A breath catches in my throat. “So he dispatched you to bring me back?” I say bitterly.
“What?” she rasps. “Of course not. Me coming here has got nothing to do with him. I needed to do this for me—to see if there was any way of us getting back to how we once were.”
I sigh heavily. “That was in another lifetime.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” she says, sounding wounded. “We could be sisters again—if you’ll just give me the chance.”
It’s as if a dagger is piercing my heart and every word she utters is driving it in a millimeter more.
“And you thought that showing up here and turning my life upside down would achieve that?” I cry. “Is that honestly how you thought we could build bridges?”
“N-no,” she stutters. “I never meant to upset you. I’m so sorry if I have, but I’m just as scared as you are.”
About what? I can’t help but ask myself. That this is all going to backfire on you?
“You have to believe me,” she goes on. “I’m not the person I used to be. I’m not going to hurt you again.”
Something inside me breaks. She’s saying all the right things. Making all the right noises. Do I dare believe that she’s telling the truth and that whatever’s going on has got nothing to do with her?
“Listen—” I start.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she says.
I don’t know what I want anymore.
“It wasn’t my fault,” is all I can think to say. It’s all I’ve wanted to say for twenty-six years.
“I know,” she says softly. “And I’m sorry that every time you tried to reach out to me, I let you down.”
“No, I let you down,” I say. It had felt like I’d left no stone unturned in my quest to find and save her, but now looking back, I didn’t try nearly hard enough.
“It was nobody else’s fault but mine,” she says. “I was pretty unreachable.”
“But why now, Jen?” I ask, as my suspicions rally again, refusing to be silenced. “Why now? After all this time.”
“You’re my sister,” she says, her voice breaking. “We were torn apart when we needed each other the most. That should never have been allowed to happen, but it did and it’s down to us to right the wrongs that have befallen us.”
“I’m just not sure I can do this right now,” I say. “There’s a lot going on.”
“Yes, Leon told me that you both have a lot on your plate at the moment.”
“Sorry … what?” I question, sure I misheard her.
“Er, Leon…” she says, hesitantly. “He … he told me about the concert this weekend and—”
“You’ve spoken to my husband?” I say shrilly.
“I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”
“What are you doing speaking to Leon?”
“Well, I … I just thought…”
“You thought what?” I ask, struggling for breath.
“I … just wanted to test the waters without burning my bridges,” she says. “I wanted to gauge the situation. I needed to know if you hated me, or still missed me.” Her voice cracks, but I can’t afford to get caught up in the emotion of it all.
“So you thought you’d track him down and speak to him first?”
“Yes,” she says. “And when he said that you’d spent weeks scouring the subway, a month crying when I didn’t show up at the airport, and that you cuddled my pink rabbit whenever you felt down, I knew it was a risk worth taking.”
My blood runs cold at the thought of my own husband telling my intimate secrets to a woman he doesn’t know. How could he do that when he doesn’t even know the full story? Why would he betray my trust, risk our marriage on something he knows so little about?
But whose fault is that? asks a voice inside my head. Perhaps if you’d been honest at the very beginning, he would have been more honest with you.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” I say, as the deceit burrows under my skin.
Though whether it’s mine or his, I can’t tell anymore.
25
Leon is sitting on a stool with his head in his hands in the kitchen when I get back to the house.
“You need to start talking,” I say, throwing my bag onto the counter. It takes all my resolve not to launch myself at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing talking to my sister, without speaking to me first? You had no right to do that.”
He puffs out his cheeks, looking visibly relieved. “You honestly think that’s our biggest problem right now?”
“I don’t know,” I shout. “You tell me. All this stuff happens—Jacob goes missing, my estranged sister turns up, I’m under suspicion for something I know nothing about, and all the while, you”—I jab a finger aggressively in his direction—“you’re right slam dunk in the middle of it all.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says quietly. “You call her name out in your sleep; she’s obviously on your mind all the time, so when she got in touch with me, I wasn’t going to turn her away because that’s not what you would have wanted me to do.”
“You should have told me,” I seethe. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done?” he exclaims. “She’s your sister and yes, she may have been in a bad place for a while, but I made sure that she was well out of that before agreeing to anything. Did you know she’s been to rehab?”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” I yell. “I think she’s got something to do with Jacob, and is setting me up for it.”
Leon shakes his head vehemently. “You’re not thinking straight,” he says. “Why would she do that? What have you ever done to her to warrant that kind of revenge?”
“I let her go,” I wail.
“You had no other choice,” he says, standing up and coming toward me. “You were a child yourself.”
“But she needed me,” I cry, holding my hand up to warn him off coming any nearer. “And I wasn’t there.”
“She’s got nothing to do with Jacob,” he says.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve just had a call from his wife,” he says.
I narrow my eyes as I watch him watching me. “Vanessa?” I ask needlessly.
He nods.
“Well, why?” I ask, as all the guilty parties and their motivations merge into one in my head. “What did she want? How did she get your number?”
He shrugs at the litany of questions. “It seems that she’s in exactly the same position as me.”
“Meaning?” I ask, my patience too thin to be playing mind games.
“Meaning, we both seemingly have unfaithful partners.”
“What?” I rasp.
“Look, I’m trying really hard to believe you but everyone and everything is telling me the same story—that you two are having an affair.”
“I swear I’m telling you the truth.”
He looks like he wants to come to me, but he stops himself. “You have to understand. You’ve been holding back ever since this whole thing started. I’m being drip-fed information on a need-to-know basis.”
I can’t disagree with him on that.
“So until I’m sure you’ve told me everything, I’m going to reserve judgment.”
I look at him, aghast. “You’re supposed to be my husband,” I say.
“And you’re supposed to be my wife,” he bats back.
“What do you want me to do?” I cry.
“I want you to be honest,” he says. “About everything.”
“I’ve told you all there is to know,” I say.
“So you’re sticking with the story that you didn’t send me that text last night?”
“It’s not a story, it’s the truth. You must be able to tell it wasn’t sent from my phone.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he says resignedly.
“Well, there you go then.”
“But that doesn’t mean you didn’t send it from the burner phone,” he says, looking me in the eye, his gaze unwavering.
“The burner phone?” I ask, wondering when this nausea-inducing rollercoaster will ever end. “How do you know about the burner phone?”
He slams his hands down on the granite. “So it’s true then!” he says, his nostrils flaring.
“The police found a phone here this morning,” I say. “But it wasn’t mine.”
“Of course it wasn’t.” He makes a self-satisfied clicking sound with his mouth.
“How do you know there was a phone?” I ask again.