The phone wakened her.
Julia heard it as if from far away. She blinked her gritty eyes and sat up, realizing that she’d fallen asleep out on her deck. Wiping her face with one hand, she eased out of the chair and stepped over the piles of balled-up paper.
At the phone, she stopped.
The answering machine clicked on and she heard her own voice say cheerily: “You’ve reached Dr. Julia Cates. If this is a medical emergency, hang up and call 911. If not, please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks and good-bye.”
There was a long beep.
Julia tensed. In the last months, most of her calls had come from reporters and victims’ families and straight-out kooks.
“Hey, Jules, it’s me. Your big sis. It’s important.”
Julia picked up the phone. “Hey, El.”
There was an awkward pause, but wasn’t that always the way it was between them? Though they were sisters, they were four years apart in age and light-years apart in personality. Everything about Ellie was larger than life—her voice, her personality, her passions. Julia always felt colorless beside her flamboyant Miss Popular sister. “Are you okay?” Ellie finally asked.
“Fine, thanks.”
“You got released from the lawsuit. That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah.”
There was another awkward pause, and then Julia said, “Thanks for calling, but—”
“Look, I need a favor.”
“A favor?”
“There’s a … situation up here. You could really help us out.”
“You don’t have to do it anymore, Ellie. I’m fine.”
“Do what?”
“Try to save me. I’m a big girl now.”
“I never tried to save you.”
“Yeah, right. How about when you got Tod Eldred’s little brother to ask me to the prom? Or when you brought all of your popular friends to my sixteenth birthday party?”
“Oh. That. Mom made me do all that stuff.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? None of your friends even talked to me at the party. And don’t get me wrong: I appreciated it. Then and now. But it’s not necessary. I’ll be fine.”
“I thought you said you were fine.”
Julia was surprised by the perceptiveness of her sister’s question. “Don’t worry about me, El. Really.”
“For a shrink, you’re a shitty listener. I’m telling you I need you in Rain Valley. Specifically, I need a child psychiatrist.”
“You’re older than I usually take.”
“Very funny. Will you fly up here? And I mean right now.” There was a pause, a rustling of paper on the other end of the line. “Alaska has a flight in two hours. Another one in three. I can have a ticket waiting for you.”
Julia frowned. This didn’t sound like the ordinary super-sister-saving-loser-sister scenario that had set like concrete in their school years. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“There isn’t time. I want you to catch the ten-fifteen flight. Will you trust me?”
Julia glanced out the huge floor-to-ceiling windows and tried to focus on the blue Pacific Ocean, but all she could really see were the yellow balls of paper that cluttered the deck floor.
“Jules? Please?”
“Why not?” Julia finally said.
She had nothing better to do.
FOUR
Julia hadn’t been back to Rain Valley in years, and now she was returning on the wave of failure. Perhaps she should have stayed in L.A. after all. There, she would have disappeared. Here, she would always be the other Cates girl. (You know … the weird one …) When a girl grew up in the shadow of the Homecoming Queen, there were two possible choices: disappear or make your own reputation. Unfortunately, when you were the tall, scarecrow-thin bookworm in a beloved, gregarious, larger-than-life family, there was no way to do either. From early on, she’d been the square peg, the kid who mediated every playground dispute but never joined in any of the games. The last kid picked for every sport; the girl at home, reading, during the senior prom. She was—or had been—that rarest of birds in a small, blue-collar town: a loner.
Only her mother had believed in a bright future for Julia. In fact, she’d encouraged her daughter to dream big. Unfortunately, her mother hadn’t lived to see Julia’s med school graduation. That loss had always been a sliver under Julia’s skin, a phantom pain that came and went. The closer she got to Rain Valley, the more it was likely to hurt.