not their mother or older sister, true. But I was their friend, and I needed to act like it. They had offered me so much of themselves. Scintillating conversation at the dinner table, enjoying all those lovely meals they’d cooked. Fun times. Games, larking around. Wonderful walks, chatting all the while.
I yearned to draw Dan and Kate closer to me.
Jen brushed past Kate and pushed the front door open. “Get a life, you guys,” she drawled. Jen then clunked the door shut as if punctuating her hammering words.
The atmosphere inside was charged with mistrust. Or rather, a whiff of betrayal floated in the air… along with…
“Is anyone wearing perfume?” I asked, sniffing the house, my nose twitching like a rabbit. I laid my pink silk scarf on the back of a chair—the one I’d remembered to grab from Pippa’s car and not leave behind this time.
Dan was doing a crossword from the Sunday paper, left over from the weekend. Another thing I’d got them all into as well as afternoon tea: the Sunday papers. He was purposefully ignoring us, in a sulk, didn’t even ask where we’d been all day.
“Dan? Do you wear aftershave of any sort?”
“Nuh-uh,” he said, his mouth puckered in distaste. “Gross.”
“Kate?” I said. She didn’t answer.
“Kate doesn’t like perfume, do you?” Jen said. Jen still wore that happy smile. The “We’re friends” smile. I felt warm inside. “Ignore my sister, she’s just jealous that she didn’t get to come today, too.”
“I smell something,” I persisted. “Do you smell it too? Jasmine? Is it jasmine I detect?”
“I don’t smell anything,” said Jen. “Maybe it’s your own shampoo.”
I let my hair out of its ponytail, shook my head and sniffed the air again. “No, not my shampoo. I could have sworn—”
“That’s because you’ve been drinking,” Kate said. Her frosty accusation was a poke to my gut. Unexpected. Out of nowhere. Or, perhaps, punishment for not being included in our outing. She must have seen the empty bottle of Mumm by the bath.
“Yes, I did have a drink today,” I admitted. “And?”
“Your senses are dull when you drink,” Dan piped up from his crossword. He smoothed the newspaper and added a letter. “Taste buds, olfactory senses… stultified.” His vocabulary was becoming very sophisticated since he’d been doing crosswords. “And if you add sleeping pills to the mix? Even worse.”
“Sleeping pills? Wherever did you get that idea?”
“It’s none of our business, of course,” he mumbled. “Sorry I brought it up.”
“They’re not prescription sleeping pills, you know, Dan. And I just take the odd one.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he replied, under his breath.
Kate took some apple juice from the fridge and poured herself a long tall glass, watching me all the while. As if admonishing me for drinking alcohol while she only drank healthy, wholesome apple juice. “If you want to drink, then drink,” she said. “It’s totally your choice.”
I turned to Dan. “What’s it to you anyway, even if I do have a drink every now and then?”
“We care, that’s all.”
I sneezed. “I smell something… different in this house! Something, I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. Sweet but also musky. Maybe woody, but mostly floral.”
Kate smiled at me sweetly and swept past me. “You. Are. Imagining things.” She fixed her eyes on my Thermos.
“Where are you going, Kate?”
“Outside, to look for Beanie.”
“Beanie?”
“Didn’t Jen tell you? We got a dog.”
“What! You can’t have a dog here, Kate. I’m allergic! You all knew that. I remember telling you.”
“Allergic? No, you never told us. We thought you’d be happy. We got him for you. He’s a rescue from a shelter. He’s the cutest thing ever.”
“You can’t—we—this is the kind of thing we need to discuss first!” I shouted.
Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “We thought you’d feel safer with a dog. We thought you loved animals!”
“I do. But I’m allergic.”
“Well I guess we’ll have to take him back,” Dan said.
Jen jumped up and down with excitement. “Where is he? I want to meet him!”
I ignored her enthusiasm. This could not happen! “I love dogs but I can’t live with them, I—”
Jen opened the front door and started yelling the dog’s name.
Their blatant boundary breaking was so outrageous I didn’t know what to say. Their sense of entitlement had gone from 0-60 in what seemed like seconds. How had I allowed this? Was I really such a pushover? “Wait! We need to discuss this over supper, this is something we have to talk about seriously,” I bellowed.
But Kate, grabbing her jacket, replied, “No worries, I already