The Sunshine Sisters by Jane Green

Author:Jane Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-16T12:11:00+00:00

twenty-three

It doesn’t matter how many years go by, how grown-up we think we are, how much we presume we have changed or evolved, when we are back in our childhood homes, we become exactly who we have always been, thinks Meredith. I bet we will all just slip back into the roles we have always played, whether we were ever comfortable with them or not. Meredith smooths her dress, tucking her hair behind her ear, inhaling sharply as she prepares to walk up the garden path and into her mother’s house.

They are about to be back together again; the Sunshine girls. And even though they have barely spoken in years, even though they may be married, or getting married, when the three of them are together, they will always be the Sunshine girls, the three daughters of the famous movie star.

Nell is here. There’s her beat-up vintage pickup truck, the same truck she has driven for ten years, taking up the last available parking space. Meredith had to park on the street, two houses away to make sure she wasn’t blocking anyone’s driveway.

But there you see it. She’s always been the Good Girl. Careful not to, heaven forbid, park in what little was left of the driveway with the trunk of her car sticking into the road, getting in someone’s way. Meredith has always looked at people who cut lines, simultaneously hating and envying them. She wants to be the sort of person who cuts lines, rather than the person who waits patiently at the end, silently cursing those who march confidently to the front and board the plane well before her, their bags tucked comfortably in the overhead compartments as Meredith has to shove past all the people to the very back of the plane to find a space for hers, squeezing all the way back again to her seat, often on the verge of tears.

Sometimes she wants to be that selfish. But most of the time Meredith feels affronted when people break the rules, push into lines, are rude to waitstaff. She has broken up with boyfriends because they were demanding or offhand to a waiter in a restaurant. And she would do it again. It is one of the things she really likes about Derek; he is polite to everyone. Except perhaps her, but that doesn’t count. He never cuts in front of lines. He follows the rules as assiduously as she. Perhaps even more so.

Here she is, about to enter the bosom of her family, parking up the street, putting herself out so as not to disturb anyone else. She would never go inside and ask Nell to pull the car up just a little bit so she could squeeze in behind. Meredith will just find a way to make it work and say nothing, ignoring any vestiges of resentment that might be lurking inside her.

After a lifetime of this, she holds so much resentment at her sisters, particularly Lizzy, that she has been relieved not to see them for so long and is not especially eager to do so now.

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