54. Erika
ERIKA
The therapy room smelled like lavender and industrial carpet, calming that worked on paper and nowhere else.
Dr. Hanson’s desk lamp cast the only warm light.
The therapist herself matched the room—neutral cardigan, neutral expression, reading glasses pushed up on her head—except for her eyes, which were sharp in a way that had taken Erika three sessions to stop being surprised by.
Erika had been coming here for two months. Twenty-four sessions, she’d counted the tally marks on her notebook.
She perched on the edge of the couch, gaze fixed on a tiny brown stain in the weave. Coffee, probably. Someone's bad day, absorbed into the seat cushion and forgotten.
Her hands sat empty in her lap. Before the island, she’d always had a sketchbook—something to do with her fingers, an excuse not to make eye contact.. Now the blank pages were an accusation she couldn’t face.
Beside her, Anneliese sat perfectly still. Too still—the way she got before a difficult press conference, every muscle calibrated, and that was exactly the problem.
But today, Erika had asked for her.
“Erika.” Dr. Hanson’s voice was gentle. Infuriatingly gentle. “You asked for Anneliese today. Why?”
Erika’s throat locked. She’d been circling this for weeks—never quite getting to the edge of it, always finding a reason to pull back.
She inhaled. The lavender caught in her throat.
“I’ve been doing the work.” She heard herself reaching for the clinical vocabulary, the phrases that lived in this room—exercises, naming, space—and knew she was using them as a shield.
Dr. Hanson didn’t write anything down. Just waited. She’d heard every version of this delay and wasn’t going to help you out of it.
“Like learning to walk again,” Erika said finally. “Except I’m not sure I ever knew how in the first place.”
Dr. Hanson tilted her head—not a nod, not agreement, just acknowledgment. “And the nightmares?”
Erika shut her eyes. The dreams were always the same—bar floor sticky under her feet, Martin’s laughter bouncing off walls she couldn’t see. And Stefan in the doorway. Sometimes reaching for her, Princesa, mírame—sometimes turning away into a darkness she couldn’t follow.
She always woke up reaching for him. She hated herself for it.
“I wake up to see Martin.” The words cracked. “But Stefan’s there. And I don’t know if I’m scared of him or scared of how much I wanted to trust him.”
The weight of his arm around her in that villa. The way his voice dropped when he said her name. Princesa. She shoved the memory down.
Idiot. You fell for the performance. That’s all it was.
She sensed Anneliese tense beside her—sensed the words her sister was biting back, the familiar refrain she’d heard a hundred times: I told you so. But Dr. Hanson had one rule. Stay quiet until invited.
“When you turn inward—focus on your own feelings instead of managing everyone else’s—what do you discover?”
Erika laughed. She’d spent her whole life managing other people’s feelings—Anneliese’s moods, her mother’s disappointments, the constant low hum of everyone else’s needs. Her own feelings were the channel she’d learned to tune out.
She lifted her gaze to Anneliese. Her sister’s eyes were wide. Braced.
“I learned I’m angry.”
Anneliese went still. “Angry at me?”
“Angry at Martin. At the studio. To everyone who watched and did nothing.”
She made herself say the rest. Made herself look at Anneliese.
“But mostly at you.”
Anneliese flinched, a full-body recoil Erika had never seen from her before. Her mouth opened. Closed. Nothing came out.
Part of Erika wanted to take it back. Smooth it over. Make it easier.
The rest of her was so goddamn tired of swallowing the truth.
“I’m angry I had to do that. And I’m angry you let me.”
“Let me?” Anneliese’s voice cracked. “I know I pushed you into it. I know I made it feel like there wasn't another option. I was trying to protect—”
“Anneliese,” Dr. Hanson said. Not sharply. Just enough. “Let Erika finish.”
But Anneliese couldn’t stop—the words tumbling out.
“Annie.” Erika’s whisper stopped her. Anneliese froze.
“This isn’t about you.” Erika’s voice steadied. “It’s always about you—your career, your guilt, your need to fix everyone.”
Years making herself smaller so Anneliese could shine, bending herself into whatever shape was needed—supportive sister, invisible twin, the quiet one who never made waves. It was coming up whether she wanted it to or not.
“You see the little sister who needs saving. The fragile one who can’t face the real world.” She held her sister’s gaze. “Not your twin. Not your equal. Just the one who needs saving.”
Erika’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She didn’t try to hide them.
“I’ve spent my life shrinking myself so you could grow. Bending around your storms.” The words came out raw and jagged. “I’m done disappearing.”
The room went quiet. Something had landed.
Anneliese’s face crumpled. Erika had seen her sister cry before. This was different. This was the real version—shoulders shaking, mascara tracking down her cheeks, ugly and specific.
