The Six Rules of Maybe

embracing this new experience better than anyone else. He sniffed the garbage can and the Weedwacker. He trotted around the willow tree and the rosebushes. He put his paws up on the fence and tried to peer at the Neilsons’ cat through the slats of wood.
    I went back in through the screen door and let it slam shut behind me. I wanted to make some kind of noise, because Juliet had gone off to pee and Hayden just stood there in the kitchen with Mom, his hands clasped in front of him. I felt sorry for him—those clasped hands made it look like he was praying.
    “I really love your daughter, Mrs. Ellis,” he said. “I’m crazy about her, actually.” One thing was becoming very quickly clear: Hayden was not Juliet’s usual type. Not at all. He seemed solid and grounded the way a tree is, and he was kind, you could tell. He had the sort of kindness that announces itself. Already it was obvious he was nothing like Adam Christ or Evan Giordi or, especially, Buddy Wilkes. Buddy Wilkes gave you the shivers. Me, the bad kind of shivers; my sister, the good kind. If Juliet was going to run off and marry anyone, I’d have guessed it would have been him. Buddy Wilkes III was the one my sister had given her heart(and everything else) to on and off for all four years of high school. Who was named Buddy anymore? No one. And he still did all those things guys named Buddy did years ago: smoked cigarettes, worked at a gas station, gave girls a “reputation.” He wasn’t a tree, but a high voltage power line, thin and electric and dangerous.
    “I’m not a ‘Mrs.,’” Mom said. “Unlike my daughter. What did you say your name was?”
    “Hayden,” I offered.
    “Scarlet. Go upstairs. I have more than I can handle here already.”
    I made a can you believe this? face to Hayden to convey that Mom had obviously and suddenly lost her mind. I didn’t want him to think I was someone who could be “sent upstairs,” which was something parents did in TV movies, anyway, not Mom. She was going a little nuts, and he looked stunned and helpless. Juliet appeared again. You could hear the gurgling sound of the toilet tank filling up from the open door of the bathroom. “I know this is a surprise,” she said.
    “Surprise? Surprise? You’re kidding, right? Let me just think a minute, here,” Mom said. She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips as if a plan might appear to undo what had been done. Mom was always a little frazzled on a regular day. I figured it was what happened when the way things were and the way you wished they would be were not quite the same thing.
    “Did you go to Vegas?” I asked. I was suddenly interested in the details, mostly because I was suddenly only realizing there were details. My sister had gotten married. My sister, whom I had grown up next to, who sat beside me in the car and at the dinner table, whom I used to take baths with, who taught me how to use makeup and shared her friends with me like she used to share her white-and-pink animal cookies because she always seemed to havemore of everything—she’d gotten married . We both used to hide the zucchini we hated in our napkins and test Mom’s patience and fight about who had what and now she’d joined hands with this particular guy and pledged her long life to his, and maybe she’d worn a white dress or maybe her jeans and maybe there was music or maybe there wasn’t and maybe they’d been in a long hall with big windows or barefoot on a beach or gazing into each other’s eyes at a Chapel of Love. How could we not have been there?
    “Portland courthouse,” Juliet said. “Five minutes, and the deal was done.”
    “It was the happiest moment of my life,” Hayden said. “Even if it was all a little … unplanned.” He reached for Juliet’s hand, but she was taking her hair down and putting it back up again. His ring—it sat solid and permanent on his finger. He was the kind of guy who would want love everlasting and silver anniversaries and Thanksgivings at big tables. The things you would want. I would want. Juliet’s ring—it seemed small and light. I could see that. Juliet’s ring had wings.
    “Jesus Christ,” Juliet said, although I doubted He’d come if she called. The two of them didn’t know each other very well. “I can’t believe it but I have to pee again.”
    Mom stopped her forehead rubbing and stood wide-eyed, her face frozen. A freight train might have just come through the living room, its single light