Page 7 -

Lemon Drop Falls

I raise my eyebrows, channeling Mom. I can endure glaring
to keep them in one piece.
But then she yells, “Mom would let us!”
I flinch. I don’t know how many times this summer I’ve
heard those words, and they never stop hurting.

Mom would let them.
Mom would do a million and one things better than I ever
can.

“Fine.”
It’s not. But I can’t bring myself to say what I’d have to say
instead: Mom’s gone. Mom won’t ever be here again.
All you’ve got is me.
And Dad.

When he’s home.
And when he can see us through The Fog.
The Fog rolled in after Mom died. It means a lot of the time

Dad can’t really see us, even when his eyes are pointed in our
direction. It means when we talk, he asks us to repeat ourselves
three times before he registers what we said. And when he tucks
us in at night, there’s no joking. No talking about our days. It’s
more like a robot replaced our real dad.

I should hate The Fog, but I’m scared that if it lifted, Dad
would see how hard it is for me to hold everything together.
I wasn’t supposed to be watching Budge and Janie all sum-

mer. At first it was just for one day until I found a way to con-
vince Dad to make it just one week, then managed it again, over

8