And then he is gone.
I look up. The wall behind Nina is covered in drawings, photo-realistic scenes from our lives growing up—the park where we used to play, our aunt’s house at the beach, even a little picture of the guy from the Covered Wagon Shipping commercial. And right in the center is a framed portrait of our mother. In the picture she looks different than I’ve seen her in a long time, soft and pleased and proud as though this is how Nina’s been remembering her.
I look back at Nina, standing right there in front of me. It took two years and two thousand miles, but I am finally here with her. Her bottom lip is shaking. Mine is shaking, too.
We run toward each other, Nina and I, crash together into a tight hug, a hug that feels like any of the thousands and thousands of other hugs we’ve shared in the last sixteen years, but also completely different because of all that it took to get here, because we almost didn’t get to have this one. Neither of us says anything because words just do not exist for this kind of moment. We just stand there hugging until the tears are pouring down both our faces.
Forty-two
What happens next is a blur, but there are certain details I know I will never forget—the sour human smell in the back of the police car, a mix of a hundred people’s anxious sweat, the sound of my mother’s voice on the phone when they call her from the station, because I can tell she’s crying, the buzz of the bright fluorescent lights in the room where I tell Detective Bryant a four-hour-long story about every single thing that happened in the five days since I’ve met Sean. But more than anything I know I will never forget the look on Nina’s face when Detective Bryant comes into the waiting room where Nina and I sit on scratched-up wooden chairs to tell us that Sean confessed. To everything. “We barely even questioned him,” Detective Bryant says. He shakes his head. “That happens sometimes.” And Nina just turns toward me, her lips pressed together, her eyes watering, her entire face contorted with such pure relief, I know I cannot even begin to understand the hell that preceded it.
“It’s over,” Nina whispers. “It’s finally over.” And she squeezes my hand.
“I’ll take you home now,” Detective Bryant says.
So we stand up and we walk outside. The clear early-morning sunlight shines on our faces. I can already tell it’s going to be a beautiful day.
Forty-three
Everything out the window shrinks as we rise higher, houses, cars, people, mountains. My ears pop. I press my face against the glass.
“Wait, wait, wait, Belly,” Nina says. “Don’t move for just ooooooooone more second…” She holds her pen up to her lips and then brings the point back to the napkin she’s been sketching on. “Your face is more angley than it was the last time I drew you.” She holds the pen to her lips again. “More cheekboney.”
I smile. “Maybe,” I say. I glance at the napkin onto which she’s sketching the outline of my face.
“No, definitely,” she says. “You look older.”
“Well…time will do that to a person, I guess,” and I try to make my tone light and jokey but it doesn’t come out that way. The problem is this: After two years of wondering, my brain doesn’t quite know how to stop. I’ve reminded myself that now that Nina is safe and I can see her, that nothing else matters, that nothing else should matter. But what we tell ourselves and what we deep down believe, those are two different things, I guess.
“I can’t believe Mom’s taking the day off just to come meet us at the airport,” Nina says. Out of the corner of my eye I can see her shaking her head slowly. She looks at me, down at the napkin, back up at me. “I mean, when’s that ever happened before, right?” She’s smiling. I don’t say anything.
The unasked questions sit heavy in my mouth like marbles, and everything else I try and say has to work its way around them. “I don’t know,” I say. After what my sis-ter’s been through, it doesn’t feel fair. It doesn’t feel fair to make her explain anything. But my brain just won’t stop wondering.
“Oh, Belly.” Nina sighs and puts down her pen. “Please, just ask me, already, okay? I know you need to ask me and it’s okay. Just…ask me.”
“How did you know…”
“We’re sisters,” she says simply. “That’s how.” And she turns toward me and smiles this bittersweet smile.
We’re sisters. There’s someone here now who can say that to me.
I take a deep breath. “I just need to know why,” I say, very quietly. I look down at my lap. “And I know it’s selfish to ask because of everything that you went through.”
Nina lets out this wry little laugh and then shakes her head. “I’m not the only one who’s been through something here, Bell. Need I remind you?”