“She was killed,” Sean says. And then he winces, as though wincing for Ellie who is just sitting there perfectly still. “She was living in Las Vegas and working in a club as—” Sean looks hesitant “—as a stripper. She started dating a guy who was a big poker player. He was known for making really insane bets. Sometimes he’d win a couple hundred thousand dollars in a night. And other times he’d lose it. He had a losing streak once, a serious one. And he borrowed money from some really bad people and then he couldn’t pay it back. And one night the guy he borrowed money from started beating him up, really badly, out in the parking lot of the club where Nina worked. He’d come to pick her up and the guys he owed money to found him there. Nina was upset. She got involved. There were guns. And…” Sean pauses again, as though he’s scared to tell the end of the story, as though if he just doesn’t say it, it won’t have really happened. He takes a deep breath. “…She got shot and then that was it.”
Sean looks down, and then back up. His mouth twists itself into a grimace of pain. He probably feels worse than Ellie does, because, truthfully, she doesn’t feel much of anything at all. To her it sounds like she is hearing about characters in a story, a story that has nothing whatsoever to do with her. She knows she is supposed to feel something now, or supposed to do something now, but for the life of her she cannot remember what that is.
“Oh,” she says. And she sits there, unsure whether she is frozen in one moment or if time is still passing. “When?” Ellie asks. “How long ago?”
“Just over a year ago,” says Sean.
And Ellie nods as though, well, yes, of course that’s when it would have happened.
“I need to talk to the investigator,” Ellie says calmly. “Can you call him back please?”
Sean nods. Ellie waits as he dials. After a moment or two Sean shakes his head. “Voice mail,” Sean says. “He told me he’s on assignment when I just talked to him, so he’s probably not able to answer his phone.” And then back into the phone he says, “Hey, Doug, it’s Sean Lerner calling again. We just spoke a minute ago, but we need to ask you some more questions, please give me a call back.” And then he closes the phone and looks at Ellie. “We’ll try him again later, if he doesn’t call back in a couple of hours.”
Ellie nods, as though she understands. But here’s the most perplexing part. For an entire year Ellie has been living on a planet that her sister is not a part of, for an entire year, and somehow Ellie didn’t even know. Ellie stares out the window at the people in the parking lot, walking places, holding things, talking to one another, eating. All those people have managed to survive all the many different things in the world that could kill a person, all the different times they were in danger, all the different times they could have died, they didn’t.
And Nina did.
I pop back into my body then, to share this thought with myself: The world doesn’t make any sense at all. People tell you it does, try and pretend it does. But I know now what kind of place this is, what kind of world we live in. And my breath catches in my throat, and my heart rips apart not just for me, not just for Nina, but for all of us.
Thirty-three
It doesn’t take long for me to remember how to cry. I lean over in the front seat, my arm against the dashboard, my head against my arm, the sobs coming out of me as though all the holes in my face lead to an endless supply of tears. The images cycle through my brain like a photo slide show with my crying as the soundtrack:
Nina blowing up a hundred balloons and filling my room for my ninth birthday. Nina drawing a little cartoon about my socks and leaving it in my sock drawer as though my socks drew it themselves. Nina driving us to 7-Eleven the day after she got her license, flirting with a guy in the parking lot until he bought me a Slurpee and her a six-pack of Amstel. Nina coming back home at five in the morning after having snuck out five hours earlier, a mischievous smile on her face, putting her finger to her lips and winking as she slipped back into her room.
But then the other images come, invading my brain, without warning or permission. Nina running out into the parking lot of some strip club, a jacket on over high heels and fishnets. Her boyfriend lying on the ground, a large hulk of a man over him, kicking him. Nina taking a leap, flying through the air onto his back. The large man stumbling forward, then backward. Shaking her off him. Her falling to the ground. And then what? I squeeze my eyes shut and wince. I do not want to think about these things. I can’t stop myself. Does she see the gun? Is she scared? Does he hold it over her and pause, make her apologize before he shoots? Or is it a surprise, a single bullet in the back of her head, the hot pain searing through her with no warning, her dying thought a question: What the hell was that?
I can’t believe this is real. It is too much. It is just too much. The tears come harder now.
We are driving again. It’s later. I’m not sure what time it is. Or where we are exactly. But what does it matter? No matter where I go, this will be the truth. No matter what time it is, this will be the truth. I cannot escape from it. I will never be able to.
I cry for a while more and then I pass into a weird place of calm, an empty bubble of blank space in between all these tears, and lift my head up. In front of us is the highway. This is what the highway looks like to me after I know my sister is dead. This is what it feels like to sit in the car after I know my sister is dead. This is what it feels like to breathe after I know my sister is dead.