The Six Rules of Maybe

rolled away from me. I spoke to the back of her head and the curve of her shoulders. I told her about the dream.
    “Am I remembering this or not?” I said.
    “You’re remembering this,” she said. Her voice was tired.
    I thought of Hayden’s note. I will not leave you like you’ve been left before. I had thought he meant some boyfriend I didn’t know about. Maybe Hayden had been more right about Juliet all long. “Our father is the one who left you,” I said.
    She didn’t know what I meant. “He left you , too.”
    “I didn’t think I remembered anything,” I said. I was still talking to her shoulders.
    “It’s too deep in to ever forget,” she said.
    “What do I do now?” I said. “I liked it better when I didn’t know I knew. When I just thought it was something forgotten.”
    “I think you’re asking the wrong person for advice,” she said.
    I stayed there, kneeling beside her bed. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted from her, or even if she could give it. Finally, sherolled over again and looked at me. “Look, Scarlet, you’ll go on doing what you’ve always done—you’ll make yourself so necessary that no one’ll ever leave you. Or else, you’ll stop. And I’ll keep making sure no one’ll ever leave me by keeping people away. Or else, I’ll stop. Pretty much, that’s all we’ve got as far as choices. You do what you do until you don’t do it anymore.”
    It took me a moment to take this in. When it settled inside and found its place, I realized that she was right. Things can look suddenly different, things you’ve seen every day of your life, like when there’s a snowfall and everything that had always been there before looks new. Or when someone who’s been only thinking things finally speaks them. I could give you my theories on everyone—on why my mother was with Dean Neuhaus, on why my sister wanted Buddy Wilkes or why she ended up pregnant. I could tell you why Nicole had self-esteem issues, or why Kevin Frink blew up that garage. But I never could have explained why I kept so close to other people’s business and so far from my own. Not the reason at the heart of things.
    The truth struck.
    “You love Hayden,” I said.
    “It’s that simple,” she said. “And that complicated.”
    “Jitter is yours and Hayden’s and you love them both.”
    “More than I know what to do with.”
    I leaned over and hugged her then, and she pulled me toward her, up beside her on the bed, her round belly against my back, and we lay like that for a while, sisters together, just like a long time ago.

Chapter Twenty-seven
    T he second letter came from the Martinellis.
    Dear Annabeth and Scarlet—
    The cocoa plants were not cocoa plants at all, and the villa was in terrible disrepair, but neither of us has ever been afraid of hard work….
    And then a third….
    Dear Annabeth and Scarlet—
    We love it here. We hope you’ll come and visit….
    I spent more time with Juliet. I went with her and Mom to see Dr. Crosby, to hear the baby’s heartbeat for myself, to see how Jitterwas coming along. As the weather got hotter and she got rounder, she craved lemons and lemonade, and I would bring her frosty glasses and we would sit and talk about baby names and about the time when I was three and stuck a LEGO up my nose, and about the time Juliet was six and locked us and our babysitter outside the house. I learned things about her. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stand the pain of labor or wouldn’t be able to soothe the baby, and she hated that she looked like our father and not our mother, and she once had tried to get Gregory Hawthorne, our middle school algebra teacher, to kiss her. I would put my face right close to Jitter and I would say things like, “Listen, you stay in there until you’re good and ready” and “We can’t wait to kiss your baby neck.” I took Juliet’s picture sideways, and she would hold her dress down as flat as possible to show off Jitter in his best light.
    Something else happened during those weeks, as summer started to close up shop and pull out fall, turning the edges of leaves orange, turning down the night temperatures, getting the display ready same as the drugstore dragging out all of the stuff for the next holiday. My love for Hayden turned into another kind of love, pieces that were there all along though I hadn’t recognized it. A love for Jitter. The desire for Jitter to have something important that I never had. Hayden was