Chapter 57 Now
Now
There’s an old cuckoo clock staring at me from the dark green wall of the kitchen. I feel as broken as it looks. Dimple sits across from me at the small wooden kitchen table. The drive over here was as silent, as dead, as this kitchen is now.
Neither of us is smiling, but there’s an expectant look on her face, the same one she wears when she’s waiting for me to speak in a session. This is all so fucked.
“I’m usually good at crises, but I’m not sure what to say or do,” she says.
For a moment, I say nothing. I’m grateful that she saved me, but she almost helped James destroy me. How can I trust her?
“So what am I meant to call you?” I eventually ask. It hurts to talk, hurts to swallow. Each breath is a memory of James’s thumbs on my larynx. “Dimple or Joy?”
“Family calls me Joy,” she says.
It’s a clever trap.
I look away from her, back at the cuckoo clock. Gaudy maple leaves carved of wood frame the clock face. I wonder why she has such an ugly thing in her home. “Why ‘Joy’?”
Confusion tugs at her for a moment before she understands. “It’s my middle name. Came out of the womb smiling, apparently. Mom chose both my names to fit. ‘Dimple’ first because it was Hindi and English. Then ‘Joy’ because of how I made her feel. She always thought ‘Joy’ felt more me.”
“Fuck. This is so fucked-up, d’you know that?”
There’s a defiant look in her eyes, chin jutting forward. “I did what I thought was right.”
“God. You sounded just like Care then.”
“I wish I’d known her,” Dimple says. When I bring myself to look at her, I can see genuine pain on her face. I try not to let it, but it pisses me off. She doesn’t get to show up in my life, fuck with it, and then miss my sister.
I get up, phone in hand. She stands to meet me, arm outstretched.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling an ambulance to go check on James,” I say, my voice coming out in a husky wheeze.
“Are you s—”
I hold a palm out. “Nope. Sorry, I’m not blindly following your instructions anymore. Not now I know you’re just as insane as I am.”
The call connects and I murmur the highlights of the evening.
None of the salacious details. Just that my husband tried to strangle me.
My sister—and I do find myself saying “sister”—hit him over the head and we fled.
I know “sister” will provoke fewer immediate follow-up questions than “therapist” and can’t be challenged as a lie, unlike “friend.”
“They want your address,” I say to Dimple. I can’t think of her as “Joy” yet. She shakes her head. I place a hand over the receiver. “What other choice do we have?”
She relents, recites the details. When the call is ended, we find ourselves just looking at each other again.
I don’t have the best childhood memory, but think I can start to see a little of Aunty Dev in her.
Especially now that she’s discarded her towel, letting that same head of tight curls fall loose.
There’s a small kernel of hope buried beneath my anger.
Had I found out about Dimple five years ago, when Claire was still alive, before Dimple lied and manipulated her way into my life, I’d have been thrilled.
I can imagine it. The three of us. It wouldn’t have taken long for me to have loved and defended her as fiercely as I did Claire.
Claire, who’d shown up at my lowest moment at Marc’s party; swooped in to make Luca pay for humiliating me; sacrificed her life to save me from George.
Now that the sting of betrayal is less fresh, I can see that these were acts of love.
Loving me when I didn’t know how to love myself.
I stare at the stranger who’s conspired against me, tried to hurt me. It’s still my sister. That sacred, irreplaceable role.
“You really wanted to put me away?” I ask.
“At first, I just wanted to find family. I was lonely, I guess. But then when I met Mel, the things she was saying about you…I got the measure of her pretty quickly and wanted to get close enough to you to find out who you were for myself. But then I read your files, found the trail of dead exes. I thought you were going to hurt people.”
“Don’t you think what you’ve done to me hurts? You’ve destroyed my life. Although I suppose with James’s history, you might have saved it in the long run.” I run my tongue over a small ulcer on the inside of my cheek. “You know, Claire was always like that. Led by a strong sense of justice.”
She leans forward in her seat. “I’d like to hear more about what she was like.”
There’s a familiar openness that’s returned to her face with a little hope beneath it. More like the Dimple I knew. A frisson of irritation runs through me at the sight of that. “Dimple, I can’t…” How to find the words? “I’m not going to immediately start playing sisters with you.”
She nods. “I understand that. But I hope you know I did try to help in my own way. I tried to explain your innocence to your mother. I’m talking about your exes.
Claire’s death. I hoped it might help heal things between you.
And…and I know I pushed you too hard, but I thought facing Claire’s death would be good for you, too. ”
My mother’s gasping sobs on the phone spring to mind.
When I’d taken that call in the car, she’d been trying to apologize.
“So that’s why she called.” I’m trying to see a way through the past into a relationship for me and her, but it’s murky.
My mouth is twitching around all the things I want to say and don’t know how to.
I’m overwhelmed and underprepared to deal with all the shit this whirlwind week has blown my way.
And I no longer have a therapist. “Anyway, we don’t have time for this.
The police will be here soon. And James might be…
We should decide what we’re going to say. ”
It’s strange feeling like I’m at the steering wheel. But then again, I suppose I’m the big sister. Weird.
By the time the knock lands on our door, we’re ready to face whatever comes next.