“Like who?”
“Like Mama. All that control, all the time. You make your mind up about things, and it’s like concrete setting. Whatever impression gets left, whatever indent, it’s there forever. The way you think I’m a coward because I don’t want out of Cattaro like you do, for one. Because I don’t think about Japan like it means freedom and salvation and everything Montenegro doesn’t mean for you. Don’t shake your head, I know it’s true. I’ve heard you feeling it at me. And I don’t mind that you think those things about me—we’re not one person, Riss, we can feel different things—but Niko . . .” She glanced up at me, suddenly tentative. “I didn’t know what you would think of us together.”
I couldn’t believe the notion had never crossed my mind before—that the reason Malina barely noticed men might be that they genuinely weren’t interesting to her. I’d thought it was growing up around Mama that had done it, the endless castigation, the relentless shaming. Of course, that had been meant for me—Mama hadn’t seen the need to chisel away at her more malleable girl, or maybe couldn’t bring herself to do it to us both—and it had worked.
I’d never fully given anyone my heart.
But Lina was my sister, my twin, the first thing I’d seen when I opened my eyes in our shared womb. I’d held her by the hand before we were even thrust into this world. I should have felt the need to look deeper, to think of her as more than the most vulnerable extension of me, a weaker limb I needed to favor. Especially when that was so far-flung from the truth.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” I said softly. “I shouldn’t have needed you to tell me. But if you had, I would have been happy for you, Lina, I swear.”
“And you don’t care? That she’s a girl?”
“Of course I don’t. Does Luka care that his sister’s with a girl?” I replied tartly, as all the furtive half gestures, the bit-back sentences, fell into place.
She winced. “He wanted to tell you. And he almost did, a bunch of times. He thought it was wrong of us to hide it from you, but Niko made him swear he wouldn’t say anything until I did. Only because that’s the way I wanted it.” She huffed out a little breath. “She hated hiding it, so much. And you know how hard Niko can hate things. I spent a lot of time paying penance by watching horror movies with her. A lot.”
“So what were you waiting for? What did you think I was going to do?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t want you to judge me for being so indulgent, for letting myself do what I wanted. And sometimes . . . sometimes you make things bigger than they need to be. I was a little afraid you’d, I don’t know, be loud about it once you got on board? Throw me a one-person parade, just so you could fight anyone else who judged me for it.”
I took a shaky breath. “I might be Iris the Martyr, but this does make you a bit of an asshole, Lina.”
She sputtered out a little laugh. “Yeah. I guess it does.”
“What is it really like, though?” I twisted my hands together in my lap. “Being in love, I mean.”
She crawled over the bed to meet me halfway, then laid her head tentatively on my shoulder. I wriggled down farther to rest my cheek against her crown. “I don’t know if I can tell you about love in general. But I can sing you what it’s like for me. Being in love with her.”
I nodded once. I could feel her smile against my shoulder, and as I closed my eyes she began to hum the fundamentals, overtones layering in. Usually her singing transcribed directly into emotion, but this time it was even more vivid, images blooming on the insides of my eyelids, as if she were showing me what she’d seen as well as felt. Maybe being here was making her stronger, too.
I caught a mosaic of glimpses, little glittering stained-glass pieces that each reflected some part of Malina’s love. There was Niko in a white triangle bikini top, her slight midriff taut and brown beneath it, a jewel winking in the shadow of her navel. A sarong was draped below the tuck of her waist, and she danced for my sister, the slim flare of her hips rippling to some beat I couldn’t hear, each dainty foot perfectly placed. Her silky hair fell over one sloe eye, but the other was large and dark and heavy-lidded, narrowed with her smile. I could feel the exact way it had made my sister’s heart race.
Then Niko breaking the water’s surface, her chin tipped up and mouth opening for breath, slick hair glossy as an otter’s, water trembling in her lashes.
Niko feeding my sister a dewy, amber slice of peach, laughingly pulling it out of reach before she finally let Malina have it, sealing it with a kiss.
Niko’s face drawn and blurred with tears, her little hands clenched into furious fists before Malina caught and uncurled them, brushing her lips over the knuckles. When had that been, I wondered vaguely; maybe after her and Luka’s mother died.
A hundred flashing glimpses of Nikoleta Damjanac, and then a hundred more, of her swimming and laughing and dancing with my sister, their fingers always entwined.
And then a final image of Niko’s sleeping profile: the pert outline of nose and lips against the pillow, her lashes fanned like a paintbrush, her fist baby-curled beneath the chin. And with it, the first swell of love my sister had ever felt, the moment in which she realized that this was the girl who held her heart. That was what the smell downstairs had made her remember, this precise moment of falling.
The devastating and glorious yielding of all control.
“That’s lovely, Lina,” I whispered, my voice thick. The illusion fell away as Malina’s singing fractured into tears, until she sobbed into my shoulder. “Shhh. Don’t.”
“I don’t want to leave her, Riss.” Her voice shuddered. “She’ll hurt so much without me. But I can’t let you go, either. You should have your chance to have that too, to feel how much you’re worth. I’ve already had it, so many years of love. It’s your turn now. It’s time for you.”
“No.” I could feel the resolve hardening within as I said it, like cooling glass taking on its final shape. “She can’t do without you; I could feel that much. You’ll have each other, and Luka—he’ll find someone else. It should be me who goes.”
Lina struggled upright, balling her fists against her thighs. “I won’t let you. Not this time. And even if I were willing, think what it would be like for me. I’d have to have babies, Riss, to carry on our line. How could I do that to Niko, drag her into all of this, make her watch me groom my children—ours, maybe, if she were still with me after all that—for sacrifice? Would she even stay with me? And if she did, how could I live and watch her get old, die in front of me? I won’t do it, I won’t. I’ll go—you stay. You have all the things you’ve never had.”