C. Box - Nowhere to Run

“I’m sorry,” Marybeth said. “I had no idea. I mean, she left for school on time after breakfast. ” She recalled two of April’s friends, Anne Kimbol and Michelle McNamara, standing shoulder-to-shoulder together on the front porch waiting for April and clutching their math textbooks. Those girls were trouble.

She looked up to see Sheridan, eighteen, standing in the threshold of the hallway in her maroon polyester Burg-O-Pardner smock, about to go to work for the afternoon. The logo for the restaurant-a hamburger wearing a cowboy hat and boots with spurs, and holding a carton of their special Rocky Mountain oysters-was on a patch above her breast pocket. Sheridan, like Marybeth, was blond and green-eyed and serious.

Sheridan wanted to save some money for her senior year in high school, and she’d discovered to her surprise she was a pretty good waitress. She was juggling her part-time job with “optional” summer basketball practice. Sheridan played forward for the Saddlestring Lady Wranglers. Although she had her mother’s concentration and determination to make it all work, her basketball coach-a venal, sideline-strutting peacock of a man who interpreted Sheridan’s job and other interests as a personal affront to him and his potential success-had threatened to take her out of the starting lineup if she missed another practice. The coach, she thought, would make her senior year in high school miserable.

Sheridan had overheard her mother and mouthed, “April, again?”

Marybeth nodded to her daughter and said to the vice principal, “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. I’ll drive her there myself if I need to and watch her go inside. I’ll deliver her to the classroom if necessary. And the good news is my husband will be back next week for good. If I can’t bring April in, I’ll ask Joe to do it. He’s used to shuttling kids.” And thought, Wherever he is. That he hadn’t called the night before still bothered her. There were so many things she needed to tell him, so many things they needed to talk about, starting with the fact their foster daughter’s behavior was spinning out of control.

Mrs. Harris thanked Marybeth and said something about the unseasonably warm weather, and Marybeth nodded with distraction as if the vice principal could see her, said “Bye,” and disconnected the call.

She placed the phone in the charger and asked Sheridan, “What is she doing, that girl? Where is she going and who is she with?” Putting Sheridan into the tough decision of ratting out her foster sister or maintaining the shared silence of the sisterhood.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Marybeth asked. “It’s for her own good. ”

Sheridan took a deep breath and prepared to say something when Missy knocked sharply on the front door.

“Later,” Sheridan said.

Marybeth thought she knew what was going on: Sheridan and April were battling. And it was going beyond normal sibling rivalry into full-fledged war. In the past year, Sheridan had assumed the old pecking order-with her in the top spot because she was the oldest and most responsible for April’s return-would resume. But April had come back with a trunk full of adult trauma and experience with which she challenged Sheridan. And everyone else. It was not the idyllic situation Marybeth had assumed it would be. And, Marybeth thought, as April herself thought it would be.

“For now,” Marybeth said dourly. “Later, we talk.” She gestured to the front door. “Would you please let her in?”

Sheridan welcomed the reprieve and shouted over her shoulder to her thirteen-year-old sister, “Lucy, there’s somebody here for you!” and ducked back down the hallway with a satisfied smirk.

“I was surprised to see your car home on a Wednesday,” Missy said, sweeping into the house with a kind of full-sized presence that belied her sixty-four years and petite figure. She wore a black silk pantsuit embroidered with the silhouettes of dragons, a purchase from China when she’d attended the 2008 Summer Olympics with her fifth husband, Earl Alden, known as the “Earl of Lexington,” who was a multimillionaire media mogul with a ranch outside of town and homes all over the world. With each husband, Missy had traded up. Her last husband, Bud Longbrake, had lost his ranch to her in the divorce when he’d discovered the handover was in small print in the prenuptial agreement he’d signed when he and Missy got married.

“I took the day off,” Marybeth said, looking around for either of her daughters for help or support. But Sheridan had slipped out the back to go to work and Lucy was hiding behind the door she’d been tricked to open to let her grandmother in. “Joe will be back the first of next week, as you know. I’ve been putting boxes of the girls’ things in his office and I needed to clean it all up.”

“Oh,” Missy said, “Joe. I’d so forgotten about him. I’ve gotten used to just you and the girls.”

“I’ll bet,” Marybeth said.

“There you are!” Missy said, turning and seeing Lucy behind her before her granddaughter could slither across the wall and dart up the stairs undetected.

“Hi, Grandma Missy,” Lucy said.

Missy enveloped Lucy in her arms, but turned her head slightly so her makeup wouldn’t smear on her granddaughter’s shoulder. Marybeth was startled to see Lucy was nearly the same height and build as her mother after a summer of fierce growth. Missy said to Lucy, “How’s my favorite granddaughter?”

“I’m fine,” Lucy said, forcing a girlish smile she reserved for photographs and her grandmother.

“Please, Mom. ” Marybeth said.

“You know what I mean,” Missy said, dismissing her.

The animosity between Sheridan and her grandmother had almost reached the level of acrimony as that between Joe and Missy. So Missy no longer made an effort to pretend that she didn’t prefer Lucy. Like Missy, Lucy went for fine clothing and fine things. Missy disapproved of Sheridan’s nascent interest in falconry and science and her lack of interest in all things Missy.

To Lucy, Missy said, “And are you wearing that silk dress I brought you from Paris? The electric blue one?”

“School hasn’t started yet,” Lucy said. “But I will.”

Missy nodded with satisfaction.

Marybeth knew Lucy was fibbing. Lucy’d told her she was embarrassed by the dress. That it might as well have had MY GRANDMOTHER IS RICH embroidered on the back of it. That she’d never wear something like that to a seventh-grade dance. She’d also confessed she was getting more and more embarrassed in general by her grandmother, who sometimes acted as if they were contemporaries as well as allies. Marybeth still bristled at the memory of Lucy telling her Missy had said one of the bonds between them included the fact they “shared common enemies.” Meaning Marybeth and Joe.

Marybeth thought, Not now . I don’t have time for this .

Marybeth’s business management company, MBP, had recently been purchased by a local accounting firm looking to widen its base. They’d retained her to run the company for a year while they incorporated her employees and contracts into the firm. Now that Joe was being sent home, it should have been the best of all worlds. But it wasn’t.

Managing the sale of her business, the transition into a larger and entrenched company, the running of the household with three teenage girls, and Joe’s yearlong absence had become almost unbearable. It was as if she were overseeing three full-time operations at once, she thought, and no one seemed to realize or appreciate the pace and scope of her responsibilities. Even Joe, who at least tried. The last time they’d talked, two nights ago over a scratchy satellite phone, Marybeth had declared that she was considering taking up heavy drinking. Joe had said, “You’re kidding, right?”