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"There are my girls!" Mummy's laughter echoed in the loft as she climbed up, hopped up, smiled at them. "What are you doing, darlings?"
Letty laid her finger across her lips, and Molly clamped her mouth shut. Even Mummy couldn't enter their world. No one could. Not even Baby Addy. Never a new baby, if they got the baby Mummy kept wanting. Not even Da - or, perhaps, especially Da. Nowadays, Letty wasn't sure; something of the trust she'd always given him was going away.
She didn't know why, and neither did Molly. They spoke in their secret language about it when Da didn't stop to kiss Mummy goodbye in the morning; when Mummy's eyes grew distant as she stared out over the moor, as he didn't come back until late.
When they didn't reply, Mummy sighed. But she didn't press. That was the nice thing about Mummy. "Well, come down. We're having lunch." She started back down the ladder. After her footsteps left the barn, Letty turned to Molly and raised her eyebrows.
"I wasna goin' tae tell," Molly whispered. "I never would. Never."
Letty offered a small smile. She wasn't so sure of Molly; sometimes she could be silly. But she was also her other half, her better half, and she wouldn't scold her. "A'right. A'right."
They hurried down the ladder and ran, making cow noises the whole way, to their grandparents' house.
~ ~ ~
"Of course, we all knew this would happen one day." Letty overheard the words spoken by her mother to her aunt one day. She stepped back, waited, listened. She was good at that. "I don't know how she's going to take it."
"Right now, she seems to be in denial." Her aunt Alice spoke those words. "When I brought him up, she just looked the other way and let the conversation pass on.
Yes, Letty had. Because it was make believe, and the sisterhood she had with Molly was real. Couldn't they see that?
Molly had a lad these days - but he wasn't real. Molly didn't bring him around Letty, Letty didn't ask about him, and they kept being each other's better half.
And, though Molly was easily distractible, she couldn't be serious about this Craig fellow. Allister Craig, was it? She calls him Alix; she didn't talk about him, though, and Letty couldn't believe that Molly wouldn't talk about him if she were going to leave Letty, start a new life, break all the promises of their childhood.
She ran out to the burn where they often met this time of day, knowing when the other would go there. She was waiting on a rock. Letty sat next to her. She didn't say anything, and Molly didn't say anything at first, but eventually, her hands grew restless. Then her breathing. Then her eyes flitted two and fro.
"He's asked me tae be his wife," she panted out. "No' this year. But next, when he's enou' money. Letty, I couldna turn him down, no' an' be true tae ... tae this." She clasped her hand over her heart. She was always the dramatic one, always the one whose feelings must come out, hot and flashing. Letty kept her feelings quiet, but she believed in supporting Molly in her outbursts. She believed in making Molly feel listened to.
But how could she now?
"A'right," Letty whispered. "A'right."
~ ~ ~
She sat alone in her bedroom, staring at the empty half of the dresser drawers. She could spread out her clothes now, but she wouldn't. She had stripped to her shift, her crumpled bridesmaid dress and the bouquet she'd caught on the floor beside her. And the drawers were empty.
Everything was empty.