Family For Beginners

As they stood in the doorway of Flora’s apartment, Molly stared in wonder from the safety of her father’s arms. “Why is your home underwater?”

“A pipe burst in the apartment upstairs and it brought my ceiling down and flooded everywhere. I’ve had an exciting morning.” Flora was bright and cheerful, but Izzy could tell she was close to tears. Her voice was high-pitched and her smile was a little too wide.

Brave, Izzy thought grudgingly. If it had been her apartment—and please God don’t ever let her live anywhere this bad—she would have fallen face-first into the flood and tried to drown herself.

Now Izzy was wishing they hadn’t come and seen it in person. It was truly awful. She was pretty sure the apartment Flora lived in didn’t look that great when it was dry, but with water sloshing around the ankles it was dank and depressing. Izzy couldn’t believe anyone lived here.

The uncomfortable images she’d had of her father and Flora using her apartment for secret sex vanished. There was nothing romantic about this place. She’d seen her father’s bank ac

count online and there had been no hotel bills, so unless Flora was paying, which seemed unlikely given the fact that she couldn’t afford a cab over to Brooklyn, they still hadn’t had sex.

That gave Izzy hope. Sex wasn’t always serious, she knew that. Half her friends had done it just because they felt it was time, not because they were “in love.” But she had a feeling that for her father sex would make a relationship serious. Her mother had always said that she’d married Jack because he was a forever type of guy.

Izzy wished she hadn’t had that thought because now she was thinking of her mother and with the thoughts came utter misery followed by anger. Why? Why?

Her parents should have been together forever. They should have lived side by side until they were both old and boring and had no teeth, and instead—

Izzy gulped.

Right now she badly needed her dad not to be a forever type. She needed him to be a one-night-stand type. The type who moved on.

She tensed as he shifted Molly onto his hip and reached out his free arm to Flora.

“Come here.”

The fact that he was willing to comfort her in front of Molly alarmed Izzy more than the water sloshing round her ankles.

“Probably best not to give me sympathy. I don’t want to raise the water level farther by crying.” Flora stepped away from him and squelched her way across what had presumably once been a carpet, toward a bed. “I managed to rescue some of my books, and my laptop is fine. My clothes are mostly ruined but it’s all replaceable. It’s people that matter, not things.”

Did she seriously mean that?

Molly pointed. “You saved my picture!”

Izzy followed the direction of her sister’s finger and there, sure enough, was the fox Flora had drawn. Seriously? All your worldly goods were under threat and you saved a stupid piece of coloring?

Flora was smiling. “Of course I saved your picture. It’s my favorite thing. I didn’t want it to be damaged.”

Molly preened and Izzy gnashed her teeth.

It was just a fox, not a van Gogh. “Were you in the bed when the ceiling came down?”

“No. Fortunately I felt water dripping on me and got out of bed to investigate about two minutes before it collapsed.” Flora rubbed her hands over her arms and stared at the mess. “It’s my fault.”

“What?” Even Izzy, who was desperately looking to blame Flora for everything and anything, couldn’t see how one person could have caused this. “How?”

“There was a weird stain on the ceiling. I’ve watched it slowly growing. I mentioned it to the landlord, but he didn’t bother investigating. Now it seems it was probably a slow leak from the pipe in the upstairs bathroom. I should have been a little more forceful.”

Izzy stared at the mess. “You should.”

Flora straightened her back. “The landlord has called a plumber. And the insurance people are coming to take a look. He’ll fix it, I’m sure.”

She didn’t look sure and Izzy, who knew nothing about home maintenance, was even less sure. Could this place be fixed? It seemed to her that it should be knocked down.

She felt a sinking feeling in her gut as her father reached out and pulled Flora against him in a protective gesture that Izzy wished she hadn’t witnessed. He cared.

And this time Flora didn’t resist. She clung to him as if he was a lifeboat. There was so much water in the place that had there been an actual real lifeboat Izzy might have jumped in, too.

The tightening of her father’s mouth was a blow to the gut. When her father wore that look he always won whatever fight he and her mother were having. Her mother would shriek hysterically and wave her arms like the original drama queen and her father would stand strong and steady and wait until she’d finished to make his point.