Chapter 15: Ask Me Anything

Margot did not move.

I did not move either.

Archie came down the last step and stood on the cold tile with the rabbit by its ear.

"You were talking about Mama," he said. "I heard you through the floor."

Margot knelt down until her face was level with his.

"Yes," she said. "Can I tell you something true? It's long."

"Is it a good long or a bad long?"

"Both."

He thought about that, and then he nodded and sat down on the kitchen floor, which meant we all sat on the kitchen floor.

She told him plainly.

She said his mama had been her big sister, and they'd had different mothers but one father.

She said his mama had left home when she was nineteen, and Margot had been fifteen, and she had missed her every day.

She said the man with the ladder was his mama's father.

"So he's my grandpa," Archie said.

"He is. That part is real."

"Is he a nice grandpa?"

"He's good at being polite," Margot said. "I don't think that's the same."

Archie looked at the steamship on the table.

"He gave me a boat. He didn't ask me what I wanted for lunch."

"No," I said. "He didn't."

"Mimi," Archie said. "Are you my aunt?"

"I am."

"Do aunts stay?"

I watched her throat move.

"This one does," she said.

"Even if Dad's mad at you?"

"Even then."

He looked at me, and I nodded, and he crawled into her lap and put his head under her chin without another word.

She held on to him with both arms, and over his head her eyes found mine.

I carried him to bed an hour later.

When I came down, she had not moved from the floor.

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