just us. I know it seems like there should have been some other kids between us—nearly ten years is quite an age span. But there weren’t any.”
“Be kind of hard not to mother a sister that much younger.”
“Mmm. Especially when there wasn’t a real mother in the picture.”
His eyebrows rose slightly. “I didn’t know that. Kristin didn’t talk much about her family. She just said that she’d shamed them and so she couldn’t have anything to do with them anymore.”
“Oh, that’s not true!” Clair lamented in pure reflex to the stab that statement unintentionally delivered.
The timer went off just then to let them know Willy’s pizza was finished baking.
Jace took it out of the oven, protecting his hands with only a dish towel.
“This has to cool until the other pizza’s done,” he told Willy, who was eager to dig into his masterpiece.
Then Jace began to dress the salad and returned to the conversation with Clair. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just repeatin’ what Kristin told Kim and Billy. We all assumed from what she said that her family had turned their backs on her.”
“I don’t know, maybe it seemed that way to her,” Clair said. “But it shouldn’t have. Not really. I had taken kind of a hard line with her, but—”
“You don’t have to explain. I know how problems can develop in families. There’s one in mine.”
“But that’s just it, there wasn’t a real problem. As far as I knew, anyway. There was just…I don’t know, a bump in the road that she didn’t let me have a clear understanding of.”
“A communication problem,” Jace surmised.
“I don’t even think you could call it that. Until the last time I saw her, she and I were as close as two sisters could be. We shared everything. There was no competition between us. I considered her my best friend and I thought she considered me hers. Of course, the same could hardly be said about Kristin and Dad….”
The timer rang again, signaling that the main pizza was finished. While Jace repeated the process he’d followed for Willy’s pie—raising the crust with a knife to make sure it was browned on bottom and taking it out of the oven to serve—Clair considered just how far she should go in detailing her family’s shortcomings.
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