20 Million Tiny Particles

13. Ava

That weekend, my sister came to town.

Ava moved out for college almost three ago and had pretty much stayed gone since. She'd had some pretenses about working in theatre and moving to New York, but those dreams got disassembled after she met Elliot. He was a senior to her freshman at the liberal arts college they attended one state away, and their relationship had her "taking a break" from college to follow him to his medical school in Virginia, too far away for her to visit regularly. It was fine with me; we still texted about the new episodes of whatever reality singing show we were watching on Wednesday evenings now and then, and I got our room to myself.

When it happened, of course, Ava stayed with us for a week. She and Elliot put an air mattress down in the study -- the library, as Mom always called it, even though it was basically a walk-in closet with a bookshelf and a desk. When she left, I asked her to stay longer, but Dad told her to carry on with her life. We'll be okay, he said. I wasn't as sure.

This time, it was just Ava, down for the weekend. She took an early morning flight on Saturday and got in by eleven. She planned to be gone by midday Monday.

I knew it more and more every time she was here that Ava had outgrown this place. Not because she was better than it, but because she figured out how to replicate her life in a new small town, and she didn't need our strip of antique shops and churches anymore. She had Elliot and a job doing something she liked enough to keep doing it every day and pretend it was what she wanted. I was preparing for her to get engaged and then pregnant as soon as they got home from their honeymoon.

In the meantime, she fit herself back into the jigsaw of our town and our family long enough to mitigate any guilt she had for living far away during the summer of our father's widowhood.

Dad picked her up at the airport while I was in the front room at the shop, sitting behind the register with my nose to my phone screen.

I was reading a forum post on the Diamondesq Ambassadors-only website, trying to glean all I could from Diamond Girls who were kind or careless enough to share their financial insight. So far though, it was a tossup as to how to find success in the company. The secret sauce, if anything, seemed to be ruthlessness -- or rather, creativity -- in how the girls recruited their peers, friends, families, everyone they knew.

"Everyone always says they don't have the money to buy more," wrote one use with the handle DiamondDeb83. "Don't fall for it. Ask them what they'd spend that money on each month. Ask them how many times a week they eat out or buy popcorn at the movies. You can do the math on your phone calculator and show them they'll save money and be healthier if they buy this instead."

Another suggested using the holidays for an incentive. "Everyone wants to lose weight for New Year's. Tell them to put a Diamond subscription on their Christmas list."

One woman even confessed putting her own funds into her recruits' initiation fees. "If someone hesitates, I put my own money on the line. You can get them to pay you back after their first sale." To that, a reply came asking if it worked. The original poster answered with a smiley face emoji and commented back a simple line: "They always pay."

I was sunk deep into the comments when the door chimed. It wasn't until I heard Ava's Southern-tinted accent echoing off the glass of the front windows, that I snapped my neck away from the screen.

"Your sister's here," Dad called, as if I wouldn't recognize her. I noticed he'd dressed up today, put on a checked button down instead of his usual plain-colored henley tee and cargo pants. He could give a shit about impressing customers; it wasn't like we didn't know every person in this town already. But I guess he wanted Ava to know that he was doing okay, that all of this was manageable.