She’s missing her calls. Maybe you should check in. Get her to come back. If anyone can do it, you can.
Rebecca turned in the middle of the room. “What’s going on, Leah?” Then, when I didn’t answer right away, she dug a little deeper. “What are you doing here?”
“Have you ever wondered if what we’re doing is the only path? If we weren’t meant for something else?” I asked, which felt too close to a confession.
She paused at the couch, opted for the kitchen chair instead. “You know, you’re lucky you didn’t do grad school. You’re lucky you’re not in debt up to the whites of your eyeballs. You’re lucky you even have the choice.”
She was top of her class in med school, too. And she was too skinny, I decided. Outside the hospital or the city, you could see how tired she was. The age starting to show around her eyes.
“Anyway,” she said, perching at the edge of the vinyl chair, “Mom says you’re cracking.” There were cracks everywhere, in the walls, between the furniture; Emmy, slipping through. “I cracked once, first year of residency. By the time you wake up and see your life, it’s too late, you know. It’s too late. You’re already there.”
She said it with an edge, as if it were not just about my life but about hers, too. But it still held me; I’d never be free. She never could’ve guessed how right she was.
“Seems like you got through it just fine,” I said.
“Well, either way, here I am,” she said.
I worried that anything I confessed would go straight to my mother. I missed Emmy. “Rebecca. I can’t go back.”
Hoping she’d hear the meaning underneath, as Emmy would. See it plain on my face. Recognize it because it was something she herself understood, an expression she’d seen in the mirror. I waited while Rebecca stared; I waited to see what she would glimpse underneath the words.
She sighed and took a soda from the fridge. It was Emmy’s. “I wish you’d talk to me,” she said.
Where to start? How to start? She saw me as one thing, but there was too much, over time, that she hadn’t learned about me. But I wanted to give her something. She’d come all this way for me. “His name is Kyle,” I said, grinning, which made her laugh.
“So, how’d you meet this Kyle?”
“He’s the cop looking into Emmy.”
She spun around, eyes wide. “You’re kidding.”
“What?”
“You have no respect for boundaries, Leah. And here I was, thinking I could help. Oh my God, this is going to end so, so badly.”
Such a simple statement, and yet so exacting. The thing that brings everyone close enough to slip the knife between my ribs, face-to-face, while I sleep unguarded.
“You give too much of yourself, Leah. People are bound to keep taking,” Rebecca said, and I heard the echo from my mother. It was a line I’d heard before somewhere. While Rebecca and my mother were stoic and practical and independent, I could never seem to get my feet planted firmly on the ground.
From their perspective, there was a very clear fault in wanting to give away pieces of yourself with no guaranteed benefit. The point of work, in their mind, was to further yourself. This was how my mother pulled herself back up, the method of endurance that she successfully fed to Rebecca. And Rebecca couldn’t escape it now. So I let the criticism sit, I let it sting, I let her feel a step above. Because the truth was, I wouldn’t have traded my life for hers—not even now.
“Okay,” she said, looking around the place. “Let’s start.”
“Start what?” I asked.
“The part where you tell me what’s going on so I can help you fix it.”
It sounded like a joke until I realized she was serious. That she thought everything could be fixed.
“Look, if you want to stay, stay. But we can’t do this part.”
“Why not, Leah?”
“Because you don’t know anything about my life anymore!”
“Well, maybe what I’m trying to say here is that I want to!”
Her cheeks had gone hollow, and I wondered if anyone checked in on her when things fell apart. I wondered if I would’ve done this—hopped on a plane, rented a car, driven to her place—to check in on her.
I took a deep breath. Looked at her luggage. Focused on a task I could accomplish. “How long are you staying?” I asked.
She seemed to sense that this was an olive branch, and she took it. Lowering her voice, leaning against the counter. “Just until tomorrow evening.”
“Listen, I’m glad you’re here. I am. But I have a crap-ton of work to catch up on. So how about we just chill, okay?”
“Chill,” she said.
“Call Mom. Tell her you’re here. Tell her everything’s fine. You want to help? That’s what you can do.”
In the meantime, I made up Emmy’s room. Was glad Rebecca was here after all, even if I didn’t like the reason for the visit. She was my big sister, and she kept her focus. She was the one you wanted in a crisis, it was true. She was someone who would hear the danger approaching, who would know what was real and what was not.
And then I sat at my computer to do some work while Rebecca began to clean. I didn’t object; I just let her be. If she thought this could help, it, too, would be my gift to her.
Rebecca had the radio on while I worked at the kitchen table, and occasionally, she would call, “Trash or keep,” and I would say, “Trash.”
My email dinged, and I sat upright. I had a new message from TeachingLeahStevens. From Theo. I opened the message. A single line. The girl forgets about the man in the car.
All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. He wasn’t backing down or cowering. Part of me was worried at first that I had pushed him too far, as I had pushed Aaron. Part of me had expected Theo to show up at my doorstep, begging me not to tell. Pleading with me, It was a joke. Just a joke.
But he was not. He was doubling down, as if he didn’t believe I had any proof it was him all along. Or, if I did, that I would not come forward. And why? Because he had something on me—I had forgotten about the man in the car. He must’ve been talking about James Finley, and I didn’t understand—
“Leah?” Rebecca stood at the counter, watching me closely.
“Sorry, what?”
She held up the paper. The one from Boston, pulled out from a drawer during her cleaning. “Trash or keep,” she said.
I closed my eyes. “Keep,” I said.
I saw those girls again. The interchangeable faces at the crime scenes, all of them blurring together. The girls in the article, faces shifting. How close I had come to being one of those girls myself.
What I had imagined: Aaron lowering my body into the tub. The setup: She hadn’t been hired after graduation. Had to crash with us, with no money, staying on our couch. She was too embarrassed to tell her mom, even. She was drinking, she was upset. We didn’t know—