“How was school and work?” she asked.
I pulled my apron strap over my head and tugged at the knot at the small of my back, untying it with one hand. I rolled it up and shrugged.
“Both good, actually. How was your day?”
“Good. A bit boring. I cleaned the house, and by that I mean put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and took out the trash, because Sam’s kind of a clean freak, as you might have guessed. And then I watched Days of Our Lives. That EJ is a beautiful, evil genius. I wish he and Sami would get their crap together.”
I wasn’t sure who EJ and Sami were, but she seemed irritated by their lack of togetherness.
“I could help with the dishes and trash. If you just show me what buttons to push on the dishwasher. I’ve never used one before, but it can’t be that hard.”
Julianne waved me away. “Please. I barely have enough to keep me busy as it is.”
“Have you thought about going back to work?”
She looked at the fridge, but wasn’t really looking at it. “At the clinic? I don’t know. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom so long…Alder always seemed to have a lot for me to do. Now I don’t really have that much…” Her eyes focused. “Oh, Erin, I didn’t mean anything by that. I would never compare you to her. I’m going to stop talking now.” She covered her eyes with her long, elegant fingers. Her nails were perfectly filed and polished with a pale mauve.
I walked over and sat down on the stool next to her. “You can talk about Alder. You raised her. You loved her. It doesn’t hurt my feelings or anything.”
Julianne clasped her hands together and leaned her cheek on her wrist, staring at me while shaking her head. “I know you said you’ve raised yourself, Erin. May I say you did a fantastic job?”
I smiled.
She slid something over to me, and I looked down. It was a smartphone.
“Sam charged it, so it’s ready to go, but the charger is plugged into the outlet behind the nightstand in your room. The number is on the sticky on the back.”
I turned it over to read the seven digits written in Sam’s scribble on a Post-it strip.
“It’s mine?”
“We’d feel better if you’d carry it.”
“How much is it? I mean the phone and the monthly bill.”
“We just put it on the family plan. We’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, but I—”
Julianne put her hand on mine, and her eyes turned soft. “It’s just a phone, Erin. We wanted to.”
“O-okay. Thank you.”
“Would you like some hot chocolate?”
“I’m going to take a shower and head to bed, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, of course,” she said, making a show of being unoffended.
The stool grated across the tile when I scooted it back to stand. Just when I reached the doorway, Julianne spoke again.
“We, uh…we talked to Weston today about something. I’m not sure if he told you or not, but we decided too late that it was a little too personal and a little too late in the game for us to be prying.”
I kept my back to her and closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry if we overstepped our bounds. We might be going a little overboard, trying to make up for lost time. Sam and I talked about it earlier. We’re going to work really hard on not invading your privacy. It must be particularly difficult when you didn’t have that…oversight before.”
I turned around. “It’s embarrassing,” I admitted. “I’m not used to it. I’m feeling a little pressure, but I don’t know. It’s kind of nice that you cared enough to harass him about it.”
Three wrinkles formed on Julianne’s forehead when both her brows lifted. “Oh, okay. Well…good-night, sweetheart.”
“Good-night.”
“Erin?”
“Yeah?” I said, poking my head back into the doorway.
“Would it make you uncomfortable if I said that I love you? You don’t have to say it back.”
“I don’t think it would make me uncomfortable.”
She smiled. “I love you.”
It was so surreal that I didn’t mind returning the sentiment. “I love you too, Julianne.”
I walked down the hall and could hear her sniffling as I climbed the stairs.
The pastel letters on Alder’s door were gone, and I stopped in front of her door. The entire second floor was dark, but there was enough light from downstairs to see what was missing.
I wondered if they were in a box amid a bunch of boxes in Alder’s room, or if Sam and Julianne had left everything the way it was. I put my hand on the knob, but thought better of it and dragged my bag down the hallway to my bedroom.
Stacks of new clothes had been laundered, folded, and placed on top of the perfectly made bed that was now covered with the duvet cover I’d chosen. It was white, with pale-green horizontal stripes across it. By Julianne’s subtle reaction, I could tell it wasn’t the fanciest she’d seen, but I’d already gone through three catalogs, and it was the first one I liked after I grew tired of looking. And it was green. Green was kind of my new thing, to go along with my new boyfriend, new house, new parents, and new life.
I packed away the clothes that Julianne hadn’t hung up in the closet into the dresser drawers and took a shower. The steam filled the entire bathroom, and I lingered so long that my fingers began to wrinkle.
After taking my time through my nighttime routine, I crawled into bed and took in a deep breath. The house was so quiet at night. No bass humming through the walls. No loud television. Just the light hum of the ceiling fan and the intermittent, low hum of the central heat and air blowing through the ducts.
Just as I began to drift off to sleep, I heard Sam’s deep voice murmuring to Julianne in their bedroom downstairs. Within minutes I heard quiet footsteps up the stairs, and then my door opened. I lifted my head to see them both looking at me.
“Sorry,” Sam whispered. “Just checking on ya. Habit.”
“It’s okay,” I said, laying my head back on the pillow as the door creaked closed. I lay there, thinking about how many nights they’d peeked through the door that no longer had the pastel letters hanging from it, and how strange it must be for them to open this one to check on a different girl.