But she was only getting started. “He can’t decide on a hair color,” she said. “And then he lets it grow out because he’s too lazy to put in a new color. That says something about the state of his heart, Chlo.”
I let her go on. “He wakes-and-bakes, he’s stoned constantly . . . think of the lost brain cells, Chlo, they don’t grow back, so it’s worse than the hair. And he won’t look me in the eyes. He’s always been shifty like that, ever since he was a little kid.”
I shook my head; she was being silly now.
“I want you to cut this out today,” she said. “That nobody with the bad hair . . . You don’t like him anymore.”
“I don’t?”
“You don’t. I won’t let you.”
She was acting like she could forbid me from having an emotion. She could shove a hand down my throat and wiggle her fingers as far as they’d go, plucking out stuff she didn’t want in there, like she did when we got up the courage to clean out last season’s moldy takeout containers from the fridge. She’d do it fast, and didn’t even hold her nose.
“Good,” she said. “Now tell me about London. How was she last night?”
There was something in the way she said it, something unsaid more than said, and I looked down to where Jonah was in the backyard to make sure he wouldn’t overhear—only to find the backyard empty.
I chose my words carefully. “She told me all about rehab.”
“Did she now?” Even though I was her sister, she was playing games with me. We may have played games with everyone in town, including passing tourists, but we shouldn’t with each other.
“I know where she was, really.” Then I added, “Even if she doesn’t.”
Ruby waited. She wanted me to say it.
“I thought she was dead. I saw her. But she wasn’t ever dead, was she?”
“She was,” Ruby said softly. “You saw what you saw. But we got her back, didn’t we? You wanted everything the way it was before—and that meant getting London out. Even if it took longer than I thought. And the wait was worth it, because you’re here.”
“All that time . . . she was down there?”
“I wanted her back before you got home, Chlo. So you wouldn’t want to go away again.”
“I went away two summers ago,” I said. “I was at my dad’s for two years.”
She hung her head. “I told you, I tried sooner. I tried last spring.”
I couldn’t make sense of what she was telling me.
“Chlo, you left and I was brokenhearted. Before I knew it, it was fall, and getting colder. And then winter—and ice covered the whole reservoir, so there was no getting in, and there was no getting out.” She eyed me especially here. “But when I came back in spring, they wouldn’t let her out then, either.”
“So how did you”—I didn’t know how to put it—“change their minds?”
“I waited, very, very patiently.” Her eyes glimmered. “And then I tricked them.”
There was an awkward silence. The weight of the reservoir could be felt at our backs.
“Why?” I asked. A better question was How? but that word wouldn’t cross my lips.
Ruby kept her eyes shaded from view with a well-placed hand. “Why did I work so hard to get her back? Because she went away and you were sad,” she said simply. “Maybe sad’s not the right word. Maybe messed-up-in-the-head is a better word, only that’s not one word. You left, Chlo. Because of that girl, you left! And I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t stand it. So I fixed it. Now that London’s here again, so are you.”
I let that sink in. She’d brought London back from the dead—for me. For us.
Inside my sister was some kind of inexplicable power. She could decide what lived and breathed. Who could stay and who should go. She controlled everything that happened in this town. She really was more than anyone who’d ever said they loved her could have dreamed.
But then she kept talking, trying to explain herself.
“Is it so wrong, Chlo? Can you blame me for taking back what I did to her, for making it right, even if it was a tiny bit selfish?”