Twenty-Four Geny
The front door is locked and the spare key is gone. I use my own key to open the door and slam it behind me.
“Grace! Are you here?”
She’d better be here. I can’t believe she didn’t come home last night.
I drove around all morning looking for her car, preparing myself to find it flipped into a ditch.
Instead, I found it in the parking lot of Gentry’s Bar.
I pulled next to the car to make sure she wasn’t sleeping in it and was out of ideas when it was empty.
Then I thought, maybe she drank too much and walked to Mom and Dad’s. It’s closer than my house. I just pray she’s here and that she didn’t go home with someone. I climb the stairs and I’m about to yell out to her again, but I stop when I hear a voice.
It’s Grace. She’s talking to someone and for a horrible second, I think she brought some guy home from the bar and slept with him in our dead parents’ bed. But as I continue to listen, I don’t hear a second voice.
I can’t bring myself to open the door. I can’t go into that room. I don’t even want to see it. I turn my head and strain to hear what she’s saying.
“I know. I’m so sorry. I miss you too.”
Who is she talking to? Who does she miss?
“I’ll call you later, okay? Okay. Yep. I love you.”
Pin pricks of electricity spark in my chest. She has someone back wherever she left. Bloomington? She told me she didn’t. Why did she lie about that? Why does she want me to think she’s single? Or is it because she wants Wyatt to think she’s single?
No. I wipe the thought away.
I go back downstairs and wait for her while trying my best to imagine the man Grace has waiting in another city for her. Does she have a type? Is he like Wyatt? Or the opposite of him? Does he know where she is, or is she lying to him too? And does this mean she isn’t going to stay here in Raven?
Her footsteps on the stairs make me look up. She spots me and looks surprised.
“You didn’t come home,” I say.
Her eyebrows pinch in the center. “Gen, that’s not my home.”
It feels like a slap, but I don’t react.
“But this is?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I didn’t say that. But more so than your house. This used to be my home. I grew up here.”
I nod but stay silent.
“I’m not trying to sound mean, Geny.”
“I know,” I say, but I don’t. Because sometimes she is trying to be mean even when she says she’s not. “You could have texted me so I didn’t worry.”
“I’m sorry. I should have texted you. You’re right.”
I look up at her again, surprised by the easy admission and half waiting for the other shoe to drop. No argument? No turning it around on me?
“Are you going to come back?” I ask. “To my house.”
“Probably,” she says. “Does it bother you for me to stay here?”
“No,” I lie.
I look around the room and debate asking her who she was talking to on the phone.
But I don’t want her to think I was eavesdropping.
I also don’t want to let her know that I saw her car at the Gentry’s.
I could tell her about the receipt I found in her car.
I want to know why she came home so many months ago without telling anyone.
“I went through your car the other night while you were sleeping.” The words fly out of my mouth before I have a chance to stop them. I watch her expression for anger or betrayal, but she only smirks with one raised brow.
I fill her silence. “You’re keeping things from me and I know it. I found a receipt. It’s from six months ago for a place nearby. You came back before now, didn’t you?”
There is still no anger on her face. In fact, she almost looks . . . proud.
“I did come back before. I didn’t contact anyone.”
I hate her answers and the way they just barely answer the question and give nothing more. I hate that I can’t read her anymore because she switches between reactions I expect and ones that throw me off.
“Why?” I ask. “And why not?”
She’s quiet for a second. Thinking. “I wanted to get a sense of things before throwing myself back into this town.” She shrugs and turns away from me. “I needed to feel some sense of control before I spoke to you or anyone else.”
“But dad was alive then.” Heat grows in my chest. “You could have seen him. He could have seen you. He could have known that you were alive.”
Grace’s face goes blank. I blink, waiting for her to respond . . . to react. Anything. But she just stands there, staring at the wall, expressionless. I give up.
I bite back the anger begging to come to the surface. “Well, I have to go to work. Maybe I’ll see you back at the house later.”
I leave without saying anything more because I’m just going to make it worse. I’m already fighting with Wyatt. I don’t want to be in an argument with everyone I love.
In the car, I fight back the tears, but they win out. At least for a minute. Everything is slipping away. Everything feels wrong. This isn’t how I imagined having my sister back, not that I ever dared to imagine it in the first place.
I’m more grateful than I can ever explain that she’s here, alive. But I only have the life I have because she died. Those feelings twist and wrestle inside me until I’m convinced I’m going to tear in two.
I drive to work but find myself accelerating when I should be turning into the parking lot. I can’t do it. Not right now. Not with everything that’s happened and these feelings boiling over. Instead, I drive to the sand trails.