I carried my niece on my shoulders, bouncing her up and down as we walked along the sidewalk in the fading light. The little angel and my other niece raced ahead, then back, and I saw something new in my daughter's eyes.

Jealousy.

She clung to my waist, asking to be lifted, all of her seven years. I shooed her away, clinging to the little waist above my head, making sure I wouldn't drop the two-year-old who squealed above me.

When we got back to the house, the little angel crawled under the deck and sulked.

I put down my two-year-old niece, keeping one eye on her as she raced about the yard, bouncing off grass blades and seeking, as two-year-olds are wont to do, anything dangerous that might exist in the world.

"What's the matter, Baby Duck?" I asked, as I peeked under the deck.

She buried her face in her knees.

And I knew. It kind of made me laugh, but not really. But sort of. Especially since it's not really my problem. I don't have any other kids. I knew it was all temporary. And my heart went out, a little, to those who have birthed more than one child.

I'm spoiled, you see. Sure, I have to play with her a lot more than my friends with more than one child have to don Zhu Zhu gear, but I really never have to deal with this.

At last Beloved appeared on the scene to chase our nieces and I crawled under the deck to assess the little angel's degree of sulk.

"You know you're still the Baby Duck," I said.

"I know," she said, to her knees.

"What are you doing? You don't even have to share me, ever! You should be happy to play with your cousins."

"I'm mad at you."

I sighed, picked a piece of grass from between the rocks.

"Okay," I said. "If that's the way you feel."

She looked up.

"But you could be my tickle monster assistant if you like."

And so it went, me the tickle monster, her my minion, chasing down nieces for tickling.

And then we came home, and it went back to the way it's always been, just the three of us rotating in our little solar system. We don't know how to be any other way, really. It's just us, it's always been just us. And I wonder how other families do it -- I see the pictures on Facebook, I hear about how lovely it is to have siblings love on each other, I see it with my nieces and nephews, and my heart sometimes wishes the little angel had a sibling to love on her.

But it's fleeting, because really I think we're sort of stuck in our ways. We like our family just the way it is.

---

New review of The Murderer's Daughters on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

"I've been listening to Dave Matthews Band lately," he said, apropos of nothing.

"Really? Were you drunk?"

"No, that's the weird part."

We mused, then, about the concert we went to with people I no longer know, the guy who lost his wallet when he rolled down the hill at Sandstone, attempted deals in the parking lot. The first time I saw Dave Matthews in concert was with my husband, though I spent a lot of time brooding to that music in my first-floor apartment 42 steps from the street on Barry in Chicago.

I just spent ten minutes trying to remember the name of that street, where so much of my personality was laid down.

Which blows my mind.

It's one street south of Briar. I only remember that because of the Briar Street Theater, where I saw Blue Man Group when it was three guys and some paint. They dropped toilet paper from the ceiling, and when I left, my head was buzzing like I'd had mushrooms and six shots of tequila, and I was totally sober.

While sitting here thinking about all this, I've been listening to Ani DiFranco, "Sorry I Am," on repeat. I leaned on Ani pretty hard during my twenties. We searched for love together.

I don't know why red fades before blue, it just does.

But now, it seems, even Ani isn't Ani anymore. She's got a baby and a partner, and it sounds like she's happy. I need to get her latest album. I haven't thought about music as a thing in a long time -- it's just something that flows through the background of my days. I don't need it like I once did.

I'm getting to the point where the events that once seared themselves into my mind are hazy.  I don't really remember specific things so much as what I was feeling when I was listening to that song, as though I could briefly inhabit the body of Rita at 17, at 21, at 25, a real-life time traveler. 

You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move, but I can't hear what you're saying.

Past events that used to hurt are scarred over now. I can push on them, nothing. 

And I can once again listen to the songs I used to love.

Today is the little angel's seventh birthday. As we waited for the school bus, she danced around the driveway singing, "It's my birthday! It's my birthday!"

There are so many things I could've said back, how much I love her, how her face makes my pupils dilate and my dopamine surge, how I physically miss her when she's gone, how proud of her I am, what a wonderful, sweet, funny, smart human being she is.

But instead I said, "Happy birthday!" She won't realize how much I love her until much later in life, and that's okay.

Last week, I got an envelope from my publisher. The first few times, I ripped them open excitedly, trying to figure out the numbers. Book-selling numbers are very difficult to make sense of, and I know this is not just me because every single author I've talked to has rolled his or her eyes when I asked how the hell to read a royalty statement.

"Just wait for the check," said one and went to get another drink at the bar.

"Start your next book," said another, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.

While I was working on my next book and waiting for that check, I attempted to predict out how likely it was I'd ever get one. Not everyone does. In fact, rumor has it that most authors don't earn out their advances. I don't know if this is true or not, but that's what the Internet told me.

The more I learned about returns and sell-ins and sell-throughs and discounting and backwards numbers, the less enthusiastically I ripped into those envelopes. I think there was one royalty period when I didn't even get an envelope.

Then ... this envelope. The numbers appear to have started over, and they're from December. And there was a check in there. A royalty check.

And so of course I started jumping up and down and screaming. My parents and sister were here for the weekend and everyone looked at me in confusion, trying to decide if I'd finally snapped or what. I tried to explain the backwards numbers and the confusion and frustration of trying to figure out what was going on with the book, and then I gave up and just kept jumping because that's okay, too. Beloved says all the time it's enough for the book just to have been published, but to me it wasn't enough. I wanted it to earn out.

I don't know if it earning out meant financial success for my publisher, and it certainly doesn't mean I can quit my day job. It was just really important to me. It means it was worth it to sit there at conference signings two years after the book came out, when people came up to me and said essentially, "You're still doing this?"

It gives me more energy to write the bio and marketing plan I was advised to write to go along with my novel query. Because this book business has such high highs and such low lows: I need all the help I can get.

It was a big help.

She perched on my lap as I pointed to the screen. Together we watched the final pieces of BlogHer Book Club come together.

"What is it?" she asked. "It's pretty."

"It's a place where women will read books and write reviews of them for you to see. Then if the book sounds good, you can buy it with these cute little buttons."

"Who's that?" She pointed to Sassymonkey.

"She's hosting the book club. She's been writing about books for years and years. Her name is Karen."

"She has red hair, too."

"Yes."

"She's pretty, too."

"Yes. But also, very smart."

She rested her head on my shoulder. "So this is part of your job?"

"Yup."

"I want to work for the San Diego Zoo when I grow up."

"Well, you just might. Hold onto that."

We launched the book club just after she ran upstairs to take a bath. When it was all said and done, I went upstairs and ousted Beloved from the book-reading spot.

"Did it go okay?" she asked, curling up to me.

"Yes. It's gorgeous."

"Good. Now read."

And I read.

Please go check out BlogHer Book Club! Our first book is Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks. Read my review here. It is pretty awesome, even though I'm completely biased.