“I haven’t had a chance to thank you, by the way. For all your help.”
I look at Daniel and I feel my forehead scrunch.
“Help with what?” I ask.
“Help with this,” Daniel smiles. “The party. He didn’t tell you?”
I look back at my brother, my white-hot words to him flashing across my mind. I feel my heart sink.
“No,” I say, still looking at Cooper. “He didn’t tell me.”
“Oh, yeah,” Daniel says. “This guy’s a lifesaver. Couldn’t have pulled it off without him.”
“It was nothing,” Cooper says, looking at his feet. “Happy to help.”
“No, it wasn’t nothing,” Daniel says. “He got here early, steamed all the crawfish. He was toiling over that thing for hours, seasoning them just right.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask.
Cooper shrugs, embarrassed. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Anyway, we should get back in there,” Daniel says, pulling me toward the door. “There are a few people here that I’d like Chloe to meet.”
“Five minutes,” I say, planting my feet beneath me. I can’t leave my brother on these terms, and I can’t apologize in front of Daniel without revealing the conversation we were having just before he walked outside. “I’ll meet you in there.”
Daniel looks at me, then back at Cooper. It seems like he’s going to object for a minute, his lips parting gently, but instead, he just smiles again, squeezing my shoulder.
“Sounds good,” he says, giving my brother one last salute. “Five minutes.”
The door slides shut and I wait until Daniel is out of sight before turning back around, facing my brother.
“Cooper,” I say at last, my shoulders sinking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine,” he says. “Honestly.”
“No, it’s not fine,” I say. “You should have said something. Here I am, being such a bitch, calling you selfish—”
“It’s fine,” he says again, pushing himself up from the railing and walking toward me, closing the distance between us. Enveloping me in a hug. “I’d do anything for you, Chloe. You know that. You’re my baby sister.”
I sigh and snake my arms around him, too, letting my guilt and my anger melt away. This is our dance, Cooper’s and mine. We disagree, we shout, we argue. We don’t speak to each other for months on end, but when we finally do, it’s like we’re kids again, running through the sprinklers barefoot in the backyard, building forts out of moving boxes in the basement, talking for hours on end without even noticing the people around us evaporating into thin air. Sometimes, I think I blame Cooper for making me remember myself—who I am, who our parents are. His mere existence is a reminder that the image I project out into the world isn’t actually real, but carefully crafted. That I’m one small stumble away from shattering into a million pieces, revealing who I really am.
It’s a complicated relationship, but we’re family. We’re the only family we’ve got.
“I love you,” I say, squeezing harder. “I can tell you’re trying.”
“I am trying,” Cooper says. “I’m just protective.”
“I know.”
“I want the best for you.”
“I know.”
“I guess I’m just used to being the man in your life, you know? The one that looks after you. And now that’s going to be someone else. It’s hard to let go.”
I smile, squeezing my eyes shut before a tear can escape. “Oh, so you do have a heart?”
“C’mon, Chlo,” he whispers. “I’m being serious.”
“I know,” I say again. “I know you are. I’ll be okay.”
We stand there for a while in silence, hugging, the party that came to see me seemingly oblivious to the fact that I have vanished for God-knows-how-long. Holding my brother in my arms, I think back again to the phone call I received earlier—Aaron Jansen. The New York Times.
“But you’ve changed,” the reporter had said. “You and your brother. The public would love to know how you’re doing—how you’re coping.”
“Hey, Coop?” I ask, lifting my head. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Did you get a phone call today?”
He looks at me, confused. “What kind of phone call?”
I hesitate.
“Chloe,” he says, sensing me backing away. He grips my arms harder. “What kind of phone call?”
I start to open my mouth before he interrupts me.
“Oh, you know what, I did,” he says. “From mom’s place. They left me a message and I completely forgot. Did they call you, too?”
I exhale, nodding quickly. “Yeah,” I lie. “I missed it, too.”
“We’re due for a visit,” he says. “It’s my turn. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have put it off.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Really, I can go if you’re too busy.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, you’ve got enough going on. I’ll go this weekend, I promise. Are you sure that’s all?”
My mind flashes back to Aaron Jansen, to our conversation on my office line—not that you could really call what we had a conversation. Twenty years. It seems like something I should tell my brother—that The New York Times is snooping around in our past. That this Aaron Jansen guy is writing a story about Dad, about us. But then I realize: If Aaron had Cooper’s information, he would have called him by now. He said so himself: He’d been trying to reach me all day. If he couldn’t reach me, wouldn’t he have tried to move on to my brother? To the other Davis kid? If he hasn’t called Coop yet, that means he hasn’t been able to dig up his number, his address, his anything.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s all.”
I decide not to burden him with this. At best, the news of a Times reporter calling me at work to get dirt on our family will piss him off enough to chain-smoke the rest of the pack of cigarettes stuffed in his back pocket; at worst, he’d call him up himself and tell him to fuck off. And then Jansen would have his number, and we’d both be screwed.
“Well hey, your groom is waiting,” Cooper says, patting me twice on the back. He sidesteps me and starts walking down the porch stairs, toward the backyard. “You should get back inside.”
“You’re not gonna come in?” I ask, although I already know the answer.
“That’s enough socializing for me for one night,” he says. “See ya later, alligator.”
I smile, picking up my wineglass again and raising it to my chin. It never gets old hearing that childhood phrase escape the lips of my nearly middle-aged brother—jarring, almost, hearing the words in his adolescent voice, taking me back to decades ago when life was simple and fun and free. But at the same time, it fits, because our world stopped spinning twenty years ago. We were left stranded in time, forever young. Just like those girls.
I down the rest of my wine and wave in his direction. The darkness has enveloped him now, but I know he’s still there. Waiting.
“In a while, crocodile,” I whisper, staring into the shadows.
The silence is broken then by the crunching of leaves beneath his feet, and within seconds, I know he’s gone.
JUNE 2019
CHAPTER SIX
My eyes snap open. My head is pounding, a rhythmic beating like a tribal drum making the room vibrate. I roll over in bed and glance at my alarm clock. Ten forty-five. How the hell did I sleep this late?
I sit up in bed and rub my temples, squinting at the brightness of our bedroom. When I had moved in here—back when it was my bedroom, not our bedroom, a house, not a home—I had wanted everything to be white. Walls, carpet, bedspread, curtains. White is clean, pure, safe.
But now, white is bright. Way, way too bright. The linen curtains hanging in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows are pointless, I realize, because they do nothing to mask the blinding sun that’s now beating down on my pillow. I groan.