Chapter Twenty
I was distracted that day.
That was what my memory reminded me, shooting images of me rushing around my apartment, texting without looking, trying to find a file I had somehow managed to misplace from just the night before.
Work was crazy.
I was being pestered about three events over the same weekend.
My parents were waiting for an answer from me about my thoughts on buying one of the houses they owned and were unloading, wanting to scale down. And by “scale down” they just meant in the state of California. They were going to buy a villa in Tuscany the next spring.
But I had a million and a half things on my mind that day.
I would never forgive myself for that, for being caught up in my own world, for not stopping, taking a deep breath, really taking in every minute detail.
Maybe things would be different.
Maybe my world wouldn't have fallen apart.
But no wishful thinking could change the cold, hard truth.
When my sister showed up at my door, I was more worried about my date to get my hair colored than why she had shown up randomly.
Of course, as many therapists would tell me in the months following, I wasn't to blame. There was no reason to be suspicious. My siblings dropped over at my place all the time.
We had always been like that. We didn't call or text. We didn't knock or ring the bell. We used our key and let ourselves in because we knew we would always be welcome.
And she was.
Sammy.
She was always welcome.
I was happy to see her even as I overturned couch cushions looking for my missing file. I absentmindedly decided we would order in Chinese, would spend the night binging Gossip Girl on Netflix like we were in high school all over again.
"Everything alright?" I asked, finally finding my file, sitting down on the chair across from her, taking my first deep breath of the day.
"It's been a rough week," she admitted, reaching up to glide her hand over her smooth hair. I always thought it was prettier when she didn't get it straightened, but she liked the shine it got when it was ironed.
There were a lot of things to admire about Sammy.
She'd always been the prettier girl—because, let's face it, Luis was the prettiest of us all.
She had flawless skin even through the teen years that had me at a new dermatologist every month to try to get my skin sorted out.
Her high cheekbones and gently pointed chin gave her an almost doll-like appearance.
She was tall like me, but a little curvier than I turned out.
She was also the softer, sweeter sister, all patience and love, easily likable.
And everyone did. Like her. Immediately.
And yet, somehow, I had never felt any animosity toward her for being so pretty, so sweet, so agreeable.
Parents didn't have favorites, but Luis and I were sure they appreciated Sammy's nurturing side more than his vanity and my tendency toward being overly opinionated.
The last to be adopted and requiring months and months of nearly round-the-clock care for various niggling ailments she came into our family with, due to malnourishment at an under-funded orphanage, she was the baby of the family, the one who always needed our parents just a little bit more than we did.
And they, getting older, knowing she would be their last, had fawned over her.
Which had turned her into the picture-perfect woman she turned out to be. No vanity like Luis. No bull-headedness like me.
We all loved her more than we loved ourselves at times.
"I know, right? Is Mercury in retrograde or something? Why is this an 'everything that can go wrong, will' week?"
I didn't notice it in the moment, but when I searched back through my memory later, I saw it. The glassy look to her eyes, the way she avoided eye-contact.
"I want it to be over."
"Me too. You know what, I was going to say we should order in and watch trashy TV.
But maybe we deserve better than that. I have to go into work for a meeting.
But then we should get dressed, and go somewhere fancy.
Just you and me. Have a few drinks to celebrate this week being over. What do you think?"
"I love you," she told me, voice deep with emotion.
"I love you too. And we both love some fancy sushi. Our place? Seven?"
I hadn't waited for an answer because I never needed one before. There was never a time one of us suggested our place, and the other one said they had other plans. Never.
I had pressed a kiss to her temple before gathering my purse and the file.
"I'll see you later, k? Love you!" I said, already out the door.
At least I could comfort myself with the knowledge that the last words I said to her were love. That was a small sort of consolation.
I sat at our table in our restaurant for an hour before I decided to call her. Sammy liked to spend time in front of the mirror, trying on pieces of her massive wardrobe until she found what was just right. It was expected, so I thought nothing of her being an hour late.
When one hour stretched to two, I remember being annoyed. It was one thing for a date to stand you up, it was a complete other for one of your siblings to do so.
