Chương 7
“Probably not.”
“I hate that you know.”
I nodded.
“And I hate that I care that you know.”
Another nod.
“And I really hate your house.”
“That seems unnecessary.”
She laughed through the tears.
I slid a napkin across the table.
She took it.
“Don’t offer me money,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
She wiped beneath her eyes.
Then she looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen since we were children.
Not competitive.
Not superior.
Just scared.
“What if I can’t keep it?”
I looked at my sister and, for once, did not give her the answer that would make me feel bigger.
“Then you figure out what keeping it is costing you.”
Jenna looked down at the napkin in her hand as though it contained an answer she had misplaced.
For a while she said nothing.
Then she folded the damp paper into a small square.
“That sounded like Dad.”
I leaned back.
“He would’ve told you to sell it before the roof fell in.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“He would’ve said exactly what you just said, and then three days later he’d show up with a ladder.”
A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.
“That also sounds like Dad.”
Jenna’s eyes stayed on the table.
“I miss him.”
The sentence was so simple that it reached somewhere none of our usual arguments could.
“Me too.”
She pressed the folded napkin beneath her thumb.
“I hated that funeral.”
I looked at her.
Her face tightened before she continued.
“Everybody kept telling me how strong I was.”
“That’s because you organized everything.”
“I organized everything because if I stopped moving, Mom started crying.”
A woman carrying a stroller squeezed between our table and the next one.
Jenna pulled her coat closer to make room.
The woman murmured thanks and disappeared toward the counter.
“I was awful to you that day,” Jenna said.
I knew immediately what she meant.
Rain on black umbrellas.
Mud sinking beneath my heels.
Dad’s casket lowering beneath a gray October sky.
Good luck paying rent this month, Lil.
I had carried that sentence for years.
“I remember.”
“I know.”
“You said I’d be back in Mom’s guest room by Christmas.”
“I remember that too.”
“Why?”
She looked toward the window.
Rain slid down the glass in crooked lines.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
Her jaw worked.
“I was angry.”
“At me?”
“At everybody.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
She rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead.
“Dad had been sick for months, and you still had your job and your apartment and this whole life nobody needed anything from.”
I stared at her.
“What are you talking about?”
“You came to the hospital, Lil.”
“I came almost every day.”
“You came after work.”
Her voice remained quiet.
“I was there before work.”
Something hot rose in my chest.
“So this is a competition too?”
“No.”
“It sounds like one.”
“I’m saying I was there all the time.”
“So was Mom.”
“And she couldn’t handle any of it.”
I sat very still.
Jenna looked at me finally.
“She couldn’t talk to the doctors without crying.”
“I know.”
“She couldn’t deal with the insurance paperwork.”
“I know that too.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Dad told me.”
Her expression changed.
“What did he tell you?”
“That you were handling most of it.”
She looked almost offended.
“Then why didn’t you help?”
The question landed harder than I expected.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came.
The easiest answer was work.
The product.
The endless nights.
The fact that Dad had told me not to stop my life because he was sick.
All of those things were true.
None of them sounded sufficient sitting across from my sister.
“I thought you had it under control.”
She laughed once.
It was bitter.
“Of course you did.”
“You never asked me.”
“I shouldn’t have had to.”
I felt myself stiffen.
“That works both ways.”
“I know.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
Her voice rose.
“I said I know.”
Several people glanced toward us.
Jenna lowered her voice immediately.
“I know.”
I looked down at my coffee.
It had gone cold.
She pulled the sleeve off her tea again.
“I hated you a little,” she said.
I looked up.
“After Dad died.”
“That’s nice.”
“I’m not saying it was fair.”
“What exactly did you hate?”
“That you got to leave.”
My fingers tightened around the cup.
“You lived twenty minutes from Mom.”
“I lived in the same town.”
“That was your choice.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes flashed.
“And it was also useful to everybody.”
I started to answer, then stopped.
She was right about that much.
Mom called Jenna first when the furnace made noises.
When she needed a ride after cataract surgery.
When the basement flooded.
When Dad’s paperwork had to be sorted.
I got calls too, but usually after someone had already decided what needed to happen.
At the time, I had accepted the arrangement without examining it very closely.
“You should have told me,” I said.
“You should have noticed.”
We sat with that.
Neither sentence canceled the other.
The rain outside thickened.
A bus groaned to a stop near the corner.
Two teenagers climbed off wearing backpacks under their jackets.
Jenna watched them cross the street.
“Do you remember when I got suspended in seventh grade?” she asked.
I frowned.
“For fighting?”
“I didn’t fight.”
“You shoved Melissa Romano into a locker.”
“She shoved me first.”
“You broke her retainer.”
“That was an accident.”
I smiled despite myself.
“Dad was furious.”
“He made me sand the deck all weekend.”
“I remember.”
“You sat outside eating popsicles.”
“You were mean to me.”
“You kept asking whether juvenile hall had a dress code.”
“That was funny.”
“I was thirteen.”
“You were terrifying.”
She laughed softly.
For half a minute we were sisters without an audience.
Then her phone buzzed again.
She checked it.
Her shoulders tightened.
“Evan.”
May you like
I looked away automatically.
She stared at the screen without opening the message.
