Chapter 17
Steven led us through the gallery and out the back of the building into the sun. He stopped in front of another door and flipped through the collection of keys. I clasped and unclasped my hands as he found the one he needed and let us in.
Without another word, he disappeared back inside the shop.
“They really need to work on their customer service here,” Boomer muttered, but I was only half listening.
A staircase stretched out in front of me.
The last forty-eight hours had passed in a whirlwind since I found my sister’s letters.
I’d wanted to track down Rose so badly that I took off without giving myself a chance to consider how reading her words made me feel.
And now that I was on the verge of seeing her, I was filled with anger.
I was mad at her for leaving, for all the years of not knowing if she was okay.
Mad at her for not coming back. It was the kind of long-lasting anger that simmered under the skin, unnoticed for long stretches of time until something like a song, a snippet of conversation, or a paper heart brought it to the surface again.
The only emotion strong enough to cut through my anger was my fear. Rose wrote to me, but she’d also abandoned me. She was going by a different name. What if I knocked on her door and she wanted nothing to do with me?
Calloused fingers knitted with mine, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze.
Alec didn’t say anything, but his eyes did the asking: Are you okay?
I couldn’t think of a scenario where I’d actually be okay given the situation, but having him at my side, the warmth of his hand in mine…
That was exactly what I needed to be brave.
Hitching up a smile, I said, “Okay, let’s do this.” And then I squared my shoulders and marched up the steps. When I reached the top, I knocked before I had time to panic again. The sound of footsteps followed immediately, along with the chatter of a familiar voice.
“…probably just Steven. He’s always thinking of excuses to visit. Oh, not at all! He’s totally harmless. It’s kinda cute actually.”
I heard a click as the deadbolt was unlocked. The door swung open, and—
There, after all this time, stood my sister.
She nearly dropped the phone when she saw me.
Whoever was on the other end said something, because Rose quickly replied, “I gotta go. Call you later.” The phone disappeared into her pocket, but neither of us spoke.
We took a long moment to study each other, almost as if we could catch up on the years we’d missed by staring.
Finally, she pressed a hand to her chest as if she was feeling physical pain. “Felicity?”
“Hey,” I responded. Four years apart, and all you can manage is a hey? Genius, Felicity.
Rose didn’t seem to mind, because she flung her arms out and pulled me into a hug.
I tensed at the contact, but as her perfume hit me—vanilla sugar, the same she wore in high school—it was like we’d returned to the night before her birthday all those years ago, before all the pain.
We were just two sisters who loved each other, and it was as if no time had passed at all.
“I can’t believe it’s really you,” she said, pulling away after a long squeeze. She placed both hands on my shoulders and gave me a once-over. “God, you look so grown up.”
“And you look so…healthy.”
I didn’t mean to sound surprised. I’d imagined this reunion so many times before.
I’d known things would be different between us, that she’d be different, because after four years, how could she not?
It wasn’t like I was the same person she’d left behind.
Heck, I was different from the person I was two weeks ago.
Meeting Alec, discovering the letters, taking off on an adventure—all of these things had changed me.
But I’d never expected such a transformation from Rose.
The last time I saw her, she looked sickly.
She was too thin and her cheeks were hollow, but now she was back to a regular weight, and there was a glow to her face.
And instead of having the overbleached, brittle look I’d grown accustomed to, her hair had its natural golden sheen again.
Even the dark circles under her eyes, a permanent fixture from her late-night partying, were gone.
“Thank you.”
Awkward silence followed, and Asha attempted to fill it. She leaned around Alec and waved. “Hey, Rose. Long time, no see.”
“Asha Van de Berg,” she replied, her eyes sparkling with recognition. “Why am I not surprised to see you?”
“Felicity’s the one person who puts up with my constant complaining, so I decided to keep her around,” Asha joked, and she quickly introduced the boys. Surprisingly, she only mentioned Alec’s first name, and besides a polite smile and hello, Rose didn’t give any indication that she knew who he was.
“So…” my sister said once she was acquainted with everyone. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Do you…not want me here?”
“Of course I do!” Her voice was high with shock and a hint of hurt, like she was insulted I’d suggested otherwise. “Why would you ever think that?”
