Free All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown Page B

wrenches open the front door before her sister has even unbuckled her seat belt. She flings herself at the car, tripping on her cork platform sandals, so that Margaret, extricating herself from the front seat, is nearly knocked backward by Lizzie’s embrace.
    “Hey,” Margaret says, her voice muffled and small from inside Lizzie’s curtain of hair. “Hey there, Lizzie. Hey.”
    Lizzie rests for a moment there, catching her breath, her head buried in Margaret’s shoulder. Her sister smells like French fries. Then Lizzie straightens herself and tugs on the bottom of her cutoff shorts. “God, I’m so glad you’re home,” she says, her words tumbling out uncontrolled. “Things are really weird here. Mom is kind of freaking me out. I thought I was going to have to give her a Valtrex or something…”
    “Valtrex?” Margaret looks confused. “The herpes medication?”
    “No, the stuff that makes you all chilled out,” says Lizzie.
    “Oh, you mean Valium, ” Margaret laughs.
    “Whatever,” Lizzie says, and sighs. Margaret always has this effect on her—unintentionally reminding Lizzie how stupid and naïve she really is, as if she’d only yesterday shoved her Barbies into the shoe box in the back of her closet. As Margaret extricates a duffel bag from the passenger seat, Lizzie cups her hands on the dusty glass of the windshield so that she can peer into the back of the car. It’s full of cardboard boxes. “What are those?” she asks.
    “Oh, just…nothing,” Margaret says. “A few things I thought I’d store here. Where is she, anyway? Mom?”
    “She’s upstairs,” says Lizzie. “Cleaning. Again. It’s been weird. First she was in, like, denial about Dad, kept setting the table for him and everything, and then she suddenly got depressed, and then two days ago she went all psycho and started cleaning. All night long, even. Like I said, it’s kind of like she needs a Valium. ”
    They pause in the driveway, the unspoken subject hanging heavy between them. Lizzie glances up at the window and, deciding that Janice isn’t watching, leans in close. “So, have you talked to Dad at all?”
    Margaret looks at Lizzie, measuring her up. “No, but I got an e-mail from him. Saying it was all going to be okay. A total cop-out, if you ask me. He really should have called.”
    “I got one, too!” The e-mail had arrived in her in-box two days after her father had left: “I’m sure that by now your mother has told you that we’re going to be divorcing. I know this may be hard, but we’re going to be fine. I’m going to be giving your mom some space while we get used to these changes and I’m going to be traveling a lot in the next month or two for work, but you and I will spend some time together later this summer. Maybe miniature golf?” This had given Lizzie pause, especially since her father had never taken her miniature golfing in his life. She suddenly had a vision of a future filled with custody visitations, and was boggled by the implausibility of going to the movies with him alone, or visiting the zoo together, or doing whatever kids do with their divorced dads. “Regardless, there’s no need for you to worry,” the e-mail went on. “I’m sure you won’t need to testify. And no matter what your mother may say, this isn’t all my fault. Be good. Love, Dad.”
    Lizzie had read the e-mail a dozen times, trying to figure out what, exactly, it meant. Don’t worry about what, specifically? What was whose fault? And what did he mean by “good”? But mostly she had wondered to herself why he hadn’t just called her instead of writing an e-mail. What, he didn’t even want to talk to her anymore? Somehow this small detail was far more painful than the fact that her father had left them at all.
    Her father’s departure hadn’t really come as a surprise to her. At breakfast the day after he left, when Mom had fed her that line about Dad “taking some time,” she’d known immediately that he