Three Months Ago

Chapter One

Mackenzie rode the few blocks home from school, and stopped in front. She glanced at the house to the left. It was white, but had a yellowed shingled roof that always made her think of a slice of bread with mustard smeared on top. On the other side was another big new place, also painted white, with a pale green door. The bread and lettuce house. In the middle was hers. A brown, pseudo colonial, with darker brown trim. Some fancy magazine declared monotones were chic, so of course her father believed it. Mac thought the three houses looked like a giant sandwich gone wrong.

She slipped into the kitchen door, closing it with both hands to ensure she didn’t make any noise. The house was bright, with lots of sunshine spilling from enormous, two-story windows. Each room led to the next through wide archways. Light, airy, open. Nothing like the people who lived in it.

Music was playing, and she peeked from the kitchen through the wide front hallway, and on to the family room. She could hear her father’s deep, muffled talking and the responding little girl giggles. Made her want to bang the pots and pans around, but if she did, he’d know she was home.

Mackenzie went to the pantry, and, entering the huge closet, surveyed the rows of staples and canned veggies, lined up like soldiers awaiting inspection. After restacking the cans of tuna so the edges were flush and the labels all faced the same way, she grabbed a box of pasta and walked out. When the water was boiling, she dropped a handful of the spaghetti into the pot. She drizzled some extra virgin olive oil into a frying pan, chopped up three cloves of garlic, and tossed them in. The oil heated up, snaking the fragrance of frying garlic through the house.

“Kenzie! Kenzie!” a little girl shrieked. She ran into the kitchen holding her blankie in the air like a flag, pigtails bouncing. “When did you get here, Kenzie? Me and Daddy are practicing.” She could not get close enough to her big sister and hopped around Mac as she cooked.

Mackenzie smiled at Lily but warned her, “Watch out Brat, you’re going to get burned if you’re too close to the stove.” She stirred the pasta, then dumped small pieces of broccoli in the colander. “You want to get our meatballs?”

Lily skittered to the fridge and pulled open the heavy freezer door with both hands. She grabbed a Ziploc bag with squiggles scribbled in the white rectangle on the front. “I wrote a label for it so we wouldn’t forget,” she said, handing it to Mackenzie. “I want you to eat mine and I’ll eat yours, okay?”

“But Lilybean, how will we tell them apart?” Mackenzie asked as she opened the plastic bag. She smiled to herself as she placed Lily’s collection of lopsided and misshapen hunks of meat next to her perfect spheres and slid the plate into the microwave.

“I made mine monster size!” Lily said, standing on tiptoe to watch them defrost. She hopped on each foot in time with the dinger as it chimed the last five seconds.

Mackenzie whistled. “Wow, Lily, you’ve been practicing your hopping, haven’t you?” You’ve gotten even better since this morning. I think you need a meatball kiss!”

Lily’s eyes lit up as she ran over and angled her cheek up expectantly.

“No, you have to puff your cheeks out like you have monster size meatballs in them and then we squish our cheeks together. Like this!” Mac bent down and they both followed her directions perfectly, making ppppthhhh sounds as they did.

“Hey, where’s my partner? Lil, you leaving me to dance all by myself?” Mackenzie’s father came into the kitchen and said, “Hi honey.”

“Look, Daddy! Kenzie’s home!

“Kenzie, you want to know a surprise? Because guess what I know something you don’t know! We are practicing something. And it’s very special! And we’re not telling until Mama gets home.”

Stan Douglas sat down and said to Lily, “Come here, Princess. Come sit on Daddy’s lap.”

When Mackenzie didn’t try to pry it out of her, Lily yelled, “This year I get to go to the dance! Kenzie, did you hear what I said?”

Mac smiled. “Yes, Lily. You get to go to the dance. How could I miss it? You’re screaming like a banshee.” She looked for hot pads to pick up the pot of boiling water.

Mr. Douglas acted hurt. “Don’t you want to come and sit with me, Lil? Daddy’s all by his lonesome,” he sniffled.

Lily went to him and draped her blankie around his shoulder, patting his back for an impatient second before running back to Mac’s side. “Don’t you think that’s so great? I can go because now I’m old enough because I’m practically going to be in kindergarten next year.” She sizzled around Mackenzie like a drop of water in a hot frying pan.

Mac used the hot pads to pick up the boiling pots, and headed toward the sink.

“Lily, watch where you’re going!” Mr. Douglas said.

“Don’t yell at her. I do have a clue, you know.” Mac poured the water through the colander, cooking the broccoli at the same time. The steam floated up to her face, and she took a deep, hot breath. The pasta fell into the strainer with a plop, blanketing the broccoli. She turned to put the empty pot back on the stove and bumped into her sister. “Lily! Are you okay?”

Mr. Douglas smirked. “Told you so.” He squatted, holding his arms out behind him. “Hop on, cowgirl, and I’ll give you the best bucking bronco ride east of the west,” he said. “Let’s go practice some more for the big night.”

