As Close as Sisters by Colleen Faulkner

to have taken the car to the shop two weeks ago.
    Fritz rose and trotted into the house; we rarely kept the air-conditioning on during the day. Instead, the doors and windows were left open to welcome the sea breeze. He barked a greeting. Then there were squeals from Lilly and the girls, followed by more squeals from the girls. When they saw her belly, I would bet. I hadn’t told them. I wanted to let Lilly surprise them.
    I listened to the voices in the kitchen: Janine’s, Lilly’s, Maura’s, and Mia’s. It made me smile to hear them talking all at once. Like good friends. But what they really needed was a mother, not a friend. Aurora and Janine didn’t have much maternal instinct. Lilly did, but she was about to have her own baby. I wondered if there was any way to cultivate a little maternal instinct in Aurora and Janine. Was it something that could be learned or was it really instinct?
    Maura walked out onto the porch first: butt-cheek-length, white cotton shorts and a light pink T-shirt. The hem of the shirt didn’t quite meet the waistband of the shorts. I could see her hot pink bra through her shirt. I bit my tongue; I didn’t want to start a fight. She knew how I felt about some of her wardrobe selections.
    She could have been a Victoria’s Secret Pink model. She was tall and thin. Her long red hair was lighter than mine and Mia’s. A strawberry blonde. A mother never likes to think that one of her daughters is prettier than the other. I think they’re both gorgeous, but Maura definitely has the couture look shown on one of their favorite reality TV shows, America’s Next Top Model .
    “Aunt Aurora!” Maura threw out her arms and ran past me to hug Aurora. I saw that the word Hotty was printed, in rhinestones, across the back of her shorts.
    How could that even be comfortable?
    “Maura!” Aurora wrapped her arms around my daughter and kissed one cheek and then the other.
    “How was Italy?” Maura gushed. “Did you eat a lot of spaghetti and gelato?”
    I sat there smiling, trying hard not to be jealous. Why wouldn’t Maura hug Aurora first? She’d seen me last week. She hadn’t seen her Aunt Aurora in months.
    “Drank a lot of wine. Dated some hot Italian guys,” Aurora said.
    Maura’s eyes got big. “You have to tell me everything.” She glanced at me with none of the enthusiasm she had for Aurora. She didn’t even try to fake it. “Hey, Mom.”
    “Hey, sweetie.”
    Maura leaned over me and brushed her lips across my cheek, barely making contact. I closed my eyes and savored the smell of her strawberry shampoo and the more elusive scent of her skin. I once read about a study where mothers were blindfolded and separated from their infants. The subjects were able to find their own babies in a room of babies, just by their scent. A scent others couldn’t detect. I could find my girls with my eyes closed in an auditorium full of teens in booty shorts.
    “Hi, Mom.” Mia walked out onto the porch and leaned over my chair, giving me an awkward teenage-girl-hugging-her-mom-because-she-has-to hug. But she touched her cheek to mine, and for just an instant, I felt the deep connection I’d known when she was a little girl. Before the rules of society and her hormones came between us. Mia had used the same strawberry shampoo as Maura this morning, but her scent was subtly different. I could have picked her out from Maura in a roomful of girls, too.
    “How you feeling?” She adjusted my teal head scarf. “You look good. Like you got some sun. Have you been on the beach?”
    Before I could answer, Aurora took center stage.
    “Mia!” Aurora opened her arms.
    Mia was shorter than Maura and a little thicker in the waist and hips. Mia desperately wished she had been an identical twin. She was always talking about going on a diet. And wanting me to let her lighten her hair so it was closer to Maura’s shade. She wore her hair piled on top of her head like a bird’s nest—just like Maura’s and