“It’s awful,” I warned. “But I’ll go with you. If you want.”
“Please,” she said, taking my hand. Even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, and we hadn’t been friends in an eternity, her palm against mine felt right. We exited the restroom hand in hand, all the bad blood between us forgotten for the moment.
It was a moment that lasted only until the door closed behind us and we spotted the one person who could splinter us again.
Adam appeared virtually unchanged. He looked a little older and considerably more tired, but he still had the same golden hair, those same cola-brown eyes, that same lanky build. He still looked like Adam, and that fact alone was enough to fling an icy stake through my heart. I unconsciously dropped my sister’s hand.
Adam’s eyes widened and he exhaled my name: “Josie.”
My heart rate quickened as immediately as if someone had flipped a switch, and before I could even sort out what that meant or chastise myself for it, I saw her.
No more than seven or eight years old, she stood at Adam’s side, looking down at her handheld tablet. I didn’t need to see her face to know who she was; that cloud of black hair was unmistakable.
As if she felt my gaze on her, she flickered her saucer-like, pale-blue eyes up at me. Delicate dark brows knit in confusion, and she turned to Adam.
“Dad,” she whispered loudly, “why does that lady look like Mom?”
The corners of my vision darkened, and my knees went weak. I backed away from them, unable to tear my eyes off the child, who was returning my stare with one of her own. Lanie reached for my arm, but I brushed her off. As I pivoted and plunged back into the crowd, I could hear Lanie and Adam both calling my name, a traitorous chorus.
It didn’t make any sense. None of it made any sense. I gave myself a hard pinch on the inside of my elbow, and then I did it again, gritting my teeth as I squeezed the tender skin with all my force. It had to be a dream. No other explanation was plausible. My mother could not be dead, not before I had the chance to tell her I was sorry. I was sorry I wasn’t a better daughter, I was sorry I didn’t protect Dad, I was sorry I didn’t know how to help her when she needed us. She could not be dead, and my father’s horrific death could not be the subject of a pop culture phenomenon sweeping the nation, and my sister could not have made a child with the first man I had ever loved.
From Twitter, posted September 23, 2015
chapter 8
I struggled to find Ellen in the still-swelling sea of people, most of whose faces I recognized only vaguely or not at all. People reached for me as I passed them, calling me “honey,” a sure sign they didn’t know which twin they were addressing. I finally spotted Ellen, almost hidden behind a towering flower arrangement, talking with a tan brunette woman. It wasn’t until I was within arm’s reach that I recognized the woman as our former classmate Trina Thompson. Trina arranged her face into a mask of sympathy so exaggerated it was almost comical and outstretched her arms, saying, “Oh, honey, I am so sorry for your loss.”
I sidestepped the hug and offered her a hurried “Thank you” as a consolation prize before dragging Ellen away to the relative privacy of the corner, where I hissed, “Why didn’t you tell me about them?”
“Them?” Ellen repeated, playing dumb even as her eyes shifted guiltily to the floor.
“Yes. Them. You know exactly who I’m talking about.” I gulped, my mouth too dry to even speak their hateful names. “Lanie and Adam. And their happy little family.”
“Oh, right,” Ellen said to the ground. “Them.”
“Oh, right,” I echoed. My heart squeezed with hurt. Everyone had betrayed me: first my sister and Adam, and now even Ellen and Aunt A. “How could you not tell me? How could you let me walk into this without being prepared? Today, of all days?”
“Because you didn’t want to know, remember? I tried to tell you. On more than one occasion. I dropped all kinds of hints, too. But you didn’t want to hear it.”
Ellen was right. My righteous anger abandoned me, and all that remained was bewilderment.
“How did this happen? Adam barely tolerated Lanie. And after everything she’s done . . . How can Adam love her?”
“It’s not about love,” Ellen said, as though that made anything better. “They only got married because of the baby.”
“It’s not 1950,” I protested. “That logic doesn’t hold.”
“Hey, don’t look at me. I don’t get them, either. But you dodged a bullet with Adam. I heard he spent most of their first year of marriage hooking up with Trina over there.”
Nothing surprised me anymore. If Adam was going to marry my sister, why shouldn’t he also have an affair with Trina Thompson?
“She ruined him,” I murmured, more to myself than Ellen.
Ellen frowned. “Trina did? That seems a little extreme.”
“No, Lanie did. Lanie completely ruined him. The Adam Ives I knew would never have cheated on his wife.”
Ellen’s expression flickered. I cut her off before she even opened her mouth.
“I know what you’re thinking, and all I have to say is this: there’s one common denominator there, and it’s my sister.”
Any pain I experienced at discovering Lanie and Adam’s relationship paled in comparison to what came next: standing in a receiving line with what remained of my family, making awkward small talk with people I barely knew, all while trying to ignore the fact that my mother’s body lay just out of my peripheral vision.
Ellen, acting as a human buffer, placed herself between Lanie and me in the receiving line. On my left side, Aunt A graciously accepted condolences, while on my right, Ellen’s practiced, honeyed voice greeted nearly every mourner by name. Neither of their voices, nor even my own, mechanically thanking people for coming, was enough to drown out the sound of my sister’s voice as she repeatedly introduced herself: “I’m Lanie Ives, daughter of the deceased.” The extreme proximity to my sister after so much time apart was unsettling, and hearing her repeat her married name was even more so. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her smile demurely. She at once was and was not the sister I’d left behind, and I wasn’t certain which was worse.
As I shook the liver-spotted hand of an elderly man who described himself as a friend of my late grandparents, I glimpsed Lanie’s old friend Ryder Strong step into the room. Time had been unkind to Ryder: her face was dry and creased, her hair brittle, and she had thinned down to practically nothing, leaving her a collection of bony limbs sticking out of baggy clothing.
Ignoring the receiving line, she walked directly to Lanie, flustering the short, soft woman from Aunt A’s knitting circle who had been speaking to her. My sister shrank minutely from Ryder, her eyes wide and anxious. Adam tensed at her side and put a hand on Lanie’s shoulder.
“Sorry about your mom,” Ryder said abruptly.
“Thank you,” Lanie said quietly.