Between the fireplace and old quilts, we shook the chill from the rain. The photo albums our aunts pulled out for Holly warmed the rest of me.
“I’m sure you recognize this gangly thing.” Our aunt Gia pointed at a picture from about fifteen years ago.
Two preteens sat on the porch steps. One was blond and tan, a big cheesy smile on her face for the camera because she was pretty and she knew it. The other was pale and awkward under a mess of dark hair and ill-fitting clothes, giving the distinct impression of a young bird, pointy and half-formed. I never did make it into a swan.
Holly looked up at me, tugging at my rolled-up cuff. The flannel was identical to the one in the picture. I smiled and shrugged. I had a look.
“Speaking of,” I tapped the other girl in the picture, “where’s Trix?”
The twins, Stella and Gia, shared a surprised look.
“Should we call the bar?” Dio, their mother, asked. “Or let her finish her shift?”
They all stood and made for the landline hanging in the kitchen but I waved my hands.
“We’ll see her when she gets off,” I said. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”
Danny’s hands hadn’t left my shoulders since he took his spot behind me on the couch. He gave me a squeeze.
Sissy handed us a plate of biscuits, gravy, and bacon—breakfast for dinner. The lines between her brows deepened as she watched me take a bite.
“Are you really back? For good?” she asked. Her voice carried the weight of ages.
I nodded. “She can’t keep us away anymore.”
Pain flashed across her face but she nodded back.
My great-grandmother, Ama, pulled an older album into my lap and started listing off greats and great-greats I’d never met. The De’Scenthir genes were strong. Every smiling face had the same warm brown eyes and gentle waves—save two, soon to be three once they started taking pictures of Holly. Even my cousin Trixy had the soft, round features of the family, though her eyes were large and dark enough to mirror the world around them.
Not me, not Jinx, and not Holly. We were too . . . pointy. Our skin and hair too stark a contrast, our eyes unsettlingly pale—almost colorless. We stood out like ink blots among Botticelli cherubs. But it was more than that. I could admit it to myself, as my aunts and grandmothers hovered around us, smiling at their intact family—or as close to it as possible.
Jinx never smiled. Not in a single picture they had of her, even as a child. Five years old and her face stared back at the camera, haunted. As the years passed amid the photos, her face, her expression, hardened. She glared back as a teenager, an anger that boiled to the surface, hot enough to scorch the earth.
And then I came along. I smiled, or tried to, but even as a kid, the world beneath my feet was quicksand. Any moment at home Jinx was liable to jerk us up and fling us across the continent. Before holidays, before birthdays . . . I never knew when it was coming, only that it was. You could see it in the hunch of my shoulders, the uncertainty of my smile, one corner of my mouth turned up, the other down. Never fully in the moment, always waiting for the door to slam.
I swore to myself, from the moment Holly was born, I’d give her a better life than I had. A reason to smile for pictures.
And now look at her . . .
I swallowed hard and forced a smile as Stella told a story about Trixy and me not understanding how Dio was her grandmother but not technically mine. I rubbed Holly’s arm from around her slight shoulders. She leaned into me and curled up on the couch, getting comfortable. The tension in my back eased a little.
She’s home. That’s all that matters.