20

“DON’T STAND IN FRONT OF the tv,” Kitty snaps.
I’m dusting the bookshelves with a new feather duster that I ordered online. I don’t know the last
time anybody dusted in here. I whirl around and say, “Why are you being such a mean little crab
apple today?”
“I’m just in a mood,” she mutters, stretching her string-bean legs out in front of her. “Shanae was
supposed to come over today and now she isn’t.”
“Well, don’t take it out on me.”
Kitty scratches her knee. “Hey, what would you think about me sending Ms. Rothschild a valentine
on Daddy’s behalf?”
“Don’t you dare!” I shake my feather duster at her. “You’ve got to stop with this meddling habit of
yours, Katherine. It’s not cute.”
Kitty gives me a deep eye roll. “Ugh, I never should have told you.”
“Too late now. Look, if two people are meant to be, they’ll find their way to each other.”
“Would you and Peter have ‘found your way to each other’ if I hadn’t sent those letters?” she
challenges.
Point one for Kitty. “Probably not,” I admit.
“No, definitely not. You needed my little push.”
“Don’t act like sending my letters was some altruistic act on your part. You know you did it out of
spite.”
Kitty sails right past that and asks, “What does ‘altruistic’ mean?”
“Selfless, charitable, generous of spirit... a.k.a. the opposite of you.” Kitty shrieks and lunges at
me, and we struggle briefly, both of us breathless and giggling and bumping into the shelves. I used to
be able to disarm her with not much effort, but she’s gaining on me. Her legs are strong, and she’s
good at wriggling out of my grasp like a worm. I finally get both her arms behind her back, and she
yells, “I give, I give!” As soon as I release her, she jumps up and attacks me again, tickling under my
arms and going for my neck.
“Not the neck, not the neck!” I shriek. The neck is my weak spot, which everyone in my family
knows. I fall to my knees, laughing so hard it hurts. “Stop, stop! Please!”
Kitty stops tickling. “And that’s me being altru... altruistic,” she says. “That’s my altruicity.”
“Altruism,” I pant.
“I think ‘altruicity’ works too.”
If Kitty hadn’t sent those letters, would Peter and I still have found our way to each other? My first
impulse is to say no, but maybe we would have kept going down different paths and converged at
some other fork in the road. Or maybe not, but either way, we’re here now.