As Close as Sisters by Colleen Faulkner Page A

Aurora’s. She was the least skimpily clad of the three of them, though, in cute jean shorts and a white volleyball team T-shirt with our last name on the back.
    Mia threw herself at Aurora. “I’ve missed you so much,” she murmured, her voice surprisingly emotional.
    “Me too.” Aurora kissed her on both cheeks, too. The girls loved how she did that. European-style, they said.
    “So tell me what’s going on.” Aurora looked from one teen to the other.
    Maura had her cell phone out texting. Apparently it had been located.
    “Boys? School? Boys?” Aurora asked.
    I wondered what Jude would think if he saw his mother interacting with my girls this way. Would he be jealous? Or did he just not care? He’d grown up a privileged kid with his über-wealthy father and stepmother. To my knowledge, Aurora hadn’t seen him in at least two years, and that encounter had been unplanned; they ran into each other in Geneva.
    So maybe he didn’t think of Aurora as his mother at all. I wondered if she was like a cool auntie to him. Or just a nice stranger? I honestly didn’t know. Aurora would talk about nearly anything: her sexual escapades, her yeast infection, or how she got her pubes caught in the zipper of her jeans. No subject seemed to be taboo with her, except Jude. Janine was the only one who could bring him up, and even she had to be cautious. Aurora had been known to take an unplanned trip to the Azores, just to avoid a conversation about the boy she gave birth to twenty years ago.
    “I’m not going out with anyone. Andy and I broke up before the end of school.” Mia lifted her shoulder and let it fall. “He was going to college. I didn’t think it was a good idea, dating him when he’d be in Virginia and I’d still be here. But you have to ask Maura about Viktor .” She sang the name, using the silly pseudo-Russian accent again.
    “So you guys are going out?” I asked, looking at Maura.
    She didn’t glance up from her phone. “We’re just talking,” she deadpanned. Then she held up her phone in her sister’s direction. “Do the kiss thing again, Aunt Aurora. I want a pic.”
    Aurora complied, kissing Mia on both cheeks.
    “Got it.” Maura hit the screen of her phone with her thumb.
    “Your camera looks different than mine.” I leaned toward her to look at the screen.
    “It’s the same.” She sounded annoyed with me. I thought I was pretty technology savvy for a woman my age, but I wasn’t in the same league with seventeen-year-old girls.
    “I don’t have that red button on my camera.”
    Maura turned the phone so I could see the screen and hit an arrow key in the middle of the photo of Mia and Aurora. The still photo became a video, and I watched Aurora kiss Mia again.
    “Wow. My phone will do that, too?” I picked mine up off the armrest.
    Maura rolled her eyes, taking my phone from my hand. She scrolled and touched the screen several times, faster than I could keep up, and the red button appeared. “You just hit the button to start and stop the video.” She handed it back to me.
    I was momentarily fascinated. “Do it again,” I told Aurora, gesturing with my free hand.
    “Mom,” Maura groaned.
    “Aurora, kiss her again.” I held up the phone.
    Aurora and Mia humored me. I watched Aurora kiss Mia on both cheeks through my screen. “Aww,” I sighed. When they were done, I hit the red button. The little light kept blinking; it kept recording. I pressed it again. It stopped. “And I can upload this onto my Facebook page?” I asked. I hit the replay button and watched it, hearing my “Awww” in the background and Maura muttering, “Really, Mom? Facebook is so lame.”
    “Where does the video go when I close the app?” I ask.
    Mia looked at her sister, then me. It was a “be patient” plea. “With your pictures. Pick the photo icon and it will be under camera roll . You should have something that says videos, too.”
    “So which does it go in?” I asked, trying to follow