Free The Memory Box by Eva Lesko Natiello

slipper socks that the nurse insists they keep. After I fill out some routine paperwork, the nurse draws my blood. She takes a pint. But from the girls, for now, she’ll just prick their fingertip for a sample to test the type.
    “You must love your cousin Ricky very much,” the nurse offers, trying to relax them.
    They clutch each other’s hand, their eyes fixed on the ceiling. They’re magnificently brave, and I’m so proud of them. They’re mostly, uncharacteristically, quiet except for an occasional mention of Ricky’s name and questions about his illness or his mother and father—the aunt and uncle they never knew existed.
    Before the nurse leaves the room to check the girls’ blood types and make up Red Cross blood cards for us, she offers apple juice and cookies and a Band-Aid for Tessa’s thumb, which is bloody from her gnawing on it. We munch on the cookies, and I whisper to the girls, “We’re not going to mention this to Daddy. He’s under too much stress, and I don’t want to worry him about Ricky. Let’s keep this little mission to ourselves.” I wink. “Okay?” They nod with their mouths full.
    When the nurse returns, she hands me the three cards, one with each of our names and blood types and says something to me that I don’t hear.
    I fan the cards, poker style.
    Come on, three-of-a-kind I silently pray to myself. I lower my eyes and read them. Lilly Thompson A+, Tessa Thompson B+, Caroline Thompson AB+.
    I close my eyes. I need another plan.
     
    Sunday, September 24, 2006, 9:12 a.m.
    The wooden blinds are not drawn all the way to the sill; they reveal a twelve-inch gap of dark sky. It looks like night, though I know it’s not. The glass panes are teeming with swollen droplets. They descend the slippery window, picking up speed, taking others with them, engulfing them, capturing them, becoming bloated and heavy. The rain falls without sound. The only sound comes from the clock on my bedside table. I look over to check that it is indeed morning. The pills I promised myself if I didn’t fall asleep by 1:00 a.m. are still there. They wouldn’t have helped anyway.
    Yesterday, after we returned home from the Red Cross, the girls insisted on writing Ricky a “Get Well Soon” card. They each included photos of themselves and pictures they drew for him to hang on his wall. I was queasy from inventing that colossal lie and for the unsettled business of our blood test. I never considered the test might not be definitive. I was so sure it would be. And now I have to mail this letter to a fake address in Argentina.
    Whoever said, “You can never tell just one lie” wasn’t lying.
    My secrets seem to snowball while my lies pile up.
    I passed on dinner, and as we were all sapped, we went to bed on the early side. Tessa couldn’t fall asleep right away, and after hours of tossing and turning in bed, thinking about Ricky, she came into my room to ask if she could bunk with me. I was never so happy to have one of the girls slink into my room in the middle of the night. So Tessa (in Andy’s spot), Smarty Pants (in his usual spot at the foot of the bed), and I finally fell asleep.
    Then, around 2:15 in the morning, Lilly began flailing in her bed. The squeaky wheels on her bed frame agitate when she flips around, and this always wakes me but for some reason, never wakes her. She’s just trying to get comfortable , I attempted to convince myself. Then she started whimpering. I was sure her nightmares had come back. She hadn’t had one in nearly a year. Before that, they were relentless. Always the same dream.
    I climbed out of bed and tiptoed in my typical zigzag pattern toward her room through the minefield of creaky floorboards. Her nightlight (in the shape of a butterfly) cast a soft, rosy glow on her room. The entire room was designed around that butterfly, and almost nothing has changed in her room since she was three.
    One would not figure Lilly to be sentimental, but try to buy new sheets