I dried my tears in the downstairs bathroom, and then could not stop myself from scanning for evidence of my sister. I had forbidden Aunt A or Ellen to mention Lanie, and I had heard nothing of her since I had left Illinois all those years ago. Ellen once sent an email with the subject heading News About Lanie and I had deleted it without opening it, shaking with rage. I then sent Ellen a missive reminding her exactly why I had no interest in speaking with or about Lanie ever again, to which Ellen simply replied “Understood.” Aunt A used to try to get me interested in Lanie’s life, but, after the first dozen times I shut her down completely for even breathing my sister’s name, she stopped making further attempts. I knew they both thought the total ban on anything related to my sister was extreme, but cutting her out completely was the only way I knew how to survive.
Now, though, back in the house where we had once both lived, I couldn’t help but wonder what she had been up to all these years. I found nothing other than a photograph half hidden behind the sheet music on the upright piano. Lanie was wearing a wedding dress, a white tulle confection that did not suit her, and standing between Aunt A and Ellen, both of whom were dressed in black. No one looked happy. Lanie’s face was puffy, and her eyes were avoiding the camera. Aunt A was clenching her jaw the way she did when she felt resolute, and Ellen wore the resentful expression of a hostage. The picture might have been humorous if it hadn’t been my family. No one told me Lanie had gotten married. I wondered who her husband was, if it had lasted. I wondered if she was happy.
I slid the picture behind the sheet music again, flipped over so the image didn’t face out into the room.
“Josie.”
I turned to find Peter, Ellen’s husband, standing in the doorway. He was a good-looking man in his mid-fifties, twice as old as Ellen, tall and broad with an expansive midsection, and had the booming voice to match.
“Peter, hi.”
“It’s been a long time,” Peter said, pulling me into an awkward half-hug where he clasped one of my hands and also patted me on the back.
I extracted myself from the embrace and nodded in agreement. It had been three years since Ellen and Peter honeymooned in Fiji, a veritable hop-skip-and-jump from New Zealand, where Caleb and I had been living at the time. The newlyweds had swanned into Auckland, Ellen unnaturally tan, and had treated us to a champagne-filled dinner at a restaurant way out of our price range. After we kissed them goodbye, Caleb had squinted at me, a little drunk and a little dazed, and asked, “This is your family?”
Peter was a little rounder than he had been then, and his hair was striped with silver, but his affable smile was the same. “How’re you holding up?”
“I’ve been better.”
“Well, you look good.”
“Shush, Peter, she does not,” Ellen said, stepping into the room. “I know you’re just being polite, but honestly. You’re not to give her any encouragement about that hair.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Peter said, winking at me. “Ellen just wants to be sure that she’s the only blonde in the room.”
Ellen laughed and swatted her husband away. Their playfulness surprised me; I’d always taken a rather cynical view of their marriage. Ellen claimed vaguely to have met Peter through mutual acquaintances, but she had once drunkenly confided to me they met online. I could only imagine their respective profiles, and assumed that Ellen had selected Peter for his money and power and that he had chosen her for her youth and beauty. If Ellen remembered that too much wine had loosened the truth about their origin story, she pretended that she did not. The one time I mentioned it, I practically heard her eyes narrowing over the phone. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she had said coolly, and promptly changed the subject.
“Now,” she said, grabbing my shoulders and studying me, “we really do need to do something about that. I called Mom’s stylist, but she’s booked up until Friday. Your mother’s visitation is tomorrow, and we cannot have you looking like an escaped mental patient. Wait here, I’ll run to Target and pick up a box of hair dye.”
“But—” I started.
“No buts,” Ellen commanded, holding up her hand and snapping her fingers shut to mime a closing mouth. “I’m in charge here.”
Ellen was a natural choice for a leader: opinionated, confident, and in possession of an enviable head of glossy blond hair. At fifteen, I had so eagerly welcomed Ellen’s guidance that I practically genuflected at her feet. Back then, the anxiety over switching from homeschooling to public school had me breaking out in hives and having dreams in which entire football fields of teenagers queued up to take turns laughing at me. Without Ellen to dictate my wardrobe or provide a map for navigating the school’s social minefield, I would have crumbled. Ellen’s lessons on wielding curling irons and mascara wands distracted me from the devastating loss of my father and the painful unraveling of my mother, and for that I was grateful.
On my first day of classes, I put on the outfit Ellen had picked out for me, curled my hair the way she had shown me, and painted my face as she had dictated. When I stepped back to look at myself in the mirror, I was pleased. I looked cheerful and pleasant, not at all like someone with a dark past.
Ellen smiled approvingly as I entered the kitchen.
“Don’t you look lovely,” Aunt A said, looking up from her cup of coffee.
As I grinned and pirouetted, my mother floated in for her morning glass of orange juice. Her hand on the refrigerator door, she paused and frowned at me.
“What do you think, Mom?” I asked tentatively, fluffing my hair for her benefit.
“The boys will love you,” she said hollowly. “Be careful.”
Then she slammed the refrigerator shut and retreated up the steps with the juice container in one hand, a dirty glass in the other.
“She’s just tired,” Aunt A said quietly, laying a hand on my shoulder. “She didn’t mean—”
I shook her off. “I’m fine.”
“Where’s your sister?” Ellen demanded, pouring herself a bowl of cereal.
Aunt A checked her watch and yelled up the back staircase. “Hurry up, Lanie! Don’t want to be late on your first day!”
It was another ten minutes before Lanie finally slunk down to the kitchen. Ellen paused with a spoonful of Special K on its way to her mouth.
“What the hell?”
“Language, Ellen,” Aunt A scolded.
I swiveled in my chair and followed Ellen’s gaze. Lanie was barefaced and plainly unshowered, her thick dark hair knotted and hanging in her face. She was wearing a black thermal undershirt that I recognized as our mother’s, the same beat-up Levis that she had been wearing for at least the last year—the ones that had the beginnings of a hole in one knee and an ink stain on the pocket—and a pair of ratty cross-trainers.