Chapter 11 #2
She's standing in my entryway with two stuffed shopping bags hanging off her arms and the most enormous smile on her face, lit up gold from the trip, and the sight of her—my sister, who slept in my guest bed for six months, who held my hand at the funeral—the sight of her loving me from the doorway nearly takes my knees out for an entirely different reason.
For one awful second, all I can think about is how much she trusts me, the sister who’s supposed to have it together.
"You're back early." The pitch rises at the end. I bring it down. "I thought it was Wednesday."
"We decided to catch the early flight, and I thought I’d make it easier with Wanda.
" She's already moving toward me, already pulling me into a hug. I hug her back, and over her shoulder I’m listening so hard for a sound from upstairs that my ears ring.
A footstep. A creak. The scrape of a body going over a railing.
Nothing.
"You smell like vanilla," Nora says into my shoulder.
"I was baking."
"Mm. For who?" She pulls back, grinning, and pokes the flour on my forearm. "You seriously need to start charging."
"Nobody. The kids' bake sale." There is no bake sale. I have no idea where it came from, and I hate how easy the lie came. "It's not Wednesday."
"You said that." She frowns, but it's a fond frown. "Are you okay? You're flushed."
"I ran down the stairs." True. "I was changing." Also true. I am getting very good at half-truths.
"Well." She lifts the bags. "We got the kids about nine hundred things, and—oh, this is the good part." She digs into one of the bags. "Owen? He paid with his own money for this."
Her hand comes out with a small flat box, and she opens it. It's a little necklace, a thin gold chain with a tiny enamel daisy.
"For Sophie," Nora says, delighted. "He marched up to the counter on his own, paid for it himself, and made me promise not to tell. He said yellow's her favorite. How does he even know that, Audrey? He's eight."
Something in me goes soft and aching. Owen, who is eight and lives with his father and has known my daughter all of two months, standing at a souvenir counter with his crumpled dollar bills, remembering what color Sophie likes best.
"Whatever happened to girls having cooties?" I say.
"I know." Nora presses a hand to her chest. "I almost cried in a souvenir shop. It's good Nate wasn't by me."
I laugh, and for a second, the upstairs doesn't exist, and there's no man on my trellis, no abandoned hat on my nightstand. There's just my sister and a daisy necklace and the ordinary good of it.
Then there's a thump against the side of the house.
A solid one. From the side yard. The exact side of the house with the trellis on it.
My stomach drops straight through the floor.
Nora's head turns toward the sound. "What was that?"
"Must be the cat." It's out of me instantly, smooth as anything, and I'm already steering, already moving, putting my body between Nora and the window. "Wanda. She's been an absolute menace all week. She gets up to—you would not believe—"
And Wanda, summoned by the slander, comes around the corner at a waddle.
With something in her mouth.
For one bright, frozen instant, I can't make sense of it. A scrap of black. Soft. She drops it at Nora's feet with the proud, terrible generosity of a cat presenting a kill. I look down, and the floor tilts.
It's an eye patch.
A black satin eye patch, the elastic chewed at one end, slightly damp.
I bought it as part of a pirate costume for next time. The surprise, the one I had been saving, that’s been sitting in a bag in the back of my closet behind the winter coats.
Wanda has been in my closet.
"Huh," Nora says, bending to pick it up. "What's this?"
"Eli's." The word leaves me before the panic even finishes cresting—calm, flat, complete. "He’s in a pirate phase. He's obsessed. We can't get it off him half the time."
"This kid." Nora hands it to me, smiling, already onto the next thing, and I take the damp scrap of my little secret and close my fist around it.
"Okay. Coffee? I have so much to tell you.
It was so good, Audrey, the three of us.
I keep waiting for it to feel weird, and it just—doesn't.
Owen was so excited the whole trip. Nate told me he fell in love with me all over again. "
"Coffee. Yes." I'm already moving toward the kitchen, herding her with me, getting her away from the side of the house, putting distance between my sister and the man hopefully off a trellis. "Sit and tell me everything."
She sits at my counter, still talking. I fill the carafe at the sink with my back to her, and that's when I see it.
There’s a window that looks out over the side yard.
And there he is.
Asher—against the fence, the navy shirt still on him and that plastic star winking on his chest, his head down—and the sight of him hits me like ice water.
He's right there in the frame. All Nora has to do is glance up from the counter and turn her head four inches to the left, and the whole thing—the lies, the locked doors, my sister's entire picture of who I am—comes apart on the spot.
My heart stops.
"—and Owen wanted to do the glass-bottom boat twice, so we did, and Nate fell asleep the second time. And, Audrey, that's when we saw it in the water—"
"Mm-hm." I don't move. I can't move. If I move, she'll follow me to the window. "Keep going."
Asher doesn't look up. He throws on his jeans over the stripper shorts and shoves his shoes on.
He doesn't know I can see him, and he turns, going low along the fence toward the gate with that easy animal prowl of his.
The latch sticks—I told him it sticks—and for one endless second he's just standing there working it—
—and then it gives.
He's through, and the gate swings shut behind him. The side yard is empty, and there's nothing in the window but the fence and the grass and an ordinary Tuesday.
He made it.
I let the breath go, slow so Nora won't hear it.
"Audrey, you're not even listening."
"I am." I turn around with the carafe and a smile bolted on so straight it almost hurts. "The boat. Nate fell asleep on the boat. Keep going."
She does.
I get the coffee started, hands steady, the eye patch still balled in my fist and the hat still on the nightstand upstairs, my sister three feet away telling me a story I'm not hearing a word of.
He made it.
And all I can think, with my heart finally climbing down out of my throat, is how thin it all is. How fast it all almost went. One turned head. One stuck latch. One fat cat with no boundaries.
I've built this entire secret on the assumption that I can keep the doors closed.
The coffee maker gurgles. Nora laughs at her own story.
And I stand in my kitchen and understand, for the first time, exactly how much I have to lose.