Six Geny
I park the car near the burial site for our dad.
There aren’t many people here yet. I look over at Grace, the sun hitting her hair, making it glint and shine.
She looks so healthy. Not at all how I’d imagine she would look after being missing for eighteen years.
My mind conjures an image of her, dirty, thin, and scraped up, having lived in the woods next to the water all this time.
But that’s obviously not where she’s been. It’s clear she hasn’t been struggling. At least, not recently. I need to know where she’s been, but I know Grace, and I know the information will come only when she’s ready to share.
There’s a rush of discomfort, and all of a sudden I feel as though I’m with a stranger and not my twin sister.
But both are true. I know her as well as I know myself and yet not at all.
Who is she now that she’s spent half our lives somewhere far away from me?
I have so many questions running through my head that beg to come out now that we’re alone in the car, but I can’t bring myself to ask them.
I’m afraid of the answers as much as I want to know them. And so we sit in silence, and it feels so absurd, I have the urge to laugh but not the energy to.
Why did she come back? Why now? Sure, it’s our dad’s funeral, but she didn’t show up for Mom’s and they were close too. So why come home now? Why at all?
I laugh a little bit. “I don’t even have your phone number.”
Grace smiles and takes her cell from her jacket pocket. “Tell me yours.”
I do, and she types it into her phone. A second later, I feel my phone vibrate from my purse.
“There,” she says. “Now we can text each other.”
I smirk. Such a small thing that feels so big. I have my sister’s phone number. I can call her and talk to her. Everything is different now.
A few cars begin to park around us, and it feels like it’s time to get out. I’m reluctant to share my sister with the rest of the world. Even more reluctant to face the reality of burying my dad. My body can’t comprehend the extremes of losing him and finding her.
“Ready?” she says, not waiting for an answer before she pushes her door open and climbs out.
I follow her, feeling eyes on us as we approach the tent that covers the grave. She walks right to the front, not acknowledging the stares or the whispers of the people who have started to gather. She acts as if she’s been here the whole time, as if she isn’t a ghost in a graveyard.
I catch sight of Frank and Tina’s vehicle, and then see Wyatt and my boys walking toward us. I can see the discomfort on my husband’s face, and every insecurity I own comes raging to the surface. I beg them, Not now.
Grace grabs my hand and I turn my attention to her. She’s staring off to the side, and I follow her eyes to the headstone with her name on it. Grace Chandler. Loving daughter, sister, and friend. 1990–2009.
I squeeze her hand and she squeezes back. How do we go about having the grave dug up and finding out who is inside? Frank was getting a lot of flak back at the church. I can understand everyone’s frustration. How did they get this so wrong?
We were surprised they found her body at all.
Most of those who drown in the lake are never found.
Lake Superior doesn’t give up her dead. It’s something we grew up hearing, the warning every parent gave their children growing up on the coast of the lake.
People who have never seen the Great Lakes, especially Lake Superior, mistakenly think they’re like other lakes.
But they’re nothing like that. They’re closer to oceans than anything else.
Lake Superior is wild and dangerous and so cold that the bacteria that normally decompose a body, making gasses that cause the body to bloat and float, work so much slower that the bodies sink and are usually preserved. An extensive watery graveyard.
My father-in-law is going to have a lot to answer for in the coming days.
First, there are the allegations against his best friend, my dad.
The pressure to investigate his suicide.
And now the dead daughter of his best friend is home, alive and well, after he was one of the few people to see her dead body.
Wyatt and our boys come to stand beside me. Carter, our five-year-old, runs and hugs himself to my legs. I use my free hand to hug him back and I keep my hand on his shoulder.
Jack, our oldest, stands next to Carter and tousles his hair before shyly glancing over at me and at Grace. I smile at him to let him know everything is okay, though it doesn’t feel okay at all.