Nine Months to Redeem Him

My eyes went wide as I stared at Madison’s perfectly manicured hand. Patting over Edward’s. Slowly. Languorously. Like a dance.

Pat, pat, pat.

With the same hand that held the ten-carat diamond engagement ring given to her by another man.

She wanted Edward’s attention now, too, I realized. Why was I surprised? It had happened all our lives. Madison always had to be the center of male approval. Even when we were teenagers, and my mother was dying, Madison had snuck away with the pool cleaner and smashed her father’s car into a palm tree—effectively pulling Howard’s attention away from my mom.

All our lives, I’d tried to look out for Madison. I’d tried to treat her like the sister I’d always wanted, back when I was a lonely only child. But she’d just taken from me, and taken more.

But as I watched her hand with the huge diamond ring pat Edward’s on the table—pat, pat, pat—I suddenly couldn’t stand it one second more.

“Are you seriously flirting with Edward now?” I said incredulously. “What the hell is wrong with you, Madison?”

She stared at me, her gorgeous pink mouth a round O. Then she ripped her hand off Edward’s as if it had burned her. “I wasn’t flirting with him! I’m an engaged woman!” She glared at me, then turned to give her fiancé a tender glance. “I’m in love with Jason.”

“Are you? Are you really? Do you even know what it means?”

“Of course I do—we’re engaged!”

“So what? You’ve been engaged five times!”

“Really?” Edward said, looking at me with growing joy.

“Five?” Jason gasped.

“You’re crazy!” she said in outrage. Then, as the two men stared at her, she moderated her expression and said more calmly, “I haven’t been engaged five times.”

“No? Let’s see.” I tilted my head thoughtfully. “That punk rock musician you met on Hollywood Boulevard...”

“You call that an engagement?” Glancing at Jason and Edward, she trilled a little laugh. “I was fifteen! It lasted six days!”

“But Rhiannon never talked to you again.”

Madison tossed her head. “He loved me, not her. She should have accepted that.”

“Yes. He loved you. For six days, till his band left for Las Vegas. For that, you destroyed a friendship you’d had since kindergarten.” I lifted an eyebrow and inquired coolly, “How many friends do you have left now, by the way, Maddy?”

She looked at me in wide-eyed fury. “I have plenty of friends, believe me!”

“Friends. People who suck up to you,” I murmured. “People who need something from you. People who laugh at your jokes even when they’re not funny. Are those really friends? Or are they employees?”

“Shut up!”

Picking up my fork, I idly traced it along my plate, crushing my potatoes against the gold-rimmed china, creating a pattern like tracks through snow. “Then when you were sixteen, there was the man who cleaned our pools...”

“A pool cleaner? That wasn’t an engagement, it was a cry for help!”

“Right.” I gave her a tight smile. “You were trying to get Howard’s attention. He’d been neglecting you, spending so much time at my mom’s deathbed. Drove you crazy.”

She tossed me an irritated, petulant glance. “You make me sound selfish, but for months and months it dragged on. A girl needs her father!”

The casual cruelty of her words took my breath away. For months and months it dragged on. Yes. It had taken my mom months and months to die. Months of her fighting her illness with courage, long after hope was gone. Months of her fading away, so sweet and brave, still trying so hard to take care of everyone, even Madison. My jaw hardened.