She laughed. She laughed like I had said the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
“Oh my God, Jenna. Relax.” She waved her hand at me. “You know I’m joking. You’re so serious all the time.”
You’re so serious all the time.
She said the exact same thing when I was nineteen. On our front porch. With her head on Kevin’s shoulder.
Tom didn’t say anything. He cut his lasagna into very small, very neat squares, and he didn’t eat
any of them.
The rest of dinner was the longest two hours of my life.
I watched my sister the whole time. I couldn’t help it. She talked to Michael constantly. She asked
about his job. She laughed at his stories. She touched his arm when she talked. She told him what a wonderful husband he was, what a wonderful father, how lucky I was.
“Seriously, Jenna, do you know how lucky you are?” she said. “Michael, you’re, like, the perfect man.
Tom, isn’t Michael the perfect man?”
Tom looked up from his plate. He looked at Michael for a long moment.
“He’s something,” Tom said quietly.
Rachel barely spoke to her own husband all night. When Tom asked her to pass the salad, she didn’t hear him. When he told a story about a bridge project he was working on, she checked her phone.
