3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows by Ann Brashares Page A

teaching and just beginning his practice. He used to have dinner -with the family and take Jo to movies and museums and sports events on the weekends. He practiced violin -with her every day. He, more than anyone, taught her how to play soccer. He coached her team until she joined the travel league in fifth grade.
    But after Finn, her dad got a lot busier at the hospital. “Your dad’s a top surgeon,” people were always saying to her, like that should matter a lot. Later they said, “Your dad’s a top-top surgeon.”
    By the time she was twelve, family dinners were a distant memory. With just the three of them, it didn’t feel much like a family anymore. Jo ate at Amas house whenever she could. At home she ate frozen pizzas with Mona, the housekeeper, or takeout with her mom.
    Jo and her dad did almost nothing together. Her dad barely even looked at her anymore. He never -went into her room. One time when he’d had to fix the toilet in her bathroom, he’d been full of bumbling confusion, like he’d landed on a strange planet. She hoped he did a better job fixing his patients than he’d done fixing the toilet.
    “It’s hard for fathers to watch their little girls grow up,” her grandmother Mary had said.
    “I don’t think he’s watching,” Jo had pointed out.
    It seemed to Jo that her father -was lost in a way that Polly’s wasn’t. Polly had never had hers, so what was there to lose? “At least he left before he knew you,” Jo had said to her. “You can’t take it too personally.”
    Polly had looked stricken on Jo’s behalf and obviously hadn’t known -what to say. She hadn’t said anything more on the subject of fathers until a week or so later. “I bet if you needed to have something, you know, removed from you, your dad would be right there.”
    Jo had tried to laugh, but the laugh hadn’t come out. She had instantly changed the subject to zit cream or something. Because Polly had touched on more than she knew. Jo’s dad was a top-top surgeon, and he hadn’t been able to save Finn.
    “Do you know what you want?” Jo’s dad asked her over the din of the Mexican restaurant in Bethesda, just two blocks from the station -where he’d met her bus.
    Jo continued to peruse the many laminated pages of the menu. She was reluctant to give it up, because it was the closest thing to a conversation piece they had.
    “I’m still deciding,” she said, having taken heed of all specials and also her dad’s opinions about what would be good here and what wouldn’t be.
    She looked around the place. She admired the technique and efficiency of the busboys. These were adults, career restaurant staff, who knew what they were doing—not like the amateurs at the Surfside. She almost wished she could hang around the kitchen and get a few pointers.
    “Hows the job?” her dad asked her. He put a hand through his hair, -which -was mostly gray, receding from the temples, with enough reddish blond left to suggest the source of hers. He was wearing a dark suit and looking well-groomed, like the top-top surgeon he was.
    She couldn’t remember telling him she had a job. Had her mom told him? Had he spoken to her mother about her?
    What if she tried to catch him out? What kind of job do I have? she felt like asking him. Okay, then, what’s the name of the restaurant? She pictured him as a contestant on a game show, attempting to answer questions about her life. She imagined the loud buzzer sound when he got the answers -wrong.
    “It’s fine,” she said. She’d let him off the hook.
    “Good.”
    He looked pale, she thought. He winced periodically, as though the noise of the place was unlike anything he had ever heard before. She wondered if maybe he wasn’t getting out of the hospital much.
    They stared at their menus for another minute. The waiter arrived. Her dad looked at her expectantly. He’d grown up in the South, so he would sooner poke her -with his fork than order his food before she had.
    “I’ll