Free The Space Between Sisters by Mary McNear Page A

went that high.”
    â€œNo, I mean, aren’t you worried that you won’t accomplish anything today?”
    â€œAccomplish anything?” Poppy said, sitting all the way up this time. “Win, it’s summertime. It’s a time of year when people go on vacation. When they relax. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m relaxing. That’s what I’m accomplishing.” But even with the sun in Poppy’s eyes, she could see that Win was unimpressed by her logic.
    â€œOkay, well, in the time you’ve been relaxing,” Win said, “I’ve paid my bills, had my oil checked, refilled the prescription for my allergy medication, gone grocery shopping, and made lasagna.”
    Poppy sighed, louder this time, and lay back down again. This conversation was not going to end well, she reflected. She was not completely surprised, though, that they were going to have it now. She’d been waiting for it, in fact, for a couple of days.
    Still, she had to admit, her and Win’s first several days as housemates had gotten off to a good start. No, a great start. They’d had fun, just as Poppy had promised they would. They’d made their favorite brownies, from a Barefoot Contessa recipe, and when they’d gotten impatient over how long it was taking them to bake, they’d taken them out of the oven before they were done and eaten them, with spoons, directly out of the pan.They’d spent a day in their pajamas, binge-watching an entire season of Scandal . They’d played Monopoly. Or they’d tried to play Monopoly, only to discover that too many of the pieces were missing to play it successfully. But they’d had fun figuring that out, anyway. They’d taken their grandfather’s ancient motorboat out on the lake—Poppy having miraculously coaxed its engine back to life—and they’d coasted around the little islets, and beaches, and coves in their bay, waiting for the engine to give out again. And when it had, finally, given out, they’d flagged down a couple of fishermen and gotten a tow back to their dock. And they’d sat on that dock, one sultry afternoon, and watched a thunderstorm approach from across the lake, and then ran back up to the cabin just seconds before the sky opened up above them, unleashing a torrential downpour.
    But most of all, those first couple of days, they’d talked. They’d talked, and they’d talked, and they’d talked. They’d talked about their parents, they’d talked about their childhood, they’d talked about old friends, and some newer friends, and about one of Win’s colleagues at the middle school who drove her crazy with her passive aggressive remarks. They’d talked about whether Poppy should get bangs—they’d decided against it—and whether Win should get a kayak—they’d decided she should, but when they’d looked at the prices of kayaks online they’d changed their minds.
    They’d talked the way only sisters and best friends could talk, starting a new subject before they were done with the old, and then coming back to the old one later and picking up right where they’d left off. They talked like this because they knew they would never exhaust their topics of conversation. Each reexamination of a subject could offer new insights. And it could always—always—be talked about some more. Now, of course, Poppy fretted, they wouldn’t be talking to each other—they’dbe having a talk with each other. And nothing could be more different than these two things. The talking was about anything, anything at all. The talk was about Poppy, and about her need to find direction in her life.
    But again, Poppy had seen this coming, because as perfect as things had seemed between them those first several days, there had still been warning signs. Win, for instance, had expressed displeasure over the way Poppy had loaded the