Betts

“I THINK WE should go for a walk,” Laney says. Just like that. As if I’m not about to bludgeon Mia. As if we’re only discussing whether the storm has passed enough to go outside.

“It would be a nice thing to do with the girls,” she says.

Ginger looks as astonished as I feel. But she sets the book with the photo and envelope beside the miniature peacock book. She says Annie would like that. In her response I see what she sees: Laney has hit a wall. She can’t talk about this anymore. She can’t listen anymore.

Ginger prods Mia to call the girls. They’ll come for her, she says. “They all think you hung the fucking moon.”

A minute later, the girls tumble down the center stairs like three-year-olds just offered a ride on a merry-go-round.

“Umbrellas in the mudroom,” Ginger says.

But she hesitates when we get to the mudroom. Her bare feet sit wide and long across a join of tile. “You guys go,” she says. “I think I’ll stay here and start going through Mother’s things.”

Annie bends her long, thin neck to study the mudroom floor. Ginger must see how much her daughter wants her to come. Still, she doesn’t move to put on shoes.

“Do you still keep those boot things you wear duck hunting, Ginge?” I ask. “Seems like a perfect day for them.”

Ginger stares at me the way she did the night in the hot tub when she claimed to hate waking up next to a guy she doesn’t know. I hold her gaze as steadily as I did then. This time it’s for her rather than for me. It’s okay, I try to say with my eyes. I’ve been sleeping in Zack’s old shirts for almost thirty years now, and I couldn’t wear my mother’s shoes either. I want to tell her that she has no idea how very much her mother loved her. That Faith loved her as much as she herself loves Annie. I want to tell her that Annie needs her just as much as she needed her own mother. That all this indifference is just an act, a way of defending herself from the fear of being rejected by rejecting her mother first.

Give her a few years and she’ll come back to you, I want to say. But I can’t say it. I can’t say any of it. Not with our daughters here and probably not even if they weren’t. So I just keep meeting her gaze.

She opens a closet door and pulls out a pair of waders. “Anyone who wants them is welcome to them,” she says.

We all decline.

“I’m sure I couldn’t walk any distance in boots like that,” Mia says with a note of challenge shaded in her plain brown eyes: Go ahead, Ginge. Show everyone you can outdo me.

Maybe Ginger sees Mia is trying to play her or maybe she doesn’t. Probably she doesn’t, because she pulls the heavy boots on and leads the way out the door.