Jennifer would like to embrace Zoe, then carry her out the door. But that is not possible. What is possible? What should Jennifer do? She feels a sharp longing for five minutes ago. “She’s just pretending, sweetie,” Jennifer says. “You’ve never had a sister. You’re an only child.”
At this, Zoe takes a stumbling step back, her face wiped of all its passionate certitude. Not since she was a small child, not even after Tommy died, has Jennifer seen her this vulnerable, seen her express a sadness that wasn’t three parts rage. But she has to save the child it’s possible to save. She crouches to look at Milo. “I need to talk to this girl,” she says. “Can you go play in your room?”
Milo shoots a nervous glance at Zoe. “Can I watch TV?”
“Yes, you go watch TV,” Jennifer says, and Milo clatters up the stairs.
“Can I go, too?” Ben asks, and Megan says, “No, sweetie, we should leave.” He protests, and she opens her mouth to speak again, but at the same time Zoe says to her, “Did she not tell you about me?”
“No,” Megan says.
“Because I’m not pretending.”
“No,” Megan says. “I can see that.”
“I’m her daughter.”
Jennifer looks at Megan, who is looking back at her. “I don’t understand,” Megan says. From upstairs, to Jennifer’s relief, comes the loud blare of a raucous TV show.
“Her name isn’t Jennifer Young,” Zoe says. “It’s Jennifer Carrasco.”
“Really?” Megan asks Jennifer.
“Really,” Zoe says. “She must have changed it so no one could look her up.” Suddenly she turns to Jennifer. “Say something,” she demands. She waits, then turns back to Megan. “People think she killed my father.”
Megan’s face. Megan’s sweet face, transformed by horrified astonishment. That fevered blush she gets, which Jennifer has only ever seen caused by embarrassment, but this time is evidence of something else, some new emotion, whatever it is that Megan now feels.
Jennifer looks at her daughter. Her twin, Tommy used to say. “And why do people think that, Zoe?” she asks coolly. “Because you got rid of the bottles he used to kill himself?”
Zoe doesn’t look at her. “The police took it seriously,” she says to Megan.
“Yes,” Jennifer says. “Thanks for that.”
“We have to go,” Megan says. She has Ben tightly by the hand, and as she leads him past Jennifer, Jennifer can see the tension in Megan’s arm, the way she maneuvers so that Ben won’t accidentally brush against Jennifer, so that Jennifer, the monster, won’t come into contact with her precious son. One minute you are one thing, and the next you are something else. The first thing is lost to you. You can never be the first thing again.
Zoe steps aside to let them leave. Jennifer hears Megan’s car door open, hears Megan urging Ben into his car seat, and knows that next she’ll lean in to check the buckles, adjust the straps, make sure her child is safe. Then she’ll go to the driver’s seat, and then she’ll be gone, gone, gone.
Jennifer darts outside, past Zoe, as if she doesn’t even see her there. She slows a few feet from Megan, who stands grasping the handle of her car door, watching her like a startled deer. “Megan, please,” Jennifer says.
Megan waits. She shakes her head. “Is all this true?”
“She’s my daughter, yes,” Jennifer says. “The rest is complicated.”
“I’m sorry.” Megan opens the door. “I think it’s too complicated for me.”
“Megan, please,” Jennifer says again. She hears the pleading in her voice. “Everybody has secrets. Your marriage isn’t perfect, right? You drink too much.”
Megan rears back. That was the wrong thing to say. Though Jennifer knows with a doomed certainty there was no right thing.
“I’m so sorry,” Megan says, crying now. “I’m so sorry for you.” She gets in her car hastily and shuts the door.
Jennifer doesn’t stand there to watch her back away. She tried, and she ruined it, this life in Sewanee, and now it is over. She turns to go back to the house. Inside Zoe is waiting, pacing up and down in front of the glass doors. She stops when her mother comes in. “I’m sorry,” she says.