8.

A doctor examined the children’s mother regularly. Grandma Pencil babysat the twins every Wednesday from two to four so Misty could go to her “health appointments.” McKenna and Toby, infatuated with their mom, created and maintained the delusion that she was attending beauty school—not the kind where beauticians are trained, but rather where Misty taught other women how to look and act like princesses, where adoring attendants preened and primped her into the immaculate image they’d grown used to seeing around the house.

Deep down, they knew the beauty school wasn’t real. They’d seen the shadow that settled over their mother’s face. They’d noticed her naps getting longer—two, three, sometimes four hours a day. They’d seen her drift through the house in her canary-yellow nightgown from morning to night, speaking rarely, floating from room to room with an expectant face as if around the corner would be the unnamable something—a person?—that would ignite her insides and make her happy again. Each twin wanted to be that person. They stumbled over one another trying to make her smile.

Misty never held a job. Her estranged father, a Grand Rapids businessman, believed that the very notion of a woman working outside the home was unseemly, akin to letting a baby suckle a sweat sock.

But what did this matter to McKenna and Toby? They knew nothing of their maternal grandfather or his attitude. Their mother loved being a mother—the twins felt that this had to be true. They couldn’t picture Misty doing anything else. She’d raised them. She’d stayed home with them all these years. Hers was the face they fell asleep picturing, the face they sought out when they awoke.

But they also understood that things had changed. They were “big kids” now. The new baby was here. The twins played together. They depended on each other. Audrey kept Mommy busy. Audrey kept her happy.

Yes, at times Misty was happy. She sang. She played Candyland. She read books to them. She kissed their cheeks, one twin at a time, before turning out the light.