“But why?” I sputtered. “Why would he . . . with Lanie?”
“Why do eighteen-year-old boys do anything, Josie? Hormones. Beer. Idiocy. They’re simple, base creatures.”
At that moment, Lanie pushed open the kitchen door. Speak of the devil, I thought unkindly. She looked glamorous in a tailored black wool dress and understated pumps. I was wearing a black H&M sweater on loan from Isabelle and a pair of old black pants I found in my closet, neither of which fit me very well. It seemed grossly unfair that she could remain so composed given the havoc she had wreaked on so many lives.
Ellen clocked my discontent from underneath her eyelashes and shoved the platter of crudités in Lanie’s direction. “Here, take these into the other room.”
“No,” Lanie said, staring at the platter while making no moves to accept it. “I’m not a servant.”
“I’m just asking you to help,” Ellen insisted, pushing the platter at her again. Lanie stepped to the side, and the platter sailed out of Ellen’s hands. It clattered noisily to the floor, and carrots rolled in every direction.
“Thanks a bunch,” Ellen snapped as she stomped out of the room, leaving my sister and me alone with the spilled vegetables.
“Josie,” she started.
I stared at her, searching her face, hoping for clues that would unravel the mystery of her: how she ended up with Adam, why she turned on me, what she really saw that night.
She frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I sighed. “What do you want, Lanie?”
“I want to talk. About us,” she hastened to add, “not that podcast.”
“Not now, Lanie. We just buried our mother.”
“Making it even more important for us to clear the air,” she said, lifting her chin determinedly.
“I said, not now.”
Adam pushed open the kitchen door, an empty wine bottle in his hands, and paused, looking from Lanie to me, clearly trying to decide whether getting a fresh bottle was important. “Everything okay in here?”
“Yes,” Lanie said sweetly at the same moment that I said, “No.”
Adam’s eyes locked on me, and my guts churned. Whereas I had once given him credit for apologizing while my sister remained silent and unrepentant, I now was certain that those apologies had been riddled with lies. If I had only been a bit more skeptical, had held his untruths up to the light . . . then what? I wouldn’t have left? If I hadn’t left, I never would have met Caleb, and I couldn’t imagine my life without him.
“Josie, can we—?” he started.
As little as I wanted to speak to my sister, I wanted to talk to Adam even less in the moment. I turned sharply to Lanie and said, “Fifteen minutes. You and me.”
Lanie paused in the entrance to our old bedroom, her manicured fingertips tracing the stained wood of the doorframe. If it had been another day, I might have made a joke about emotional vampires not being able to cross thresholds any better than their mythological counterparts. Instead, I took a seat in the desk chair and watched as Lanie looked around the room.
“Wow,” she said quietly. “It’s just the same.”
I nodded stiffly. “You haven’t been here lately?”
“Not to this room.” She shook her head. “Not since I moved out.”
“You’re not close with Aunt A? Even though you live in town?”
“Come on, Josie,” Lanie said scornfully. “What do you think? I’m the one who drives everyone away: our mother, you. Aunt A wants nothing to do with me.”
“She said that? That doesn’t sound like her.”
“Of course she’s never said those exact words. But I know. I know the only reason she tolerates me at all is because of my daughter.”
“That’s not true, I’m sure,” I murmured, looking down.
I picked up the model Washington Monument and turned it over in my hands, clasping my fingers around it so that the jagged edge where the tip had once been bit into my palm. I waited while Lanie looked at the pictures on the wall, and then finally sat on her old bed. She stared at her feet for a minute, and when she finally spoke, it was not what I expected to hear. I had expected an excuse, a reason why the things that had transpired were beyond her control. If I was honest, I had hoped for an apology.
Instead, Lanie said, “I named her Ann. After Mom. Her middle name, you know.”
I wanted to hiss that of course I knew our mother’s middle name was Ann, that Ann was the name I had selected for my own hypothetical future children with Adam, and that Adam knew that. But there was nothing to be gained from saying these things, or even thinking them, so I kept my mouth shut and pushed the monument deeper into my palm. My eyes watered.
“I’ve been dreaming about her,” Lanie said quietly.
I looked up. “Your daughter?”
“Mom. I’ve been dreaming about Mom.”
“Oh.” I turned the monument over in my hands, unwilling to admit that I had not been dreaming about our mother, afraid that it showed Lanie was a better daughter than I.
“The dreams, though . . .” Lanie trailed off. “Sometimes they feel like more than dreams. Sometimes I feel like she’s trying to tell me something. Do you ever have those?”
“Yes,” I lied.
“And if I’m not dreaming about her, I’m not sleeping. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve gotten more than a collective ten hours of sleep since she died.”
“Lanie,” I interrupted. “What is this? You dragged me up here to talk about your insomnia?”
“I just thought you might understand,” she said, looking chastened.
“There are so many things we need to talk about. We can’t just skip all that and go directly to lamenting our sleep schedules. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to start with all the havoc you’ve wreaked on my life.”
“Fuck that,” she said, eyes darkening. With a curse on her lips and a scowl on her face, she looked more like the sister I remembered from high school than the chic Stepford wife that had inhabited her body. Part of me felt relieved to see her calm veneer cracking once more; there was a certain comfortable predictability to her temper.
“Every time I see Aunt A, she’s always telling me how perfect your life is.” Lanie’s scowl deepened and she affected a shrill voice that I assumed was supposed to be Aunt A’s. “Did you know that Josie’s boyfriend is a humanitarian? Did you know that Josie and her boyfriend own a one-bedroom apartment in New York City? Did you know that Josie sold a book to that funny lady comedian from Saturday Night Live?”
“Kristen Wiig? Yeah, I did,” I said automatically. I caught myself and returned her scowl.