Free Tighter by Adele Griffin Page B

cup of Lipton. Last minute, I slapped together another PB and J toastie for myself so that I could duck the displeasure of her dinnertime company, and I ran for it.
    Isa had barely finished our bedtime feast before she burrowed herself under the covers. Cocooned inside her pink butterfly room, she looked heart-achingly young and alone. Practically an orphan. “Will you leave the TV on?” she asked.
    “How about I just turn it down?”
    “ ’Kay.” She’d been watching Blue Earth. The flat screen over the mantel showed a couple of stoner koalas chewing eucalyptus leaves.
    I stepped closer, using the remote to adjust the brightness. “Hey, Isa, you know there’s all these tiles missing around the hearth?” They looked so ugly, gapped teeth in the blue-and-white Delft design.
    “That was Peter.” She yawned. “I saw him do it once. I told him I’d tell Dad. It was the only thing that made him stop.”
    “Why would he do it at all?”
    She nestled in deeper. “Oh, Pete was always messing up stuff.”
    “What a joker.”
    “It was just his way.”
    I found a hearthside tile and tamped it back in. “Night, then.”
    “Thanks, Jessie,” she murmured sleepily as she settled. I didn’t bother to correct her. “Don’t lock me in my room tonight, okay?”
    “Of course not.” Weird. How often had Jessie locked Isa in her room to keep her out of the way when Peter was over? Jessie’s babysitting style officially unnerved me. Sometimes I wondered if she’d only agreed to the job so that she and Peter could have access to this house, so high and lofty on its hill, so far away from their parents’ judgment.
    Milo hadn’t taken either of the cars, so wherever he was, he’d gone by foot. I hoped he was smart enough to stay put. I wound upstairs, pacing the corridor, and then I looped back into Isa’s room, where she’d fallen asleep.
    Her art notebook was drying on top of her desk.
    I picked it up and flipped pages. Wildflowers, a sparrow, and then, toward the end, a sketch that had been drawn by a more sophisticated hand. A shiver lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. Now this was Jessie’s work, I was sure of it. The sketch of Peter was in three-quarter view. In the taut curve of his stingray lip, I recognized that reluctant smile.
    On the flip side was a drawing of Isa. She looked softer, younger, and the date, July 5, was printed at her collar. Next to this sketch was a rendering of a hand. Jessie’s hand. She’d drawn it to scale. I curled my own hand over the sketch, and now it became a near-perfect, phantom match to mine.
    Last summer, Jessie was here, in love, sketching her boyfriend, driving too fast. This summer, she was gone. And yet she wasn’t gone; in some ways, as long as I was here, doing all the things that she had done, an essence of her life remained trapped in this house. Or maybe in me. And in a dislocated tug of my senses, I almost missed her, even though I hadn’t even known her.
    Maybe my loneliness was starting to unwind me. I knew I needed more socializing than just interacting with Connie and Isa and Milo; even a daily phone call with Mags would have helped, but the longer I stuck with just myself, the more messed up I might become rapping at the windows crying at the locks and it was beginning to bother me how much.
    “Miley’s home.” Isa’s head snapped up like an elastic from the pillow, as if she hadn’t been sleeping at all. “I think I hear him, Jamie. I bet he’s freezing cold.” She yawned and then, confident that on her command I’d take care of everything, dropped off just as quickly as she’d woken.
    As if on cue, the front door slammed. I was downstairs in an instant.
    Milo was soaked through, hair plastered and legs darkly mud-streaked. Wherever he’d been, he carried his secrets in the spark of his eyes and color in his face.
    As I reached the bottom step, I crossed my arms in front of my chest and tried to do the au pair thing. “Hey. I’ve been