Seventeen Geny
Grace isn’t home when we get back from church. I fight back the panic that claws up my throat and repeat the mantra in my head that she isn’t gone and she’ll be home soon. But the mantra doesn’t work, and inside my mind feels like the night she didn’t come back out of the lake.
Flashes of Wyatt’s face appear in my mind like a horror film.
Him saying he can’t find her. That she swam too far out and the current took her.
The ice-cold water on my legs. The raw feeling in my throat as I screamed her name and prayed as hard as I ever had to be able to go back in time.
I begged God to let her head pop out of the water.
To hear her laughing saying Got you! Oh my God, look at your faces!
Wyatt touches my arm and I nearly jump out of my skin.
“Whoa, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says.
I shake my head. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“You sure? You look like you’re having World War Two flashbacks.”
I laugh. “Something like that.”
His mouth purses and he pulls me into a hug. I fight back tears.
“She’s just out with a friend. She isn’t going to disappear again.”
“You don’t know that,” I say. I start to cry in earnest.
He holds me tighter.
I can’t remember the last time he held me like this.
I think back until I find it, and it actually wasn’t as long ago as I first thought.
It was when I found my dad. I can barely remember the few hours after.
The shock and the grief pulled me in, and I still don’t think I’ve come out of it.
And with Grace coming back, I feel altogether untethered.
“Just text her,” he says. “Ask when she’s going to be back.”
“That’s not too clingy?” I ask.
“No, not at all. You guys have plans, right? Just see when she’s wanting to go for your walk.”
I nod. “Yeah. You’re right.”
I pull out of his arms and immediately feel the coolness of the air where there was just warmth. I text my sister and stare at the screen, waiting to see a reply. My heart leaps out of my ribcage when I see the bubbles pop up that show she’s responding.
So sorry! I actually just got to the café with Brooke. Plans got delayed. Rain check on the walk?
My heart sinks. I can feel Wyatt watching my face and I try my best not to look as devastated as I feel, but I fail. Tears come rushing fast and hard, and Wyatt scoops me back into his arms.
“She’s bailing on me,” I say between sobs. “To hang out with Brooke O’Neil.”
“Babe, it’s okay. She’s staying here, she’ll be back. You guys will have plenty of time together.”
“No. She stayed away from me for eighteen years! And then she comes back and she’d rather hang out with someone she doesn’t even know. She should be here with family.”
I don’t even know if my words are coherent, but they come out of me like vomit.
As I say them, I feel like a whiny brat.
But am I not even a little justified? My twin sister just reappeared in my life after I thought she was dead for almost two decades.
Literally a day ago. Am I so out of line to think she should be here with me?
Catching up with me on the last eighteen years of our lives?
“I’m okay,” I say, pushing away from Wyatt and wiping my face with my sleeve. “Sorry. I lost it for a second, but I’m okay.”
He looks at me with a raised eyebrow.
“I promise. I’m fine. You’re right. She’ll be back and we have plenty of time in the grand scheme of things.”
I say words I don’t mean, and Wyatt takes a step back, accepting them. Does he know I’m lying and is choosing to let it go like I do to Grace? Or does he believe me when I say I’m okay?