I blinked.
There was a girl on my front stoop.
She was several inches taller than me, with long, tangled blond hair and dark circles under her wide blue eyes. Her clothes were rumpled, but her pants were the same ones Rhonda had shown me in a magazine last month, by that French designer she’s obsessed with. The girl’s purse looked expensive, too, and there was a map of San Francisco sticking out of its front pocket.
I’d never seen her before, not even a picture of her, but I was absolutely certain it was Tammy.
“Sharon?” There was no doubt in her voice, either.
A million words bubbled up in my throat at once, but I seemed to have forgotten how to speak. I stepped back into the foyer, waving frantically for her to come in. I was moving so fast I almost tripped, my loafers squeaking on the linoleum.
She stepped inside, her eyes shifting around, taking in everything at once. The lumpy plaid couch under the front window. The stained shag rug. The dark doorway to the kitchen with the breakfast dishes piled in the sink.
Then her gaze slid to me, and I remembered my wet hair and lack of makeup and the frayed pair of Peter’s corduroy pants I’d thrown on when I couldn’t find anything decent in my own laundry pile.
None of it mattered, somehow.
“I’m sorry to show up this way.” She was looking right at me, but her gaze didn’t linger on my disheveled hair or my lumpy 49ers sweatshirt or the zit on my chin. Her eyes were bloodshot, with the remnants of what must’ve been yesterday’s mascara underneath, but she held my gaze, even though she looked exhausted enough to fall over at any second. “There wasn’t anywhere else I could go, and—Well, um, could I…?”
“Yeah.” I tried to think quickly, which wasn’t easy given how hard my heart was pounding. “I have to go babysit, but you can come with me. We’ll talk there.”
“I don’t want to impose…”
“It’s okay.” I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I wanted to help. In that moment, I wanted to help Tammy more than I’d ever wanted to do anything. “The O’Sullivans won’t mind. You know how to take care of little kids, right?”
She smiled thinly. A very, very tired smile. “That’s one of the few things I actually do know how to do.”
“Good. We’ll have to be fast.”
I locked the door behind us and led Tammy down the block at a near-run. I didn’t ask her any questions, and she didn’t volunteer anything. But she wasn’t carrying a suitcase, or even a backpack—only her purse. Whatever had brought her four hundred miles from home, it must’ve happened fast.
We reached the O’Sullivans and rang the bell. I turned to Tammy, trying to think of some kind of story we could tell them, but before I could say a word Mr. O’Sullivan swung open the door and stepped out onto the porch, his coat in his hand. Three-year-old Penny and one-year-old Chris thundered across the kitchen floor behind him after a toy truck. “Morning, Sharon. I’ll be back by five.”
He was already halfway down the steps when he noticed Tammy standing next to me and paused. I started to babble. “This is my friend Tammy, she’s, uh—”
“I’m visiting from out of town and I offered to help Sharon today. I hope that’s all right, sir. I won’t need any pay, since I’m still learning how to babysit.”
Mr. O’Sullivan smiled, and Tammy smiled right back at him. A completely different smile than the thin, fatigued one I’d seen thirty seconds ago on my doorstep.
Now, out of nowhere, she was bright and sunny. Even the circles under her eyes seemed to have lightened.
There was no time to figure out how she’d pulled that off. Mr. O’Sullivan was already nodding. “Fine. See you girls at five.”
“SHARON!” Penny lunged through the door the second her father disappeared, throwing her arms around my calves. “Chris broked my truck!”
“Oh, no! Well, I bet I can fix it. Hey, Penny, this is my friend Tammy. Tammy, this is