“How could I not? You left without saying good-bye, and I’ve spent the past four years wondering if you were alive.”
Her skin paled as if I was seeing my sister through a black-and-white lens. “You didn’t get my letters?”
I shook my head. “I found them under Mom’s bed on Friday. She’s been keeping them from me.”
Rose didn’t respond immediately, but her face was clear enough: eyes thunderous, mouth twisted like she was sucking on a piece of sour candy. “Are you shitting me?” she exclaimed. “That’s so typical of Mom.” She pulled the door all the way open. “You should come in. We obviously need to talk.”
Five minutes later, I was sitting at my sister’s kitchen table.
Her apartment was tiny, but it was so Rose I didn’t mind that every time I shifted in my chair, I knocked my head on the low-hanging cabinet behind me.
Picture frames containing snapshots of her travels covered the walls, a collection of seashells lined each windowsill, and then there was the origami: intricate flowers with layers of petals, cute woodland creatures like foxes and squirrels, and a fierce-looking dragon that must have taken hours to complete.
The paper foldings were scattered everywhere.
The coffee table. The living room bookshelves.
Even the kitchen countertops. It was as if they sprouted up from any available surface like wildflowers in a forest.
Asha, Boomer, and Alec were out exploring restaurants, so it was just the two of us.
The three of them had claimed to be hungry, but I knew they were trying to give us some privacy.
A bag of Tostitos and salsa were set out between us, and Rose had enough blueberries in the fridge to make me a shake, but neither of us touched the food.
“So…” Rose said.
“So…” I said back.
There was so much I wanted to say, so many questions I needed to ask, but I couldn’t get my brain and mouth to work in unison.
Conversations had always been easy between us, but now it felt like forcing small talk with an old acquaintance.
It seemed even the natural bond between sisters could break down over time.
Rose was struggling too. She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. I watched as she tucked her leg up to her chest, propping her chin on her knee. “I don’t know where to start.”
“How about with why you ran away,” I said, fiddling with the spoon in my shake.
“Ran away? Is that what Mom told you?”
Surprised by the scowl on her face, I could only manage a nod.
“That’s not what happened,” Rose said, sitting up straight. “Not even close.”
“So tell me what did.” Reaching out, I lightly brushed her knuckles with the tips of my fingers. I’d meant to take her hand in mine as a comforting gesture but chickened out at the last second.
Rose deflated in her seat, as if my fleeting touch had punctured her escalating anger. “It’s complicated.”
I expected her to say more, to start confessing excuses, but she averted her gaze instead.
I blew out a sigh. “I get that. If it wasn’t complicated, Mom wouldn’t have lied to me, and I wouldn’t have had to drive all the way to Seattle to find you.”
“I’m still shocked that you never got my letters.
I called the post office to make sure they were being picked up, and they were, so I assumed it was you.
I never thought that Mom would…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“The night I left, I put a letter on your dresser. It was the first one I wrote to you, and it explained everything. There was a key and instructions inside.”
“For the PO box?” I asked.
She nodded. “Mom must’ve seen it before you woke up. I should have done a better job hiding it, but I was afraid you wouldn’t find it.”
“But…why? Did something happen between you and Mom?”
“We weren’t getting along,” she said. “Like, at all. Mom had these high expectations for me, and I couldn’t live up to them. She wanted me to get into a good school and study something boring like accounting or law, but that just wasn’t me, you know?”
“Yeah, I can’t picture you doing someone’s taxes for the rest of your life.” I could see Rose guiding tourists around some eclectic European city or running a Jet Ski rental in the Caribbean, but sitting at a desk and crunching numbers from nine to five? Never.
“Exactly,” she said. “Besides, it’s not like I had the grades to get in anywhere good.”
“So then what?”
“Mom kept pushing, so I pushed back. Little stuff at first, like cutting class and sneaking out at night. Then I started partying. Just your typical Friday or Saturday night keggers to blow off steam, but things got bad fast. I would go out every night during the week. I’d skip school during the day and sleep off my hangovers. ”
This I knew. I’d lived through it. But I could tell there was something more, something she wasn’t telling me. “And?”