Thirty-Six Wedding Lanterns All For My Younger Sister Chapter 05
I sat beneath the old oak by our driveway, staring into space as the evening breeze tossed my hair around my face.
Mrs. Miller was walking home from the playground with her young grandson. When she saw me, she didn’t say anything. She only sighed and shook her head.
Five minutes later, she came back carrying a bowl of homemade beef-and-noodle soup and sat down beside me, just as she had when I was a child.
“Honey, did your mom make you go without dinner again?”
The familiar question made me laugh.
“Mrs. Miller, you’ve been asking me that for twenty years.”
She shoved the bowl into my hands.
“And you’re still laughing?”
I picked up the fork without thinking, twirled up a mouthful of noodles, and started eating as ravenously as I had when I was little.
Mrs. Miller brushed a few strands of hair away from my forehead.
“Slow down. If that’s not enough, I’ll get you another bowl.”
After I drank the last of the broth, she reached for the empty bowl.
I held on to it so tightly that she stopped.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
—
A tear splashed into the broth, disappearing among the tiny beads of oil on the surface.
Then another fell, and another, until I couldn’t stop them.
Mrs. Miller didn’t say anything. She simply wrapped an arm around me.
“It’s okay. Don’t cry.”
“You’re getting married soon. You’re going to have a home of your own.”
“If you want to come back, then come back. And if you don’t, don’t force yourself.”
“Mrs. Miller…”
She set the bowl and fork aside, then wiped my tears the way she did for her grandson when he cried.
“Mrs. Miller, I could smell the slow-cooked beef from your house earlier. That’s why I’ve been sitting here waiting for you.”
She pinched the tip of my nose.
“You’ve always had a nose like a bloodhound.”
The winter I was six, the snow had come down hard.
Grandma came to visit with scarves she’d knitted for all of us. Before she left, she secretly slipped me a pair of mittens with little rabbits on them.
She told me Mom had bought them for me but had accidentally left
—
them at Grandma’s house, so she’d brought them over herself.
I put them on, thrilled that my hands wouldn’t freeze the next time I played in the snow.
Then Chloe saw them.
She insisted the mittens were hers. When I refused to give them up, she started screaming and crying.
Mom forced me to take them off and hand them over to Chloe.
Dad made me kneel outside in the snow as punishment.
Inside, the rest of the family sat around the fireplace eating hot bowls of chili while my empty stomach growled.
Then Mrs. Miller appeared in front of me with a bowl of homemade beef-and-noodle soup.
“Honey, did your mom make you go without dinner again?”
I looked at her now.
The face I knew so well was no longer as soft and full as it had been twenty years ago. I gently touched the gray hair at her temple.
“Mrs. Miller, there’s something I was always too embarrassed to tell you.”
“Whenever Mom punished me by making me miss dinner, I’d sit there breathing in the smell of whatever you were cooking.”
“And I’d actually be happy, because it meant I’d get another bowl of your soup.”
—
Mrs. Miller broke into a huge smile.
But then, even as she smiled, tears filled her eyes.
“Oh, honey. You could’ve come over anytime you wanted. You really think I ever would’ve turned you away?”
I took her hand and held it tightly.
“This is the last bowl I’ll get from you, Mrs. Miller. After today, I won’t be able to have it anymore.”
Her tears stopped instantly.
“Honey…”
A black Maybach pulled up at the curb before she could finish.
Julian stepped out and held out his hand to me.
“Maya, I’m taking you home.”
Mrs. Miller stared at us for a moment before relief washed over her face.
“You scared the life out of me. I thought you were talking about hurting yourself.”
She gave me a light swat on the back as punishment.
Julian helped me to my feet, and I laced my fingers through his.
Mrs. Miller covered our joined hands with both of hers and patted them again and again.
In the end, everything she wanted to say came down to three words.
—
“Good. Good. Good.”
I’ve never forgotten the way she stood beneath that old oak and watched me leave that night.
In the rearview mirror, I saw her smiling from ear to ear, her white teeth flashing.