“Too early for you, Erin?” Hank said.
“Actually, at home, I get up for swim practice well before the sunrise. I’m saying I wouldn’t get up just for the sunrise.”
The room froze. Felicity said, “You must not have seen many good sunrises.”
Sifting through mental imagery, Erin couldn’t recall a single sunrise. Not in Wheaton. Not on vacation. Not in the U.P. “I don’t think I’ve seen one, ever.”
Everyone turned their attention from Erin to their absolutely fascinating crumpets. Heat crawled up her cheeks.
Pippa said, “Erin plays the cello. Did you know, Hank?”
“I’ve heard.”
Felicity said, “Erin, you know you’re welcome to practice your cello in the living area, right? We’d love to hear you play. Your mother says you’re quite good.”
Erin shifted in her seat. “I was thinking we might return the cello. I haven’t opened it since I arrived, and I’m enjoying the break.”
“Okay,” Felicity said. “Perhaps we could we hear you play it, just once?”
“It’s her birthday,” Hank said.
She rolled her eyes but could hardly say no to a woman receiving a single present from her family. Had Claire’s birthday ever lacked fanfare, there would be hell to pay.
“Sure,” she said. “I also bought you a little something.”
Felicity opened the MAC gift certificate. “How extravagant!”
“I thought you might like it. It’s something my mom likes … to do on special occasions.” That was a flat-out lie, but Erin couldn’t admit Claire enjoyed spa days monthly. She already felt guilty Felicity had spent hundreds of dollars on an unsightly uniform Erin had no desire to wear.
After breakfast, Erin tuned the cello, warmed up, and played the second movement of Debussy’s sonata. Her phrasing felt cold, as if she were returning to an unwelcoming house. She pulled the bow over the strings—it was a fine instrument—and swayed a bit in her seat, but she felt nothing.
Cello really wasn’t her thing. She loved listening—god, she loved listening! Claire had bought four Yo-Yo Ma albums to entice Erin to play, and she loved them; Yo-Yo Ma’s music was gorgeous.
But Erin was not Yo-Yo Ma. Her heart didn’t belong to the cello.
Cello hadn’t come easily to her, but she did it, because—again, she needed to be a well-rounded person. At eleven, she’d swapped her guitar for intensive cello lessons to close in on her peers.
Her heart wasn’t in the music today. It never had been. She couldn’t compel herself to work hard at it anymore, either.
Erin finished her piece with a flourish and felt only relief.
“You found a well-crafted cello,” she said to Felicity. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Erin.”
As Erin packed up the cello, Hank regaled Hamish with a story about Mrs. Wellman, whose cracked foundation he’d finally fixed the previous day, and then everyone moved outside.
Hamish engaged the garage door to reveal Felicity’s new bicycle and everyone yelled, “Happy birthday!”
Felicity hugged everyone before strapping on her helmet. “Maybe a wee spin.”
The woman had no jacket … but away she went.
“Sweet as,” Pippa said.
Hamish said, “I’d say she’s happy”
“How did she used to get to work?” Erin asked.
“She biked. But this is the bike she wanted. It’s a sweet bike. Light as a feather, carbon fiber. Twenty-two speeds. Took her ages to decide what she wanted. Been in the garage for a week, so she waited patiently!”
“Where’s she headed?” Erin asked.
“Probably out to the wop wops and back.” Hamish registered Erin’s confusion. “How do I say it? Way out of the city. Middle of nowhere. Can’t see one house from another. The wop wops.”
“It’s an affectionate term,” Hank said.
Pippa giggled. “Hank lives in the wop wops.”
“And you make an appearance for birthdays?” Erin said.
He shrugged. “I’m considering changing my surname to Wakefield. They’re my second family, so I had to come ’round for birthday hugs.”
His crooked grin forced something in Erin’s chest to swell.
“What’s the plan when she gets back?” Erin asked.
“Special pudding after tea tonight,” Hamish said.
A bunch of kids on bikes came up the driveway. “Keen to play?” one asked Pippa.
“Yes!”
Hamish held out his arm. “Your uniform clean?”
“Yes,” Pippa said.
“Bed made?”
“Yes.”
“Room tidied?”
Pippa hesitated. “My things are tidied.”
“Cleared for takeoff,” Hamish said.
Pippa hopped onto her bike and sped down the driveway.
“Birthday tea at half six!” Hamish yelled.
Erin wondered where they were going, how Pippa would eat lunch, and what the gang of young cyclists could do for nine hours.
Leaving Hank and Hamish in the driveway, she retreated to tidy her half of the bedroom and text her new friends that she was free today after all. Everyone was already out for the day, but every single one of them invited her to a party at Satellite Club that night.
Jade: Happy to give you a lift, if you need.
Erin: Yes, please!
Jade: I probably can’t hang much once we get there.
Jade: I have a thing. Not really a date, but …
Erin: But WHAT?
Jade: A crush? A longing?
Jade: I am seriously grinning as I type that.
Jade: I don’t want to say anything that might jinx it.
Erin: Been there, done that.
Jade: Pick you up at half eight?
Erin: Sounds good.
She had until 8:30. The idea of going to a party turned her stomach, but at least she knew Claire and Mitchell wouldn’t be at her throat the morning after.
Late in the morning of her seventeenth birthday, Erin arrived home to hear her mother screaming in the kitchen, “Valentina is literally airing our dirty laundry for the whole world to see.”
Living with two lawyers made for constant arguments.
“Claire,” Mitchell said. “It is obviously clean laundry. And I don’t know why you are so bent out of shape about this.”
“It is embarrassing. It is rude. It looks like we live in the ghetto.”
In the backyard, Erin spied four lines stretched from the deck to the back fence. Valentina was an artist in many ways, so the family’s clothes hung in chromatic order, from Claire’s white lacy thongs fluttering near the porch through a laundry ombre ending with Mitchell’s black business
