The World Divided by Piper by Caela Carter

Author:Caela Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

13

Mom and Calvin are gone for hours. Something is weird when they come back: Gladys is sleeping, and they’re laughing. They disappear into their bedroom, then they reappear, without Gladys. She’s asleep in her crib.

Things are . . . better.

Mom restarts the fire, lays the tablecloth back on the floor, and asks me to set out breakfast even though it’s 4:00 p.m. The doughnuts are tough and cold, and the nine-hour-old waffles are especially gross, but Mom, Calvin, Eloise, and I eat everything anyway.

“I know this would have been more delicious at ten thirty this morning,” Mom says, gnawing on her last bite of waffle. “But it tastes amazing right now.”

I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling. “OK, sure.”

“I’m serious!” Mom says. “This is the first thing I’ve eaten since that egg muffin this morning.”

“Now that was delicious,” Calvin says.

“Thanks,” I say, sheepishly.

“I barely tasted it,” Mom says. Then she quickly adds, “I mean, I’m sure it was wonderful. I was just so worried, but this right here”—she picks up a mostly cooked chocolate-glazed doughnut and pops it in her mouth—“this is the perfect Christmas dinner.”

Mom puts her arm around me, and I sink into her, so glad to have a hug without anything between us. It feels too good to be true, so I don’t ask any questions for the rest of the day. I go to bed still not knowing or really caring what was wrong with Gladys.

The next day, things are even better. Gladys wakes up, of course, but she doesn’t cry. She’s noisy, but it’s gurgling and baby talk into Mom’s collar as Mom cleans the kitchen or snoring on Mom’s shoulder as Mom prepares a lecture at the table. I guess whatever happened at the hospital really did help her stop crying so much. Eloise spends the whole day at our house, except for a few hours at the dog shelter, and she takes me with her for that.

I go back to El Jardín in the afternoon to sing Deck the Halls to the resting roots, but I don’t study there. I study at home. Gladys is so much quieter that I can sit in the living room to study the way I used to. Calvin refills my water bottle before I even ask. Mom sometimes puts a snack next to me. When Gladys fusses, Mom bounces her and hums, and she quiets back down. It’s the way I thought life with a baby sister would be before she was born, normal except for a tiny warm body sometimes wedged between us.

By New Year’s Eve, I’m feeling pretty prepared for all four of my remaining specialties, so, in the evening, I take the Encyclopedia of Plant Life and The History of Natural Disasters and wander into the living room to ask Calvin to quiz me. The light is on under the door to the basement, so he’s probably in his office. I could go down and ask, I know he’d help me, but instead, I look for Mom.

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