Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [82]
“We could let it go or put it in the jar.” She pointed to the jar lying on the grass.
Bailey made an excited mangle of sounds ending with “jar.”
Bridget wasn’t sure Bailey knew what it meant. Kneeling down so Bailey could see, she trapped the bug in one closed hand and opened the jar with the other hand while holding it between her knees. She opened her closed hand onto the top of the jar and held it flat until the bug flew in. She could hear Bailey breathing. “Now, quick, you put the lid back on so the bug doesn’t fly out.”
Once the lid was screwed shut Bridget handed the jar to Bailey. Bailey held it with two hands and gasped and dropped it as soon as the bug lit up. Bridget laughed and picked it up off the grass. She put it back in Bailey’s eager hands.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
Bailey stared into the jar and then looked up at Bridget. “Again?”
“You want me to catch another one?” Bailey nodded.
“Okay. You can try to catch one too.”
Bailey was loath to let the jar go for the sake of catching, but finally relented. They both ran around the grass. Bailey flailed at the sky with cupped hands in rough imitation of Bridget.
As soon as Bridget caught and captured another one in the jar, Bailey looked at her greedily. “Again?”
“Another one?”
“Other one!”
They kept at it until there were nine lightning bugs in the jar. Bridget found it so thrilling that it was hard to stop, and Bailey was relentless.
“It’ll get too crowded,” Bridget finally said, laughing.
“Other one!” Bailey shouted.
“Too many in there. They might get in a fight.”
Bailey paused and looked interested in that.
“They might bite each other.”
Bailey looked concerned.
“No, I’m just kidding. They don’t bite.”
“No bite,” Bailey proclaimed, snapping her jaws together.
“No bite.”
Brian came out onto the back steps. “What are you doing out there?” he called.
Bailey went rushing for the steps, nearly hyperventilating in her eagerness to show her dad the bugs and the jar.
Bridget smiled and stood around, a little awkward about her own zeal, but proud at having caused the excitement and pleasure.
Bailey’s words collapsed into such an eager muddle you couldn’t understand one thing she was saying, but the blinking jar spoke for itself.
“Wow,” Brian kept saying, carrying her into the house as she held the jar, still sputtering with her story. “Wow. Wow.”
Bridget cleaned up the kitchen with a feeling of satisfaction, listening to Brian calming Bailey down and putting her to bed.
Yawning on her own way to bed an hour or two later, Bridget stopped at Bailey’s bedroom and opened the door very quietly. She walked a few steps into the room and smiled to herself at the sight of Bailey in her crib, still clutching the lightning-bug jar, and the bugs still flashing faintly between her arms.
Bridget hoped for another long innocent night of sleep, but it didn’t come. The longer she lay in the little twin bed in the extra room of this house that had been Tibby’s house, the more agitated she felt. There were so many obvious sources for this feeling, she didn’t feel any desire to dig. But her mind didn’t go to the obvious things like Tibby or Eric or Nurse Tabitha or Carmen or Lena, it went further back, to her mother. The memories opened not in any logical order but in flashes, some sweetly nostalgic and others devastating.
And then, without warning, her mind skipped all the way back to the present. It flashed on the glass jar in Bailey’s arms and then flashed ahead to the very near future, the morning right in front of them. The thought of it made her so restless she sat up in bed and put her feet on the floor. She imagined Bailey waking up and finding the bugs dead or dying among the bits of grass in the jar.
Bridget had killed enough lightning bugs in her life to know how it went. Whatever light they might muster in the context of the morning sun looked tawdry and pitiful, so you couldn’t believe there had been any grandeur to it at all.
She couldn’t tolerate the idea of Bailey’s discovering them in that state. What