As Mackenzie got out the plates to set the table, her father danced through the front hall with Lily on his feet and called out, “Barb’s flight landed a while ago, but I checked and the traffic up from both Newark and JFK are clear so –”

“You don’t know where she’s flying into?”

“Her flight changed at the last minute. Anyway, she’ll be here any second, honey.”

Mackenzie got another plate out, and thought again how lucky Lily was to have a real mother. That makes all the difference. It’s something to be grateful for, at least.

She reached for another place setting, plus a wine glass for Barb and a beer glass for her father. The Brat would use the old plastic princess cup with the peeling picture of a crown, and Mac put out a water glass for herself and placed her chopsticks on her chair.

She went back to the kitchen to toss the pasta and broccoli in the garlic oil, and as she ripped a bag of salad open and dumped it in a bowl, Barb walked in the front door.

“Hi everyone!” she said as she came into the dining room, dropping her briefcase by the coat rack. Her curls caught the light, and the red highlights lit up her face. Pale freckles dotting her nose like burnt sugar made Barb appear kind of cute-ish, and the fact that she didn’t wear much makeup took off even more years. It was easy to see why a lot of guys would like her. What wasn’t as obvious to Mac was why in the world would she settle for Stan Douglas? What could she possibly see in him? She would say his money but Barb had a good job. Grownups had their weird reasons, she guessed.

“The traffic up from JFK was – ” Barb was saying when Lily ran up and jumped into her mom’s arms, and they spun around in a gigantic squeezie spin.

Lily’s fingers intertwined behind her mother and she said, “I’m so big I can reach around you!”

Right on cue, Barb teased, “You’re not so big. I’m so little!”

Barb always joked that when she started working, she’d tried to save money by shopping in a store that sold business suits in the kid’s department but she just couldn’t find the right one. She nuzzled Lily’s neck, then put her down in her chair, and took the one beside her.

“Oh how I missed you, Punkin! How was school today? Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

“My fifth grade buddy came to my room today,” Lily said, crawling back off the chair. She spread her blankie on the seat and after making sure every wrinkle was out, climbed back up. “She read me a story, and I made her a picture.” Barb got up to push in Lily’s chair and raised her hand in a silent wave to Mackenzie.

When they were all settled at the table, Mr. Douglas passed the bowl to Barb, but not before helping himself to a huge plateful.

Mealtimes were the hardest after Mackenzie’s mom died. It seemed like every TV show had families sitting down to dinner together, sharing their thoughts, laughing, and talking over Important Problems.

Mac didn’t have any Important Problems until her father started his night visits. They ate alone every evening, just the two of them, and no one who overheard their conversations would’ve ever suspected a thing.

He only talked about it when he came into her room. The script never varied. She stopped listening after awhile, but the tape played in her head over and over. She tried to erase it, but it just wouldn’t stop.

No one could ever love you like I do.

You’re my little princess.

This is our special club.

We’re the only members.

No one else will ever have what we have.

By the time she was six, it felt like it had been going on forever. There was no beginning, and she couldn’t see how it could ever end. She had tried to make it stop then, when she was in kindergarten, right after the fifth graders had their big spring fundraiser.

There had been a spaghetti dinner at school. Families were sitting in the cafeteria at tables decorated with white butcher paper, crayoned with red checkerboards, heaping plates of pasta in front of them, served by the fifth grade “waiters”.

Emily and her parents had invited Mac along, since her dad had to work late that day. Em was in the middle of telling her parents about a bully in their class when Mackenzie realized they were talking about Important Problems.

“What are you going to do?” Emily’s dad asked.

“I could arrest him, Daddy!” Emily said.

He smiled and told her only people who broke the law got arrested, and that didn’t usually include five-year-olds. “Well, Mr. B. told us since he’s our principal that means he’s our pal and if we ever had a problem, we could tell him.”

“I think that’s a great idea, honey,” Emily’s mom had said.

The next day at school, Mac saw Mr. B. on her way back from the drinking fountain. He smiled at her, and she decided to tell him everything. He would help her. He would tell Daddy to stop their special club.

She stood, frozen, in the middle of the empty hallway.

“Mackenzie? You okay, hon?” Mr. B. asked.

“I got hurt,” Mac had whispered.

“You what? Speak up!”

She took a deep breath. “I got hurt,” she said again.

“How?” Mr. B. asked, checking Mac’s knees and elbows for scrapes. He wasn’t whispering and Mackenzie looked around to see if anyone could hear. She wasn’t supposed to tell secrets. It was their special time. Only for Daddy and her. But she didn’t like being in their club. She was working up the courage to tell him everything when he repeated his question.

Again, Mr. B. asked, “How did you get hurt?”

Finally, she told him. “Daddy!” Mac wailed, and covered her face with her hands.

Mr. B. tsked, tsked, tsked. “I really don’t think we need to bother your Daddy, Mackenzie. You look fine to me. Now go on back to your classroom.”

He patted her on the head and left her standing in the hallway.