she said with finality.
Feeling as if she were arguing with the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland, Jo tried anyway. “Emma, you’re so skinny, I’m afraid you’ll break! Why do you think you’re fat?”
“Oh, I guess I’m not really.” She shrugged. “Not now. But I was. You should have seen me two years ago. I was, like, pudge city. So now I’m just really careful, so I don’t gain any weight.”
If she weighed ninety pounds, Jo would have been astonished. “Boys don’t usually like skinny that much.”
“The other girls are so jealous!” the teenager said with pleasure, as if she hadn’t heard Jo or didn’t care what boys thought. “They’re, like, pigs. They can’t make themselves not eat pizza and ice cream and junk like that. They want to think everybody eats it, but then I don’t, so they know they’re lying to themselves.”
“Jealousy isn’t the best basis for friendship,” Jo said carefully.
Emma looked at her as if she were crazy. “I’m not going to be fat just to make them feel better.”
“You don’t have to be fat. Just don’t…” Jo had the sense not to say, Rub their noses in it.
Emma wasn’t listening anyway. “Uncle Ryan is here. Did I tell you?”
No. She hadn’t.
Jo grabbed her small purse and stuffed her wallet, a brush and lip balm in it. “You don’t mind that I’m going out with him?”
“No. You’re cool.”
Jo smiled over her shoulder as she reached for the knob. “Thank you. I’m touched.”
“Mom’s showing him the bathroom. She’s bragging, like she did all the work,” Emma added spitefully.
Jo hurried down the hall.
Ryan’s voice floated from the bathroom. “This tile looks great. I can’t believe how much you’ve gotten done.”
“We worked hard,” his sister said.
We? Jo’s temper sparked.
But Kathleen, seeing her, smiled graciously. “Jo is our expert. And Helen has become a whiz at cutting tile. She’s hardly broken any.”
The bathroom did look good, if Jo said so herself. Ryan did, too, but she tried to concentrate on the room, not his big, broad-shouldered presence or the slow smile he gave her.
They’d gone with a basic, glossy, four-inch-square tile in a warm rust. The grout was a shade lighter. The floor was still raw plywood; Jo was concentrating on getting the bathtub surround and the countertop done so the sink could be reinstalled. Wallpaper would be last, an old-fashioned flower print in rust and rose and pale green.
“I just did the grout this afternoon,” she said. “I guess I have to wait a couple of days to seal it.”
Ryan nodded absently. “I can put the sink in tomorrow evening if you’d like.”
“We’d like!” Kathleen exclaimed. “Now, if only we had a toilet upstairs…”
Feeling as if she’d just been criticized, Jo reddened. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have done that part of the floor…”
Kathleen laid a hand on her arm. “Don’t be silly. You’re a miracle worker. I’m just whining. I got up in the middle of the night last night and fell down the last three stairs. Ms. Graceful.”
Behind Jo, Emma laughed, the tone jeering and unkind.
Kathleen flinched.
“That’s not very nice,” Ryan said. “Laughing at your mother having hurt herself.”
“She was a cheerleader. And homecoming queen. You don’t think it’s funny that she fell down the stairs?”
“No. Any more than I’d think it was funny if you had.”
“But I do things like that all the time,” Emma said resentfully. “She never does.”
Rather than angry, Jo saw with interest, Kathleen looked stricken.
“I don’t cut myself with a table saw, either.” Ryan kept his voice calm. “Would it be funny if I did?”
His niece stared at him. Her voice rose. “That’s different! You know it is!”
He didn’t let her off the hook. “Why?”
Color staining her cheeks, Emma cried, “Because…because you don’t think you’re perfect!” With that, she whirled and ran down the hall. Her bedroom door slammed.
The adults stood in silence for a painfully long moment. Jo wanted to be anywhere else.
Ryan and Kathleen looked at each other. He had a troubled line between his brows, while her face looked pinched.
“She’s been impossible lately.” Hysteria threaded Kathleen’s voice.
“Like I said before, she’s a teenager.”
Trying to be unobtrusive, Jo edged back into the hall.
“You know it’s more than that.” Tears glittered in the other woman’s blue eyes.
Her brother squeezed her shoulder. “The therapist told you there weren’t any easy answers.”
“Yes, but I thought…” She pressed her lips together. “I hoped…”
“I know,” he said, in a low, quiet rumble.
Kathleen turned almost blindly to Jo. “I’m sorry we keep throwing these scenes. You must wonder about us.”
They were both looking at her now. She couldn’t go hide in her bedroom. “No,” she lied. “I…”
“She has an eating disorder.” Tears wet Kathleen’s cheeks. “I suppose you noticed.”
Jo nodded dumbly.
“I thought my husband was the problem.” For a moment her face contorted before she regained control. “It would seem I was wrong.”
“Emma’s the one with the problem,” Ryan reminded her, in that same deep, soothing way.
“Is she?” Kathleen wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Her eyes had a blind look again. “Excuse me.” She brushed past Jo and a moment later her bedroom door shut with another note of finality.
This silence was uncomfortable, too. Both spoke at the same time.
Jo began, “If you’d rather not…”
“Makes you glad you live here, doesn’t it?” Ryan said at the same time.
They both laughed, in the
