Chapter 29The next morning, Paula and I ate breakfast outside on the screened-in veranda. Philip and my mother spent the morning and early afternoon running errands, mother and son-in-law bonding time, she had said.
I orchestrated the breakfast so I could spend quality time with my sister. We both had things to get off our chests and into each other’s heads.
Over the steady hum of a lawnmower and the faint laughter of neighborhood children, I watched my sister push her scrambled eggs around her plate with a fork. She set the utensil down, looked out onto the sunny fenced-in yard, overrun with Mom’s daylilies and azaleas. She twirled her hair, a nervous habit.
“Have you spoken to Mom?” she asked, gazing, lost in thought, absorbed by the warm, hazy day, anywhere but on me.
“About?”
She
