“Cass!” I heard my mother call from the bottom of the stairs. “They’re here! Come down, sweetheart!”
I lay still and listened to the sound of her fake excited voice as it trailed up the stairs from the living room. I could no longer make out the words, but I knew what she was saying because she was using the tone she always used when she was thinking mean things but saying nice things. I felt myself judging her, but it was not satisfying the way it had been when I was younger and free of the guilt that now made me a hypocrite. I would get out of this bed and brush my hair and gargle with mouthwash and put Mrs. Mar tin’s fat clothes back on my body. I would go downstairs and give him a big hug and shake his girlfriend’s hand and have some tea. I would smile as I thought my own mean things and said my own nice things. I had been thinking mean things for many years. They surely would not leave me just to ease my conscience.
Hunter looked different from how I remembered him. His face had become more angular, nose, cheekbones, brow all more pronounced. His hairline had receded a bit. And he was muscular, strong. My mother told me he had started lifting weights at his fancy sports club. She said it was probably a cover story he used so he could cheat on his girlfriend, but I could see from the size of his arms that some of his story must be true. Mrs. Martin had to believe this because this woman was very beautiful and very young. She had long, luscious blond hair and chiseled cheekbones and deeply set eyes and a big pouty mouth. Mrs. Martin was not the most beautiful woman in the world when Hunter’s woman was around. So she had to concoct her theory about Hunter cheating on her. She had to believe that Hunter didn’t really love her.
Hunter walked to me from across the room. His head was tilted slightly and his face was scrunched up like he was about to cry. It was the face people make when their child loses the spelling bee, or falls off a horse, or scrapes a knee on the sidewalk.
“Cass! My God!” he said.
I did not move. I took a long breath and held it firm as he wrapped his new strong arms around me and rocked my body back and forth.
His girlfriend pounced upon us, and I could see in an instant why my mother hated her.
“I’m Brenda.” She said this while Hunter was still hugging me. She said it so he would stop.
I pulled out of his embrace to greet her, and when I did I felt the hesitation. He did not want to let me go, which I found strange. He had never once hugged me like that.
“It’s so horrible, Cass, what happened to you and Emma. And Emma’s still there! It’s just too terrible to even think.”
I repeated just some of the story while we sat in the living room drinking tea. I knew Mrs. Martin had told Mr. Martin, and Mr. Martin had told Hunter most of what I had told them in my interviews. Hunter kept shaking his head like he didn’t believe this had happened and like it was the most horrible thing he had ever heard.
I had gone over in my mind what it would be like when I saw Hunter again, the same way I had done for my mother and my father. For everyone. I had a lot of time to think about my reunions. None of them would be the way I expected them to be. I suppose that’s normal. First kisses. Graduations. Weddings. Sports victories. They never feel the way we think they will, and they never go quite the way we dream about them. Still, I was just as shocked by Hunter’s reaction as I was when Mrs. Martin didn’t recognize me on her doorstep.
Hunter had been obsessed with Emma right from the start. But because our families had become related, it was forbidden, and that made it unbearable for him.
I was not the only one who could see it lurking in his eyes. Witt had seen it as well, though he and I never discussed it. I just knew by the way his back got straighter when he was around Hunter; the way his light disposition disappeared along with his sense of humor. They did not have occasion to be together often. Sometimes our father would send Witt to pick us up at our mother’s house when it was our weekend with him. And sometimes Hunter would be there on those weekends. Other times Hunter would pick us up from our father’s house, especially in the summers, and he would see Witt when he did.
The summer after Emma had sex with that boy, Joe, from Hunter’s school—when I was thirteen, Emma was fifteen, Hunter was seventeen, and Witt was a junior in college—we were all home for the last two weeks of August. Hunter was working as a caddy at our club. Witt was volunteering for a political campaign for some local senator and living with our father. Emma and I were back from summer camp in Europe and getting ready for school. Emma had started dating a boy from our country club, and Hunter was relentless in his ridicule of him. I think what happened with Joe the spring before had not helped. Hunter’s jealousy grew like the weeds in Mrs. Martin’s garden.
He and Emma fought almost every day, but then they would get drunk together and watch movies in the finished part of the basement. Sometimes they would sit very close, and Emma would rest her head in his lap. One night, Mr. Martin came downstairs very quietly. I was sitting on the floor on some pillows. Emma and Hunter were on the couch together, with her head in his lap and his hand stroking her hair. We were watching The Shining, which we had seen countless times but which still held our attention. Mr. Martin stood there looking at them for a long time. They didn’t see him but I did, and I waited to see what he would do, to see if what they were doing was wrong enough for Mr. Martin to put a stop to it. But he didn’t stop it. He just watched it, and then he left without them even noticing.
I remember thinking that maybe I was the one who was crazy. Maybe it was normal what they were doing, and the worst possible thought—maybe I was jealous that Hunter loved Emma more than he loved me. Maybe it was just like with our mother. I didn’t even like Hunter. Still, maybe I was just a petty little sister who had to want everything her sister had. I ran upstairs and smoked one of Emma’s cigarettes out my window and hated myself. Then I cried in my bed and hated myself more until I fell asleep.
The next week, there was a huge fight between my father and Mrs. Martin. One of the mothers from our school had called them both to tell them that there were pictures of Emma on the Internet. It was some new Web site all the kids were using because it wasn’t owned by a large company that had to be careful about stuff like naked pictures and swearing. Kids were using it to say mean things about other kids, and about teachers also. The school told us we were forbidden to visit that site, but they never checked our phones or laptops. The pictures of Emma showed her posing in a black dress. She was acting sexy in all of them, pretending to undress by pulling a strap off her shoulder.