Sophie plopped down on the other side of the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I can’t do anything right today, can I?”
She was still in her own wet clothes, despite insisting, when I finally returned, that I get into a hot shower. I hadn’t realized how cold I actually was until I stood naked under the hot water. My fingers were blue. The tips of my ears were so cold, the water felt as if it was scalding them. Now, I sat on the edge of her bed, wrapped in her big green bathrobe. My feet were encased in a pair of red and blue knitted slipper socks that came up to my knees. A cup of chamomile tea was resting on top of her dresser, which, for some reason, looked oddly bare, as if something was missing.
Sophie watched me rub my hair for a moment more without saying anything. Then she brought her fingers to her forehead, kneading the skin gently. The sleeves of her thin T-shirt clung to the sides of her arms and the knotted ends of her red bandanna dripped against the top of her overalls. “God,” she said again. “I knew I shouldn’t have…”
I stopped drying my hair. “Shouldn’t have what? Told me about Dad? Told me the truth?” Sophie looked at me quizzically, as if trying to understand my tone of voice. “Because at the very least, Sophie, that is what you should have done. A long time ago. What you shouldn’t have done—for the last twenty years—was keep it a secret.” I let the towel fall into my lap. “I mean, I can almost—almost—understand the whole code of silence about Maggie, since I never even met her. But Mom? Mom, Sophie? I would have never kept something like that from you!”
“How do you know?” Sophie’s eyes flashed. “You’ve never been in the same situation—not even remotely. In all the years you’ve grown up with Mom and Dad, I bet you’ve never heard them say one negative thing to each other, let alone witnessed a scene like that. So don’t tell me what you would or wouldn’t have done. You don’t have the faintest fucking idea what you would have done!”
“Yes, I do!” I yelled. “I know exactly what I would have done! And you know why? Because I know what the word loyal means. And I know that there is nothing more important in the world than being loyal to your family—no matter what!”
Sophie’s lower lip trembled as she stared at me for a long moment. “Oh, Jules,” she said, sinking down against the bed. She buried her face in her hands, rocking back and forth slowly. Then she lifted her head. “He used to say the exact same thing to me.”
I stared at her. “What’re you talking about? Who did?”
“Dad,” she said sadly. “He used to give me the whole loyalty routine too. ‘Nothing is more important than being loyal to the family.’” She stood up and began to pace around the room. “That’s how he convinced me never to talk about Maggie. Or Mom. Or even me.” She looked at me. “Do you know where I went that summer after I graduated from high school?”
My brain started to race. That was the summer I won the Acahela Summer Camp Spelling Bee and Sophie had freaked out, throwing my trophy down the hall. A few days later, she had moved to Portland, where she was going to start classes at the University of Maine that fall.
“You went to Maine,” I said. “For school.”
“I didn’t go to Maine!” Sophie’s eyes were huge. “I went to a fucking psychiatric hospital in New Jersey, Julia! For four weeks!”
My face flushed hot. “What are you talking about? Mom and Dad never said anything about you—”
“Mom and Dad have never said anything about anyone!” Sophie said. “Think about it. They’ve never said anything about Maggie, they’ve never said anything about me, they’ve never even hinted at the reason for Mom’s hearing aid. I had to go live in a mental ward for four weeks because I was losing my mind living like that! Do you know what’s it like to live your whole life with horrible secrets inside you, screaming to be let out? Do you know what that does to you?” Her face was pink with rage; spit flew out from between her teeth. “It makes you crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “It makes you completely and certifiably crazy.” She shrugged, defeated. “Dad said everything had to be kept in the family. Taking it outside of that was breaking the family circle.”
“But I’m family!” The sides of my head throbbed with the force of my words. “I’m not some outsider, hanging around the circle, Sophie! I’m your sister! I’m part of you. I’m part of all of you. I’m family!” Something broke inside of me when I said those words, a sheet of glass splintering into a thousand pieces. “What was so wrong with me that none of you would talk to me? What did I do to deserve being shut out? Did I not fill Maggie’s shoes well enough? Were Mom and Dad’s expectations of me too high? Did I…”
Sobs overtook me then, blocking the words in my throat, and I cried with abandon, like a baby left behind in a darkened room.
“Oh, Julia.” Sophie encircled me with her arms. “It’s not you. It was never you. Ever.”