Chapter 13
I didn't open the gate right away. My finger hovered over the button, and for several seconds I stared at Lara through the small intercom screen, where her face looked flat, gray, almost foreign—like a photograph of someone you've already been told the worst about, yet you still can't believe you once shared a bedroom, hair clips, candy from Mom's purse, and one last name.
The suitcase stood beside her on the wet stone.
A taxi waited at the curb. The driver smoked, turned away, as if embarrassed to be present at someone else's family autopsy.
Lara took off her dark glasses, and I saw the mark from my palm on her cheek.
No longer red. Dark. Ripened. Like a bruise on a rotten truth.
"I won't come inside the house," she said into the speaker.
"How delicate."
"Niki, please."
"Don't call me that. From your mouth my name sounds like something you stole and are now trying to return without a receipt."
She closed her eyes. Before, I would have softened. I had a rare talent: people could hit me and I'd still apologize for hurting their hand. Now inside me sat not softness but a shard. Small, sharp, cold. Not strength. But already a weapon.
I pressed the button. The gates parted slowly, with a low creak, as if even the iron didn't want to let her in.
I didn't go to the main entrance. I opened the side door into the winter garden and stopped on the threshold.
It smelled of wet earth, the lemon tree in its tub, and cold glass.
A perfect place for a sister who'd entered my home under the guise of warmth and left frost behind.
Lara came in without her suitcase.
"Left it outside?" I asked. "So I'd appreciate how brief you'll be?"
"So you wouldn't think I'm asking to stay."
"I wouldn't have thought that. My imagination is rich, but not that deranged."
She flinched but held. Stood two steps away, without makeup, in a thin coat, damp at the collar.
For the first time she didn't look like a winner.
And somehow that didn't heal. I'd thought that seeing her broken would level something inside me.
No. It just got dirtier. A monster is easy to hate while it's still a monster.
But before me stood my own sister, crying, breathing the same childhood I did.
"Talk," I said.
"I'm flying out tonight."
"Flight schedules could've been sent on a postcard."
"To Milan. Then probably to Switzerland, to Aunt Claire. I don't know if I'll come back."
"Whether you come back or not is no longer my geography."
She clenched her fingers.
"I didn't come to ask for forgiveness."
"Smart. Real progress."
"You won't forgive me anyway."
"I'm not even sure I ever want to become the kind of woman who has."
Lara nodded. Slowly. Almost submissively. And that enraged me.
"Don't stand there as if I'm executing you. You're not the victim in this room."
"I know."
"Great. That word's on sale today, is it? Everyone knows everything—just always after."
She raised her eyes.
"I wanted you to find out."
At first the meaning didn't register. It struck me and dropped to the floor, too ugly to immediately accept as truth.
"What?"
"I left traces."
I went cold so fast my fingers went numb.
"What traces?"
"The hair on his jacket. The perfume. Messages at inconvenient times. The bracelet. Not all of it, but a lot of it. I pretended it was accidental, but it wasn't always accidental."
Something clicked in the winter garden. Maybe a radiator. Maybe the last living thread between us.
"Why?"
Lara turned to the glass. In the reflection we stood side by side: two sisters, alike just enough to make it sickening.
"Because he wouldn't choose."
I laughed. Short, dry, almost soundless.
"He was sleeping with you, Lara. Typically that's considered a fairly active form of participation."
She flared.
"Don't."
"Don't what? Name things? You prefer 'he was drawn to me,' 'he got confused,' 'it just happened'? Adults, poor things, four months straight accidentally falling on top of each other?"
"That's not what I mean."
"Then what? Every time he left me, he came back.
Even when he stayed an hour. Even when he turned off his phone.
Even when he said things were hard at home.
He still checked the time. Wiped my perfume off himself.
Got angry if I talked about you too directly.
I could see he had you even when he was with me. And I hated you for that."
I felt twisted inside.
"You hated me because my husband came home after cheating?"
"Because you had everything."
"Everything?"
My voice broke so sharply that Lara stepped back half a pace.
"The house? Where I spent months learning to suck in my stomach because they explained I wasn't enough of a woman?
The children? Whom you held after you'd held their father?
The name? Then take the name, if you think it heals.
Take his shirts, his silence, his ability to look at you as if you're guilty just for breathing.
But don't touch my children anymore. That much filth is enough from you. "
"I love Tim and Marta," she whispered.
