The Charm Offensive. Cari Lynn Webb

become a better mother.” Tessa leaned away, but Sophie caught the white of her teeth biting into her bottom lip. Her sister always did that when she was scared. She’d chewed her lip raw on their fateful bus ride to the city.

      Tessa’s voice lowered, her words tumbling out in an urgent rush. “Mom’s voice is still too loud inside me. And you promised me that you wouldn’t let me become like Mom.”

      Sophie had made that promise when Tessa had come home high and clutching a pregnancy test. But Sophie had long since stopped believing in empty words and put her faith in actions. Too often people claimed to be pet lovers, then threw away newborn kittens. Too often parents promised to return to their children, then continued moving on, sending an occasional postcard or making a quick phone call. Too often her sister said she’d put her family first and then disappeared.

      But Tessa had booked her healing trip to India on her own. She’d made a plan for a new life. She’d asked for Sophie’s support. Now Sophie had to trust her sister would do the right thing.

      “I need these last six weeks to become my best,” Tessa said. “You understand, right?”

      “Of course.” Sophie wanted her sister to be home. To be healed. To be a parent. For once in Ella’s life, Sophie wanted Ella to have a real mother. Not a stand-in aunt, who covered for her absentee mother with constant assurances of how much Tessa still loved Ella, even after all these years. But her sister feared coming home. She couldn’t blame her. “No more after this, Tessa. You need to be here. There are decisions to be made about Ella’s next surgery. Her parent needs to sign those medical forms.”

      “You have all the paperwork I signed before I left, Soph,” Tessa said. “You just have to submit it.”

      “We aren’t talking about that paperwork.” That paperwork made Sophie more than Ella’s aunt. That paperwork relinquished Tessa of her parental rights. That paperwork she’d stashed in the bottom drawer of her dresser under keepsakes from Ella’s first year: hair from her first haircut, her pacifier and a milestone book of Ella’s first five years. Sophie hadn’t opened that drawer since Tessa had boarded the plane to India.

      “Fine, but we need to talk about it sometime,” Tessa said. “For now, I’ll put the charges for the next six weeks on the credit card.”

      Her sister wasn’t coming home and she expected Sophie to fund the extension. Sophie didn’t have the funds for the electric bill. She closed her eyes and saw only the image of her sister after she’d given birth on her supplier’s cold basement floor. Both mother and baby had barely been breathing. Sophie had vowed that night she’d do anything to keep her only family safe. She dropped her hair and let the braid unravel. “You’re supposed to be teaching classes to help cover your room and board.”

      “I do teach,” Tessa said. “Just not regularly. I’ll pay you back. We talked about this before I left.”

      They’d talked about many things, some irrelevant like the weather and some relevant like missing Ella’s ninth birthday. Sophie watched her sister wrap a silk scarf over her head. Ella’s tenth birthday was next month. Shouldn’t her sister remember her own daughter’s birthday? If her sister had grown as a person from her year of discovery in India, then Ella’s birthday should’ve mattered.

      Sophie shook her head and prayed six more weeks was the answer to Tessa’s lack of parental inclination. “Put the charges on the credit card.”

      Tessa kissed the phone screen. “I love you, little sister.”

      “I love you, too.” Sophie meant those words and believed her sister did, too.

      Sophie just wasn’t sure that love mattered. Love was empty without support and commitment and trust. That’s what made love a bond that lasted and endured. Sophie knew that love existed. She’d seen it with Ruthie’s parents who’d recently celebrated forty years of marriage, and now between Ruthie and Matt. It was rare and precious and magical. But only children believed in magic and fairy tales. And a childhood built on abandonment and dysfunction severed any belief in happily-ever-afters. Instead, Sophie strove for happy-for-nows.

      “I have to run,” Tessa said. “Class begins in five.”

      “Wait.” Sophie grabbed her phone. “Don’t you want to talk to Ella?”

      “I will soon,” Tessa said. “It’s better if you tell her. You can hug her and make her smile after delivering the news. If I tell her, then we’ll all be in tears. That won’t be good for anyone. She already thinks I’m a huge disappointment.”

      Tessa ended the call before Sophie could respond. Sophie stuffed her phone into her back pocket, checked the locks on the front doors of the Pampered Pooch and switched off the lights. She glanced at the boarded-up window. Brad hadn’t made it back to the store. It meant she’d get to see him again. She might’ve warmed to the idea if her sister hadn’t doused her with a cold bucket of broken promises.

      The outside fire escape, with its sturdy thick wood stairs and reliable handrail connected the backyard to the third-floor apartment she shared with Ella. Sophie ran up the stairs, bypassing the empty second floor that would one day hopefully house a vet’s office. This staircase meant Ella and she never had to go outside on the front sidewalk to deal with the steel gate at their main apartment entrance and they could avoid the strangers at the bus stop four steps from their front door.

      She wiped her shoes on the mat outside the back door and strode through the kitchen down the hallway. She’d planned to cook a marinara pasta dish with Ella, but her appetite had disappeared when Tessa had signed off. Just thinking about adding garlic to her too-sour stomach made her insides cramp even more.

      She pressed her palm on her stomach before knocking on Ella’s bedroom door. “Hey, sweetie.”

      Ella sat in the middle of a queen-size bed in a room painted pale lavender and decorated with fuzzy pillows, plump stuffed animals and a thick down comforter. It was the room Sophie and Tessa had never had as children. Ella had picked out everything to make her bedroom cozy. Sophie wished Tessa had been there. Sophie wished Tessa could see how accomplished her daughter had become. Sophie wished...

      Ella pressed Pause on her CD player, drawing a smile from deep inside Sophie. These days she couldn’t order audiobooks fast enough for her niece.

      “Do we have extra cotton balls?” Ella asked.

      “In my bathroom.” The colored markers Sophie had found at the craft store last week covered Ella’s bed. Years ago, Sophie had taught Ella her colors through scent. Discovering scented markers had ignited Ella’s other passion besides books: art. “How many do you need?”

      Ella pressed her palm against the upper corner of a poster board. “Enough to glue here for my clouds.” Then she frowned. “Or should the rainbow be above the clouds?”

      “The rainbow can be anyplace you want it. So can the clouds.” Sophie touched the intricate braids that Ruthie had formed into her niece’s hair. She wanted so much for Ella to see how much she looked like a princess. “It’s your picture. Your art to create.”

      “Do you think Mother will like it?” Ella asked.

      Sophie’s heart stalled as if clogged by those extra cotton balls. “She’ll love it.”

      “After we add the clouds and I finish the rainbow, you’ll help me write ‘welcome home,’ right?” Ella ran her hands over the rainbow arc she’d formed with thin, flexible wax strips.

      The joy in Ella’s tone stole Sophie’s heart, and her throat swelled, feeling stuffed by another bunch of cotton balls. “Whenever you’re ready.”

      “She’ll be home in nineteen days,” Ella said. “So I need to be ready soon.”

      “About that.” Sophie sat on the bed. “I talked to your mother today.”

      Ella’s hands stilled on her picture. “Is she excited to come home?”

      A