“Just come,” Kitty said. “It’s worth it.”
They drove through Oakley—this was the route they had followed to the campus of Seven Hills for countless mornings of Liz’s life—but instead of continuing to Oaklawn Drive and making a left, Kitty turned right into the parking lot of Madison Bowl.
“She bowls?” Liz said.
“She’s in a league.” Kitty’s voice was thick with amusement. “And it’s not a hipster league. It’s middle-aged fat people.”
“That’s not against the law.”
“Once you see them, you’ll think it should be.”
As Kitty pulled into a parking space and turned off the car, Liz said, “She’s in there now?”
“I followed her here a few weeks ago. I needed to make sure she wasn’t in a satanic cult before we became roommates.”
“Did you tell her you’d followed her?”
Kitty shook her head.
“So what’s your plan? We go inside and yell ‘Surprise!’ at her?”
“Last time, she changed in her car into a red-and-black uniform,” Kitty said. “Don’t you think it’s weird that she’s so secretive about something so dumb?”
“Because she knew this was how you’d act if she told us.”
Kitty had parked near a light pole, and in the sallow illumination it provided, the sisters looked at each other. Petulantly, Kitty said, “You’re no fun.”
“You know what, Kitty? You can decide to be a good person. If you’re lucky, you have a long adulthood ahead of you, and you might actually be happier if you’re nice instead of mean.”
“I am a good person,” Kitty said. But it was with clear resentment that, to Liz’s relief, she started the ignition.
LIZ CALLED JANE from the Ikea couch, and when she told her sister where she was, Jane said, “I’m sorry your last night in Cincinnati isn’t very ceremonious.”
“Whatever,” Liz said. “This way I’ll appreciate the luxury of my Houston hotel room.”
“I’ve been thinking about what the extermination man told you,” Jane said, “and the idea of Mom and Dad eating food that was in the house during the fumigation—it makes me nervous. What if you move stuff to Kitty and Mary’s place beforehand, or just throw it away? Some of Mom’s spices are probably from the eighties anyway.”
The annoyance Liz felt—it was because she knew Jane was right, and she also knew that clearing out the many kitchen cabinets, plus the refrigerators on two floors, would not be an insignificant task. And Ken Weinrich’s team was supposed to arrive at the Tudor at ten the next morning.
Liz glanced at the closed door of Kitty’s bedroom; light shone out from the crack, and she could hear the sound of whatever TV show Kitty was watching on her smartphone. Mary was out, presumably still at the bowling alley. Liz would enlist them both, she thought. To Jane, she said, “Want me to send you a picture of the house when it’s tented?”
“No!” Jane sounded dismayed.
“I won’t if you don’t want me to.” Liz lowered her voice. “There’s something I haven’t told you about Darcy.” Her wish to confess stemmed less from a moral awakening than from confusion over the uneasiness she’d experienced leaving Darcy’s apartment that afternoon; she needed to discuss the oddness of their final encounter.
“Do you know,” Jane said before Liz revealed more, and Jane’s tone was equanimous rather than bitter, “if it weren’t for Darcy, I have a hunch Chip and I would still be together?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The night he broke up with me, one of the things he said was that Darcy didn’t think we made a good couple. Chip also said, as if I didn’t know this, how much he respects Darcy.”
An unpleasant alertness had come over Liz. “Why would Darcy have disapproved of you and Chip?”
“Who knows? Although I’m sure I could torment myself from now until the end of time guessing.” Jane laughed a little, which seemed to Liz a sign of her sister’s progress. Indeed, Jane appeared far calmer about what she was describing than Liz felt. “Anyway, it’s not like Darcy’s low opinion of our family has ever been a secret,” Jane said. “What’s the thing you haven’t told me about him?”
Liz thought miserably of her conclusion—her entirely self-serving conclusion, she realized—that sleeping with Darcy was not wrong. What disloyalty to Jane she’d shown! Surely divulging her trysts to Jane at this juncture, especially when those trysts were now finished, would serve no purpose. Haltingly, Liz said, “That day you fainted, when you were at the hospital—I ran into Darcy outside the ER. He helped me figure out where to go.”
Jane was quiet, seemingly waiting for more.
Lamely, Liz added, “I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned that to you.”