"Don't you dare."
"It's the truth."
"The truth would have been not adjusting my bracelet and telling me my wrist looks thinner. The truth would have been not sitting beside me at the party knowing how he kisses you when he checks the door. The truth would have been not taking my daughter in your arms after coming from his bed."
Lara covered her mouth with her hand. In her eyes at last appeared not pretty suffering, not offense, not "I'm hurting too"—but horror. Real. Late. Useless.
"I was jealous of you," she said, muffled.
"Don't drag childhood into this."
"I have to. Not to justify myself. So you know: it didn't start with Damien. He was just the most disgusting way to strike where I'd been aiming for a long time."
I stared at her and felt my mouth go dry.
"Do you hear yourself?"
"I do. That's why I'm leaving."
"Oh, how noble. Set the house on fire and decided not to bother the firemen."
"Niki..."
"Talk."
She sobbed but didn't look away.
"You were always the one they protected. 'Niki's quiet, Niki's sensitive, don't touch Niki.' And they told me: you're strong, you'll manage on your own. I grew up convenient, pretty, adult. And you were allowed to cry, and people came to you."
I felt a strange, almost icy calm.
"You slept with my husband because you didn't get enough attention as a child?"
She flinched.
"I hate it when you do that."
"Do what?"
"Hit that precisely."
"Get used to it. The mouse learned to bite."
Lara cried. Not theatrically. Tears simply ran down her face, and she didn't wipe them, as if for the first time she was too tired to look better than she was.
"I wanted him to choose me in a way you'd see. The worst part is that I didn't love him the way you'd have to love someone to go crazy over it. I loved that he was yours. I loved beating you. I see that now and I'm disgusted with myself."
I started shaking. First my fingers, then my shoulders, then my stomach, as if inside me a rusty key had been turned.
"Thank you."
She raised her eyes.
"For what?"
"For finally calling yourself the right name."
"I don't want you to think you're less than me. All those words about your body, about your shape, about 'your husband will leave if you relax'—that was my dirt. I knew where to hit."
"Remember, after I gave birth?" I asked quietly.
Lara went pale.
"Niki..."
"I was standing in the bathroom. My stitches hurt, milk was leaking, my stomach was alien, soft, frightening. And you said: 'The main thing is, don't let yourself go—men get used to ugly fast.' I ate nothing but buckwheat for three days after that. With Marta in my arms. I almost collapsed."
She closed her eyes.
"I remember."
"I thought you were being caring. Thought that was just your personality. Blunt but well-meaning. I defended you to myself, to Mom, even to Damien. 'Lara doesn't mean it.' 'Lara's just honest.' 'Lara wants the best.' You know what's the funniest part?"
"What?"
"You really did want the best. Just for yourself."
She doubled over as if I'd punched her in the stomach. There was no joy. No sweet revenge, no fanfare. Only the taste of blood on my tongue, though my lips were whole.
Behind the winter garden door came footsteps. Heavy. Quick. I understood before I saw: Damien. Of course—security had reported. The house he'd built as a fortress couldn't hide even a stranger's suitcase at the gate from him.
He walked in damp from the rain, without a coat, his face the kind that made the air around him denser. Lara straightened instantly. My body, too, treacherously gathered itself—an old reflex, as if a person had appeared who would now decide for everyone.
"Leave," he told Lara.
His voice was low, even, dangerous.
"No," I said.
He turned his head to me.
"Niki."
"This is my conversation."
"She shouldn't be here."
"Really? What a fresh ruling. Too bad four months ago you didn't have time for access protocols."
He took the hit. But didn't soften. In his eyes stood anger so cold I could almost see its edges.
"I won't let her keep destroying you."
"You already did. Now I'm finishing the job myself."
Lara smirked quietly.
"See, Damien? She already talks like you."
I turned to her.
"And you're still looking for a man to confirm you exist."
Lara went white.
Damien took a step but stopped himself. I noticed. And hated myself for noticing.
"I'll stay by the door," he said. "If you tell me to leave—I'll leave. If she tries to touch you, I'll remove her."
"If she tries, I'll handle it myself."
"You will."
"Then stand there and be quiet."
He clenched his jaw.
"That will be hard."
"I know. You love a challenge."
Something alive, almost a pained smirk, crossed his face, but he stayed by the door.