Undercover by Beth Kephart

Author:Beth Kephart [Kephart, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

Part Two

1

CHRISTMAS WAS ALWAYS my mother’s holiday. She started buying gifts in March, wrapping them at night when she couldn’t sleep, mentioning them briefly in passing: Oh, I found the best thing. I can’t wait until it’s yours. There was an entire room at the end of the upstairs hallway in which Mom stowed the boxes of earrings, the blouses and tights, the ties she always bought for Dad, and for as long as I could remember, Jilly and I could be trusted with that. There would have been no pleasure in ruining the surprise.

On Christmas morning we’d come downstairs, and there would not be a place to stand. It would be as if the floor had cracked wide apart and a world of color pushed up, and through—a jagged landscape of red and white foiled boxes, snowflake cutouts, silver angel wings. On the mantel my mother would have placed birch twigs, frosted with sugar. On the windowsills she’d have arranged her Santas. And she’d be sitting there in her favorite green plush chair—her blond hair magnificently smooth, her eyes wide beneath a sky of sparkle, my dad squeezing in beside her. Christmas was my mother’s holiday. It was the day of the year in which her talent for beauty was an active verb—a cascade across the room.

Dad took the red-eye home that Christmas Eve morning. A cab dropped him off. I heard it brake at the curb because I was waiting for it, because I’d been awake since so much earlier, watching the window for signs of a diminishing dark. I had a million things to tell my dad. I had as many things I knew I’d never say. But all I wanted, when I heard the cab, was to feel his arms around me, to hear him say My Littlest Girl, which is what he always called me, even after I got big.

I slid out of bed and opened the door to my room. I went halfway down the stairs and stopped. There was a pot of coffee on. There was a murmur. I understood at once that I would have to wait my turn. That some things do take precedence over a daughter’s love.

They talked for the longest time, my mom and dad, but I could not make out a single word. I heard only the rise and fall of sadness and silence, the long pause and the resumption, the rush and the rebuttal. I was back in my bed with the door closed tight, watching the window, the low sun in the window, the day that was coming on strong. I heard a scuffle outside my door, the rattle of the loose doorknob turning.

“Hey.” It was not my dad. It was not my mother. It was Jilly, who hadn’t bothered to knock, and maybe for some sisters that would have seemed the most natural thing, but not for the two of us—blond and auburn, pretty and not, on the opposite ends of most spectrums. She was

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