The Borrowed and Blue Murders (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) by Merry Jones Page B

snorted. Nick snickered.
    Sibling rivalry, I guessed, was as common as siblings. I’d read about it, studied it in family psychology courses. I should have recognized it, prepared Molly better for it. But having been raised alone, I’d been insensitive to sibling issues, and now I’d let Molly down. Her world—the world she and I alone had shared—had been invaded, turned upside down by a little alien. And only six years old, she couldn’t know why she felt the way she did, couldn’t be expected to deal with her conflicted feelings. Molly was understandably jealous: Luke was tiny and cute and grabbing all kinds of attention that would otherwise have been hers. And I had been completely oblivious, not anticipating the feelings of my own daughter.
    “Here.” I handed the baby to Nick, left the brothers to their squabbling and hurried upstairs to Molly. I wasn’t sure what to say. Nick and his brothers would be better qualified to explain this phenomenon than I was. But at least I could reassure her, remind her how much I loved her and how incredible a person she was. But, as it turned out, words didn’t really matter.
    Molly must have heard my steps in the hallway, because before I got to her door she burst out of her room and ran into my arms, clutching onto me, sobbing. “I’m sorry, Mommy. Don’t be mad. I’m sorry.”

T WENTY -O NE
    A FTER WE FINISHED HUGGING and drying tears, the rest of the night was just us girls. First, we tackled her school project, which turned out to be, aptly, to make a family tree. We got markers, old photographs and poster board and traced her ancestry as far back as we knew, which was only two generations back. We talked about family as we worked, and I asked how she felt about having a brother.
    “It’ll get better.” She was probably assuring herself. “We’ll have more fun when he can do stuff. Now he just cries and sleeps.”
    “And he takes a lot of my attention.”
    “It’ll get better, Mom. He’s not going to stay a baby forever.” Now, she was reassuring me. She concentrated on drawing a line connecting Nick’s name to Sam’s.
    “Molls, do you ever miss the times before he was born? You know, when it was just us?”
    Molly looked up from her work. “Not really.” Her eyes were solemn. “I’m bigger now. It’s Luke’s turn to be the baby.”
    Oh dear. Once again, Molly’s thoughts went deeper than I’d imagined. We pasted on pictures of our family members, admiring our design.
    “But how do I finish it?” Molly frowned.
    I didn’t know what she meant. “It isn’t finished?” We didn’t have photos of Nick’s parents or my mother, but we’d made silhouettes for them. The thing looked done to me.
    “No. What about my other family?”
    Her other family? Oh God. How could I have been so insensitive and obtuse? Molly was adopted. She had a whole other biological family.
    “Aren’t I supposed to make them a tree, too?”
    Oh dear. “I suppose, except we don’t know their names.”
    “Right.” She stared at the poster, and I thought she seemed sad. “Maybe I can do that some other day.”
    Molly had her bath, then, and we blew her hair dry and painted our finger- and toenails. When they were dry, we went through my jewelry box and I gave Molly a locket I’d worn as a child. We cuddled up and read books we hadn’t looked at in years, her favorite picture books from her early childhood,
Where the Wild Things Are
and
Goodnight Moon.
We snuggled on her bed until she was about to fall asleep. Then I put my mouth to her ear and whispered, “I’ll always love you, Molly. No matter what.”
    “I know.”
    “You were my first baby. You always will be special to me.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “You can always talk to me if you feel unhappy. Or jealous. Or mad.”
    “Okay.”
    “There’s no one else like you. You’re beautiful. And smart. And funny. And kind. And cuddly and huggy. And—”
    “I get it, Mom.”
    She did?
    “I get that you love me.”