Free A Dropped Stitches Christmas by Janet Tronstad

didn’t have any rules about keeping secrets,” Marilee says a little too quickly.
    She’s right; we didn’t have a rule like that. But she knew, like I did, that everyone else had shared their lives. Marilee talked about the problems she’d had adjusting to her parents’ divorce. Lizabett talked about how she felt her family was smothering her. Becca talked about the struggles she had trying to be her own person in her family. And, all that time, I let them believe my family life was as smooth and unruffled as they pictured it.
    “How long have you been worried like this?” Becca ignores Marilee and demands to know.
    “We’ve lived with my uncle since I was twelve. It’s been okay,” I say and then I stop myself. If I’m going to do this, I need to be honest. “I’ve been worried he’s going to ask us to leave for the last six years or so.”
    “Since before you got your diagnosis?” Lizabett says softly as she scoots her chair a little closer to me and puts her hand on my shoulder.
    I shake my head. “I started to worry about it after I heard about the Hodgkin’s.”
    That was part of the reason I never said anything to anyone. I had so much to worry about with the cancer that I thought I was just imagining that my uncle didn’t seem as tolerant of us being in his house.
    “And you didn’t say a word to us?” Becca asks. “I told you everything.”
    “We don’t have any rules,” Marilee stubbornly repeats what she said earlier.
    By now, Joy has stopped eating and Quinn is looking at us all. I wouldn’t be surprised if the people at the counter are paying close attention to us as well. There’s enough tightly controlled emotion in Becca’s voice to make anyone want to look over here or, if not that, to at least get ready to duck and cover from where they sit.
    “I’m sorry,” I finally say. “I just didn’t know how to tell you.”
    My words hang there as the Sisterhood seems to absorb them. Finally, I hear footsteps and look over to see Randy coming back to the table.
    “Good news,” Randy says as he sits down. He looks at Joy. “I’ve got a place for you to stay for a few days. There’s a place called—” Randy stops and looks around. “Did I miss something?”
    “Carly just told us that she’s worried that she and her parents might not be able to keep living with her uncle,” Marilee says quietly.
    “Yeah, that’s why I mentioned the apartment over my diner. I can’t rent it to anyone because my customers make so much noise when they’re watching their sports games on television. But, if Carly didn’t mind that, she could stay there for a while. Her parents, too, if they need to.”
    Becca looks at Randy. “She told you she was worried about the deal with her uncle?”
    Randy nods and looks around in bewilderment.
    “They’re just upset that it took me a long time to tell them,” I say.
    In all the years I’ve been meeting with the Sisterhood, I’ve never disappointed them like this. Until it happened, I would have said I was so used to living with my mother’s disappointment that I could deal with anyone else’s as well. I would have been wrong to think that. I might not be so worried about cancer anymore, but the Sisterhood is still my lifeline.

Chapter Six

    “A half-truth is a whole lie.”
    —Jewish proverb

    B ecca brought us this proverb to our meeting one night in the spring of the first year. We’d been talking about whether we wanted our doctors to tell us the whole truth or if we wanted them to hedge a little so we’d have more hope. Becca wanted her doctor to hit her with everything straight on. Ka-boom. She wanted it all. I said I would rather my doctor not tell me anything if he couldn’t give me some hope along with it. Becca and I were different even back then.

     
    Becca respects the truth and that’s why she’ll make a good judge someday. I remind myself of that on Monday morning when I’m sitting in my advanced literature class.