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standing up at the head of the bus like he was in charge or something. Well, I suppose he was, but still and all. ‘Take your toothbrushes and sleepwear with you, and if anyone tries to stop you, tell them to see me. I’ll be in the front of the store.’
    Personally, I’m not one for walking around a store in my nightgown and robe. I mean, I’m totally decent and all, but it just seems inappropriate. Knowing I’d have to walk back in in the morning, wearing the same thing and changing clothes, made me decide to sleep in what I had on and change my blouse in the morning. I went in the Wal-Mart, but with just my toothbrush and night cream in my purse.
    So imagine everyone’s chagrin when we woke up the next morning to find out we’d been traveling most of the night. Brother Joe had taken a turn driving – he said he had a license to drive a bus, whatever. And we were back on Sister Edith’s itinerary. We should arrive in D.C. late tonight.
TUESDAY
    I got up the next morning, threw a robe on over my sleep T-shirt (one of Willis’s from a Grateful Dead concert years ago – the holes aren’t in any awkward places), and headed into the kitchen.
    Willis was right behind me, jeans and a button-down shirt, running shoes and crew-socks, and his briefcase. Being your own boss does have its privileges – like every day is casual Friday.
    I handed him an orange juice and his vitamins, all of which he consumed in one swallow, then his cup of coffee and he was out the door by seven-ten. I went back into our bedroom, threw the robe on the floor, and crawled back into bed.
    I woke up again around nine-thirty when I heard a commotion in the kitchen. One of my not-so-favorite things about building our new bedroom onto the new addition of kitchen and family room is that it was too damn close to the kitchen.
    I stretched, picked the robe up off the floor, and opened the door. Alicia and Bess were in the kitchen, Bess making coffee and Alicia fixing bagels.
    ‘Don’t drink that,’ I said to Bess. ‘It’ll stunt your growth.’ I crawled up on a stool. ‘But make enough for me.’
    ‘It’s cigarettes that stunt your growth, mother,’ she said. ‘And I gave those up weeks ago.’
    I started to react, then realized she was joking. Probably. I’d been joking, too, of course. Bess had just turned sixteen in the summer, and was still five foot nothing, so her growth had already been stunted by something. Her birth mother had been short, too, but more like five foot two inches. As Bess was already sixteen, I didn’t see a big growth spurt in her future. And yes, there were a lot of short jokes in the family, but she seemed to handle it well. I think knowing that Megan, at five feet ten inches, felt like an awkward behemoth around her perfectly proportioned and quite beautiful younger sister eased the pain of a few playful short jokes. With Alicia now in the works, when she stood in the middle between the other two, I had stair steps. Alicia was five-five and ninety-eight pounds, so if she leaned just a little, it almost looked like Bess/Megan. That’s a joke.
    ‘Is Megan up?’ I asked the girls.
    ‘Not that I noticed,’ Bess said.
    ‘She’ll probably sleep ’til noon,’ Alicia said.
    ‘What do y’all have planned for the day?’ I asked.
    ‘Why?’ Bess asked. ‘So you can get us out the door quickly and go back to bed?’
    ‘Coffee,’ I said, having heard the noise from the coffee machine stop. ‘Actually,’ Bess handed me a cup, into which I emptied two packets of Equal, ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but it seems like a plan,’ I said, thinking going back to bed was an excellent idea.
    Alicia turned to Bess and said, ‘You’re right. I do see where she gets it.’
    ‘You’re comparing me to Megan, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘That’s an awful thing to do.’
    ‘That’s an awful thing for a mother to say!’ said a voice from behind me.
    I glanced. It was, of course, Megan. ‘It was a joke,’ I