I paid my bill and went home, wondering if maybe she had passed out and forgotten to set an alarm, if she had suddenly been struck down with one of the skull-splitting migraines she'd been afflicted with since her high school years.
I felt a surge of remorse for having been annoyed as I moved through my house, looking for her in the living room, in the guest room, in my room.
I called.
I texted.
I went to bed with a knot of concern in my stomach.
When the phone rang at three a.m., panic didn't grip my system.
Luis had a tendency to call me tipsy from wherever he was in the world, which often meant we were in different timezones. I never bothered to be annoyed about it. It was just part of our dynamic.
"Luis, I need to get some sleep," I answered even though I was ready to listen to his escapades about which heiress he'd bedded that night, which pop star he had partied with.
"Reagan..." That was my mother's voice.
It was right then that the panic set in, making my nerves skitter around my skin, making my belly feel wobbly.
No call from your parent at 3 a.m. was good.
But my mother's voice cracked.
It cracked.
"Is Dad okay?" I asked, sitting up straight, swinging my legs off the side of the bed, already digging for pants in my dresser, ready to hop in my car and head to the hospital to be there for him, for her. "Mom?" I asked when she just broke off on a hysterical sob.
"Reagan," my dad's voice, loud, booming as ever, but sounding winded, met my ear, giving me a wave of relief.
Not Dad.
"Dad. What's going on?" I asked, placing the pants back down on the open drawer, sucking in a steadying breath, willing my heartbeat to settle back down.
"It's Sammy," he said. And his voice cracked too. This was the strongest, most stoic man I had ever met in my life. I'd never heard him angry or frustrated or impatient. I'd never heard him sad. And his voice cracked.
"What's the matter? Was she in some kind of accident?" I asked, my nerves picking up again, my stomach flipping over.
"Sammy killed herself tonight, Reagan," he told me.
I don't remember if he said anything else.
I don't remember if his voice hitched when he told me.
All I remembered was my phone smashing to the floor, scattering shards everywhere as my knees met the hardwood when my legs gave out.
I remembered the noise that escaped me then. Loud, primal, the shriek of a dying animal. Because that was what I felt like right then. Like someone had stuck a knife in my belly and pulled up, like they had yanked out all my insides, like there was nothing left.
I couldn't say how long I sat there wailing, but a neighbor must have thought the worst, because cops stormed in, tried to talk to me, tried to get me off the floor, tried to get me to answer questions.
In the end, finding me completely inconsolable, they drove me to the hospital, they left me in the care of people who specialized in breaks.
Because that was what it was.
A break.
A fracture so deep there was no way to fuse it back together again.
Luis had been the first one to show up, fresh off a flight from New York, eyes red-rimmed, face sunken, slipping into the bed beside me.
We sobbed together for hours, finding a bottomless well of misery inside, constantly surging up to the surface and pouring outward.
At some point, my father came, giving permission to the staff to sedate me, to hold me temporarily.
Because he didn't want to lose two daughters in one night. And I honestly couldn't give him any promises about having a will left to live.
I was released heavily medicated forty-eight hours later, just in time to buy a dress, to walk rubber-legged into the funeral home, to accept embraces from people who loved Sammy.
But none of them as much as me.
I loved her more than I loved myself.
The meds numbed me enough that I couldn't attach those feelings of love and loss together right, couldn't process the pain, couldn't purge it.
Which meant I was composed through the service, as stoic as my dad and brother. My mother had to sit on a couch in the back, embraced in the changing arms of her friends as she cried.
I don't really remember much about the days that followed. Luis was there. In my apartment. He canceled all his shoots to try to make sure his only sister stayed on this earth. He was the one who ordered food, forced me to eat, cleaned my apartment, dealt with my work and my bills.
Eventually, he was the one to bring me back to the doctor, to insist I was too medicated, that I was a zombie. And I was.
I was weaned back downward gradually, letting the grief slip in, letting my mind finally wrap itself around this new reality.
Sammy had killed herself.
She had left my home, gone back to her apartment, climbed into her tub, and slowly and carefully downed an entire bottle of the sleeping pills prescribed to her for her migraines.