I felt my eyes drawn to Blair, barely aware of my actions as I pulled out a chair and sat down. There was this aura in the air that hadn’t been there yesterday, casting a tenseness around us that was more difficult to ignore than I would have thought it would be. I could tell that Ana and Ivy had picked up on it too, as they had grown unusually quiet.
My mother had already announced her plans to return to the cottage near the border that she hadn’t inhabited since the girls had been born. This, of course, was why they had started to cry and complain, as they had never lived without my mother around. I hadn’t been surprised when I found my mother handling them with the strict efficiency that she had always handled me in my teenage years.
On the other hand, Blair had joined them in their
