Even now, hours later, Mia reeled from her own venom. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life as the whipping girl for every Future Mia in a black mood. If the girl with two watches was right, then the problem would only get worse.
Mia suddenly heard sharp, angry voices outside the door.
“Okay! All right! I was just asking, Hannah!”
“You’re not asking! You’re blaming!”
Mia put down the heat wand and groaned. God. Not this. Not now.
The sisters stomped through the bedroom, both half-dressed and flailing in jittery rage. While Hannah stuffed unfolded garments into duffel bags, Amanda rummaged through Xander’s closet.
“There’s a difference between being upset and being upset at you,” the widow snapped. “I’m upset because I only own one shoe now!”
“And you’re upset at me because I left your other pair at the lake house!”
“Did I say that? Did you actually hear me use those words?”
“You didn’t have to. It was all in your tone. Do you think we just met?”
Amanda shook her head in trembling pique, throwing shoe after shoe over her shoulder. Of course the old man had the narrow feet of a ballerina. She was destined to go barefoot to Brooklyn.
“You always do this, Hannah. Always.”
“Always do what?”
“Take your bad moods out on me. I know what you’re really upset about.”
“Oh do you now?”
“You hurt that agent. I get it. I hurt two cops so I know exactly what you’re going through. But do you come to me for help? Of course not. You decide to yell and scream at me, just like you always do!”
“Excuse me. Who’s screaming now?”
Amanda jumped up from the floor. “I am! I’m screaming at you now because I can’t take it anymore! You wear me out!”
Hannah clenched her jaw and looked away, her foot tapping maniacally.
“You think I’m weak. You think I’m so goddamn weak. Have you considered the fact that maybe I’m only weak around you? Maybe you’re the one who—”
The bathroom door flew open. Mia barged into the room, her wet hair throwing droplets in arcs. She snatched a pair of sandals from under the bed and chucked one at the feet of each sister. She waved a quivering finger back and forth between them.
“No more. I’m not sharing a room with either of you ever again. I don’t care if I have to sleep outside in a dumpster. I can’t do this anymore.”
Amanda and Hannah watched her in matching stupor as she stormed back to the bathroom. She spun around at the door, fighting tears.
“You think I wouldn’t kill to have my brothers here? You think Zack wouldn’t kill to have his brother here? You have no idea how lucky you are, and yet all you do is fight. There’s something seriously wrong with both of you.”
“Mia—”
She slammed the door behind her, jostling a picture from the wall.
Dead-faced, silent, Hannah made a slow trek out of the room. Amanda sat down on the bed and calmly gathered the sandals. As she slipped them over her feet, she thought once again about David’s theory and realized that the DNA didn’t matter. The six of them lived and screamed and hurt each other like family. They were all siblings down to the bone.
—
The Silvers rode the final leg of their journey in dismal silence. Xander’s red Cameron Arrow was a skinny little car with two platform rows that were better suited for couples. Zack’s arm brushed Mia every time he turned the steering wheel. She could feel Theo’s body tense up whenever he suffered a new flash of pain. She held his hand, caressing it with worry. Her future self once told her that it was more important to get to New York in a strong state of mind than it was to get there fast. She had no illusions about anyone’s current condition.
David slept soundly in the back, his head flopping in turns between each sister’s shoulder. As Hannah fixed her surly gaze out the window, her dark emotions flew back and forth across the car. She faulted Amanda, then faulted herself. She hated Amanda, then hated herself.
By the time she snapped out of her doleful trance, the Arrow had shot out of a tunnel and into a great urban thoroughfare.
Hannah blinked at the sight of yellow taxis and Jewish delis. “Wait. Are we . . . ? Is this . . . ?”
Zack shined his searchlight gaze around at all the lumic signs and tempic storefronts, these alien embellishments to the city he once knew. Though he was finally back in his native Manhattan, the cartoonist never felt farther from home.
“This is it,” he said, with a nervous exhale. “We’re here.”
THIRTY-ONE
The traffic light was nothing but a floating disc of lumis, two feet wide and red as a sunset. Fat gray pigeons fluttered through it while a hunched old woman crossed the street between tempic guardrails. A ghosted billboard stretched the length of the intersection, hawking heart-healthy breakfast cereal to idled drivers.
Zack leaned forward and craned his view at the near and distant streams of flying cars. He’d counted seven different levels of traffic when the light turned green, the billboard vanished, and the tempic rails gave way to open road.