Staying Together by Ann M. Martin Page A

little mad,” Nikki admitted. “It’s their fight, but it’s affecting all of us.”
    â€œYeah!” Now Olivia sounded angry.
    â€œI have to go,” said Nikki. “Mom and Mae just got home. I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”
    Mae burst through the door then and exclaimed, “Mommy has good news, but she won’t tell me what it is!”
    Nikki tried to put Flora and Ruby out of her head. “What’s your news, Mom?” she asked, smiling.
    Mrs. Sherman set down her briefcase and a shopping bag from Bistro-to-Go. Mae tossed her school bag on the couch in the living room, turned three somersaults in a row, announced, “I want to take gymnastics,” and threw her arms around her mother’s waist. “
Please
tell us your news?”
    â€œOver dinner,” replied Mrs. Sherman.
    When Nikki had cleared her books away and the table had been set rather sloppily by Mae and everyone had been served the fancy takeout food that Mrs. Sherman only bought on special occasions, Mae said, “Mom, please, please, please?”
    Her mother smiled. “All right. Girls, you are looking at the new coordinator of dining services at Three Oaks.”
    â€œWhat?” said Mae.
    â€œI’ll oversee everything to do with dining and events.”
    â€œYou mean now you’re the Big Boss,” Mae said with satisfaction.
    Nikki leaped out of her chair and ran around the table to hug her mother. “You got a promotion!”
    â€œA pretty nice one, too, I have to admit. It comes with a bigger paycheck,
and
I won’t have to work on weekends so often.”
    â€œA bigger paycheck?” repeated Mae.
    â€œMom, that’s great!” cried Nikki. “We have to call Tobias and tell him.”
    When dinner was over, Mae said she was going to make a special dessert and served up dishes of ice cream. She tried to spell out CONGRATULATIONS in chocolate chips on her mother’s scoop, but only had room for the C, the O, and part of the N.
    Nikki seized upon her mother’s news as an opportunity to call Flora and Ruby. “I need to talk to both of you together!” she exclaimed when Flora answered the phone. “Something really exciting happened.”
    â€œTell me, tell me!”
    â€œPut Ruby on the phone, too.”
    There was a little silence. “I’m not speaking to her.”
    â€œYou’re right,” said Nikki, already feeling exasperated. “
I
want to speak to her. I’m the one with the news.”
    But Flora refused to call Ruby to the phone.
    â€œOkay. I’ll tell you in school tomorrow,” Nikki said abruptly, then hung up. She dialed Olivia instead.

One afternoon, when Willow Hamilton had been lying lazily on the floor of Flora’s bedroom, Olivia, who’d been sitting at the desk, had asked, “How far back can you guys remember?”
    â€œWhat?” Willow had replied.
    But Flora had said, “You mean, what’s our earliest memory?”
    Olivia had nodded.
    Flora had frowned. “Well, I can’t remember anything from when I was, like, a baby. But I remember playing in the wading pool in the backyard at our old house one day. I think I was three. And Ruby had just learned to walk and she fell in the pool and my father screamed. It was the only time I ever heard him scream.”
    â€œWhat happened to Ruby?” Willow had asked.
    â€œNothing. My father had just panicked, even though he was only about four feet away. What’s your earliest memory?” Flora had asked Olivia.
    And while Olivia had told a story about getting her hand stuck in a jar of olives that her mother had specifically told her not to eat because they were for company, Willow had sat hunched on the floor, trying to invent an answer to the question. She certainly couldn’t have told her friends her actual earliest memory. Even people who understood about her mother, which her friends