The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen

wind sent the dandelion behind her ear flying toward the stream, but Twiss was too alarmed to follow it.
    “Clark?” she said, after her father disappeared down the fairway.
    Lightning! Thunder!
    Whirrrrrrrr, whir. Whirrrrrrrr, whir .
    “Mom!” she screamed.
    Right then, Twiss knew she should have loved her mother more for being right about the weather, but that would have meant loving her father less for being wrong about it. So with each snarl of thunder and each flash of lightning, each realization that her father wasn’t coming back for her, she stuck to the safety of hating her mother, even though her mother would never leave her alone in the middle of a storm. Because her mother would never leave her alone.
    “Milly,” Twiss finally cried, since she didn’t have to make a choice about loving or hating her. There wasn’t a person in the world as worthy of love as her sister.
    Though she’d never said so, Twiss knew Milly played halfhearted games of golf on her behalf. “Graceless,” she’d overheard her father say to her mother one night about Milly’s swing, which was perfectly graceful when she and Twiss were alone. “A mule could have played a more elegant round of golf than our elder daughter.”
    “So she had a bad day,” her mother had said to him. “Even you’ve had a few of those.”
    “I’d jump off a bridge if I ever played like that.”

    In the end, when Twiss couldn’t will herself to move or will her father to come back to her, it was Rollie who scooped her up as if she were a feather and ran with her all the way back to the maintenance shed, where they waited out the storm, which whirled things around plenty but never produced a tornado. Even after the sky cleared and the sun came out and a rainbow arched over the river, she wouldn’t let go of Rollie.
    “You’re safe, Button,” he kept saying. “You’re safe now.”
    But Twiss didn’t feel safe. None of her tricks had kept her from crying or brought her father back to her. As far as he knew, she was still crouching on the bank of the stream next to her baby dragon, whose gift couldn’t protect her. Twiss realized just how much she’d counted on the history books being right; nowhere in the pages she’d read did Clark ever leave Lewis behind. The and always linked them together.
    After her father returned, wild-eyed and windblown, Twiss ran to him, but not as quickly as she could have. It was as if he had inadvertently told her something essential about himself, a secret she would have to keep forever: You can’t count on me.
     
    5
     
     
    illy put down The Curious Book of Birds in order to pick herself up. She glanced at the bariatric walker—an affront to both her decorative tastes and her relatively small size—which was sitting in the corner of the room collecting old linens and scraps of fabric. She used to mend clothing for half the town of Spring Green when she could still sew without making a mistake. Despite her recent inabilities, she was working on a layette for a woman who lived by the river. The woman, a girl, didn’t have a mother to sew one for her.
    Not that people in Spring Green sewed much anymore; when they needed something, they went to the department stores in Madison. Milly had only been to a department store once, after her doctor recommended knee braces to treat her hip pain.
    “But it’s my hip that hurts,” she’d said.
    “Treating just the hip’s like baking a cake without flour. You wouldn’t do that, would you?” the doctor said.
    Well, yes , she thought. I would .
    But she and Twiss drove to the department store anyway and paid an astronomical price for what amounted to Ace bandages. And the walker, which could accommodate persons up to one thousand pounds. The salesman claimed that purchasing a bariatric was like getting two walkers for the price of one; plus, he’d said when they’d looked doubtful, it was the only walker left in stock. While they were there they also bought an