Nine Grace
She knows I’m lying. I can tell. But she isn’t calling me on it, the same way she never did when we were younger.
And so we let the lie sit there. I have questions of my own, but I won’t ask them.
I let one comment about her and Wyatt slip, but there won’t be another.
If I make her feel guilty, she might push me away and I don’t want that.
“What do we do now? How do we catch up on the last eighteen years?” Geny asks, pushing away from my embrace. Tears make her eyes shiny again.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when Mom and Dad died. That you had to go through that alone.”
I wish I could tell her more. That I could tell her the truth. But Geny has always been fragile, and I don’t want to put her in danger. Not when I have so much to do and figure out. I can’t worry about her in that way right now.
I take my place back on the couch. “What do you know about the allegations?”
She shakes her head, face scrunching up. “It’s bull crap. Obviously.”
I smirk at her almost cuss. “Yeah. Obviously. Do you know anything else?”
“Not really. It was an anonymous tip. One of the officers seized his computer and phone. He was really upset, but who wouldn’t be. It’s a horrible thing to be accused of. He didn’t seem worried though. Only after they said they found stuff.”
I push out a long breath through puffed cheeks. “Did they arrest him?”
Geny shakes her head. “No. But I think that’s just because of Frank. Dad was mad at him, like he could just make it go away or something. But obviously Frank was obligated to look into it, no matter how insane it was.”
“Of course,” I say, chewing my bottom lip. “How did he seem . . . before—”
“Before he killed himself?”
I close my eyes. She has to know he wouldn’t do that. But then, what do I know? I haven’t known him in eighteen years. He’d lost his daughter and then his wife. And now he was losing his good name. That kind of stuff changes people.
“He was weird. Angry,” Geny says. “He almost seemed frantic, but that makes sense, doesn’t it? He didn’t seem suicidal. People say that though. That they seemed okay or there were no signs. He had reasons.”
“He had reasons not to too.”
Geny winces. I want to hug her again, but I stay where I am. I don’t know what to say. Because if he did kill himself, it means he left her and his grandchildren. If he didn’t . . . well, that means something else entirely.
“I should be getting back to the boys,” Geny says. “Jack took it really hard. He needs me.”
I nod, getting to my feet. “Of course,” I say. “My car is back at the church with all my stuff in it.”
“You can stay with me at my place. The downstairs is set up with a spare bedroom.”
I nod. Smile. I’m glad she’s invited me. I would have stayed here if she hadn’t, but it wouldn’t feel right to finally have her back and then be separated again so soon. I think she feels the same way.
Geny chews her bottom lip, and I wait for her to say whatever it is she’s mulling over. She glances up, sees me looking at her, and sighs.
“Why didn’t you come back sooner? If you started to remember . . . if you remembered me. Why didn’t you come back then? How did you know about Dad’s service? Why wait until today?”
“The service was announced in the newspaper.”
She glares at me when I don’t continue. “That’s the only thing I get an answer to?”
“I don’t know, Genevieve. I don’t know what you want me to say. I didn’t have a full picture. I still don’t. It’s scary to walk into a situation when everyone knows and remembers your life, but you don’t.”
It feels like a staring contest, each of us daring the other to call out the lie. She looks away first. She links her fingers on top of her head the way I used to when I finished a race.
I want to go back to her house. I want to see what the life of my sister and my boyfriend looks like. I want to get a full picture of the life I almost had.
“All right,” she says. “Let’s go.”
* * *
The walk back to the church is awkward. There’s too much between us now. Too much time apart. Too much life lived without each other. I try to find that easy comfort we always had, but it’s gone. I should’ve expected as much, but it still surprises me.
I look for clues of the girl I used to know. “Do you still write?”
She turns her head to me, her face pinched in confusion. “Poetry? No. That was just a stupid phase in high school.”
It wasn’t stupid. And she was still writing after we graduated so it wasn’t exclusive to high school, but I let it go.
“Sorry,” she says.
“For what?”
“That came out rude. I didn’t mean it to. It’s just something I did when I was young. It seems silly now. Like the MASH games we used to play or something.” She laughs under her breath and I smile.
“I’m still holding out hope for eight kids with Channing Tatum in a mansion with a limousine.”
“I somehow always ended up with ten kids in a shack or something,” she says.
I snort. “Yeah, you didn’t have good luck with that game. But look at you now.” I spread my arms to gesture around me. “You showed MASH.”
She goes quiet, and I let the conversation die. She got the husband, the house, the kids, and family SUV. I got a life of anonymity, pretending to be dead. I take a breath and try to push away the resentment for my sister. It isn’t Geny’s fault, and I’m not completely empty-handed.