She rolled her eyes. “I don’t remember. I think I was riding my bike and I hurt my ankle. He gave me a ride home.”
“You were riding your bike way over there?”
“I just said I don’t remember. It was, like, forever ago. Why does it even matter?”
“I’m just surprised you never mentioned him.”
“Maybe I didn’t mention him because I knew you’d act like this,” she accused.
“Act like what?”
“Like this. Like me hanging out with a boy is this huge deal.”
“Well, it is sort of a big deal. I mean, you haven’t had a boyfriend before.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. Even if I wanted him to be, since Dad treats me like I’m two years old.”
“Jessica. Come on. I’ll admit he’s a little overbearing when it comes to you and boys, but you can always talk to me.”
She scowled at me. “Maybe I didn’t want to. I wasn’t aware that I had to report everything that happens in my life. I mean, it’s not like you don’t have your own stuff.”
“Stuff? What kind of stuff?” I was baffled, taken back by her anger.
“Things you keep to yourself. Things you don’t say.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“I don’t know. Like yesterday. You told Grandma that you liked her date nut bread even though I saw you cover most of it under your napkin. Then you threw it in the trash when she left the room.”
“There’s a difference between saying something to spare someone’s feelings and willfully withholding information.” My voice was strained now, my patience dwindling.
“Okay. Then what about Kat? You withheld information from her,” she said. “Is that different from me withholding telling you about Alex?”
It took a minute for the words to process in my head. It was as if I’d been expecting to hear them all along—how could I not have expected to hear them!—but they still came as a shock. They rippled through my body. The hair on my arms stood up. Time stopped.
Suddenly I was back in Maddie’s bedroom, the police officer holding my arms, gently guiding me out of the room, repeating that we needed to give the paramedics space. From between the tangle of legs and arms, her pudgy arm, the necklace tangled in her fingers. Then Jess in the doorway, just off the bus, earlier than usual, earlier than Kat. It was her last day of school, only a half day to give the PTO time to get the gym ready for homecoming that night.
She’d missed the dance, of course, spent the night with Kat, waiting for us to return from the hospital while Boon and his girlfriend tried to keep them distracted by playing cards. Everyone flinching, I’m sure, when a car passed outside.
Everyone on edge, waiting, hoping.
Later, when we were home, Kat had asked, “Mommy? What happened?”
“She stopped breathing,” Jack had whispered, and pulled the girls against him. Jess had put her arm around Kat and closed her eyes. I wondered if it was to block out the image of Maddie, the necklace around her wrist, the locket that hung off it gone.
I couldn’t go back and remove the necklace from Kat’s neck so it wouldn’t drop in the crib while she and Maddie played. I couldn’t pause the moment Maddie decided to taste it and rewind it, record over it like the mixed tapes I used to make in high school. I couldn’t stop time and make Jess come in the house five minutes later, time enough for me to unwind the necklace from around Maddie’s wrist.
Time enough for Jess to not see it.
But she had seen it.
And the week after Maddie died, when Kat asked if I’d seen her necklace, I lied and told her the store I bought it from called, and the necklace caused awful rashes on several people, and they asked for it back.
Jess had looked at me wide-eyed, startled at my overly elaborate lie, and I turned away, ashamed that I didn’t have a better answer.
But when Kat searched for the necklace, I saw it on Maddie’s wrist. And when she asked me if I’d seen it, I pictured the locket in Maddie’s mouth.
Months ago, Kat begged me over and over to replace the locket, and I knew she was disappointed in the one I’d brought home, a miniature version of the original. I’d chosen the smallest one I could find. So small, I was surprised she managed to get a picture inside of it.
“Mom?” Jess’s voice broke the silence. I blinked, her face coming into focus.
I heard the door open, and Kat walked in, my mother behind her. They were holding ice-cream cones, a stream of chocolate running down Kat’s arm.
“We should have got cups,” my mother said, wetting a paper towel and running it up Kat’s arm. She looked over at us, from me to Jess then back at me, and quickly threw the paper in the trash.
“Missy, you need a good cleaning. Come upstairs with me, and I’ll run a bath with some of that fuzzy salt stuff everyone is so fond of giving old ladies.”
She turned Kat toward the door. Kat skipped out and up the stairs. My mother patted my shoulder before she crossed through the living room and closed the door behind her. I waited a moment before I spoke.
“I didn’t know you felt this way. Remember we talked about it after? You said she would blame herself—”
“I remember,” she blurted. “She would have blamed herself. I never said she wouldn’t.”
“But you think I was wrong for not telling her the truth.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, what are you saying? You’re obviously upset.”
“I’m not upset. I’m just stating a fact. You withheld information from Kat. I withheld information from you. I guess that makes us both liars.”
A look crossed her face when she said this. I saw that her anger was a surprise to her, as if the words had come from some unknown place inside of her.
I kept my voice steady, calm. “You’re not a liar, and neither am I. Your sister stopped breathing. That is the truth. That is what we told Kat.”
“But not from SIDS like you led her to believe. Likes she believes now.”
“I never mentioned anything about SIDS. She heard that at school and told me about it.”
“You didn’t tell her that it wasn’t that,” she accused, her voice growing louder.
I didn’t tell her to speak in a quieter tone. I could hear the bath running upstairs. I knew Kat couldn’t hear us. Most of all, I knew that I wanted Jess to keep talking. That she needed to keep talking. It seemed to me that what she was saying had been eating at her. I saw that it had sat inside of her and festered.
“No, I didn’t. You’re right. She told me that she liked to think that Maddie just went to sleep and stopped breathing. She said thinking that made her feel better.”
“And you said she should think that. I heard you. I was there.”
“I did say that,” I agreed. “And I’d say it again. I want for all of us to think of things that make us feel better. Don’t you?”
She shrugged, scowled.
“Can I ask you something?”
She didn’t speak, but she looked at me out of the corner of one eye.
“Do you think I should have told her? Is that what this is about?”