“I never—” Anneliese’s voice broke. “Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I don’t replay it every single night? The call I should have made, the contract I should have broken—”
Erika wiped her own eyes.
“I know.” She knew Anneliese had never meant for any of this to happen. “But I did it anyway. And you let me. We’ve danced this our whole lives—you, indestructible; me, always in need of saving.”
Anneliese was still crying—the kind she never let anyone see. Erika sat with it. Didn’t try to fix it.
“Does that make me a bad sister?”
Anneliese lifted her head, face wrecked. “No.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Bean, it makes you—God, Eri, it makes you braver than I’ve ever been.”
Anneliese’s fingers curled into the fabric of her skirt. “I’m terrified. How do I be your sister if I’m not the one holding you together?”
Erika leaned forward until their knees touched. “We’ll figure it out. Together, but apart.”
Dr. Hanson leaned forward. “Erika, what scares you about giving up that role?”
“That I’d be abandoning her. That she’d fall apart without me there to catch her.” She forced herself to finish. “That she’d hate me.”
Anneliese made a sound. “Abandoning? Eri—”
Erika drew in a breath.
“I found an apartment. I’m moving out.”
Anneliese went rigid.
“Okay. Okay. We’ll find you something nearby—same block, same zip—”
“Dr. Hanson’s arranged a place.” Erika made herself hold her sister’s gaze. “In Silver Lake.”
Thirty minutes away.
“So everyone knew but me.” Anneliese’s voice went flat. “Dr. Hanson. Probably Bradley. And I’m—what, the last to know my own sister is leaving?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Thirty minutes.” Anneliese turned to Dr. Hanson, voice rising. “She’s having panic attacks. She’s not sleeping. And your professional advice is to put her thirty minutes away from anyone who can help her?”
“Anneliese.” The same quiet pressure. “What are you afraid of?”
Anneliese’s shoulders caved. She pressed her hands to her throat.
“That she’ll call and I won’t answer in time. That something will happen and I can’t protect her.” Her voice broke. “I already failed her once. I can’t do it twice.”
Erika’s throat went tight. She wanted to reach for Anneliese—to comfort her as she always had. But that was the old pattern. The one she was trying to break.
“You didn’t fail me. Martin failed me. The studio failed me. The system failed me.” She paused. “But Annie—I can’t find myself while living in your shadow. I need space to breathe. To figure out who I am when I’m not being your twin sister.”
Anneliese reached for her hand. Erika let her take it.
“I don’t want anything from you but you,” Anneliese whispered.
Erika’s voice cracked. “I don’t know who that is yet.”
Anneliese wiped her eyes. “When do you move?”
“Next week.”
“Okay. I hate it, but okay.” She squeezed Erika’s hand. “Promise you’ll call. Even if it’s three a.m. Even if you think it’s stupid.”
“I promise.”
Dr. Hanson closed her notebook—a small, deliberate sound that meant the session was over even if nothing felt finished. “One more thing. You mentioned someone else you need to confront. Are you ready to talk about him?”
She hadn’t said his name in weeks.
“Not yet. But soon.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
In the passenger seat, East Hollywood slid past. Neon signs bleeding into twilight, coffee shops with fairy lights, murals splashed across brick walls in colors she used to know the names of.
Cadmium orange. Phthalo blue. A massive billboard loomed over Sunset: Ariel Waves, the former child star turned pop princess, red hair blazing against turquoise, promoting her new album. From the Deep.
She was an outline without color.
Anneliese drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Erika knew that rhythm. It meant she was working up to something.
“So,” Anneliese said, too casual. “Have you thought about reaching out to—”
“Stop.”
“I’m saying, if you wanted to hear his side—”
“I don’t.” She was shaking. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to hear his side. I don’t want anything to do with him.”
Anneliese was quiet for a moment. Then: “There’s something else. About Stefan.”
Erika’s whole body went tight. “Annie—”
“Let me say it.” Anneliese’s voice shook.
“I was jealous. Petty. I made him the enemy before you even met him—fed you every headline, every rumor, every reason not to trust him. He hurt you, and part of me felt justified.” She exhaled.
“I need you to know that. Whatever you decide about him, you deserve to make that choice without my voice in your head poisoning it.”
Erika didn’t move.
“But maybe if I hadn’t done that from the start—” Anneliese broke off. “Maybe you’d have let yourself fall without all that armor in the way.”
Would it have changed anything? She didn’t know anymore. She didn’t know anything about Stefan except he haunted her dreams and she couldn’t stop being angry at him—angry at herself for trusting him, angry at the whole tangled mess of it.
“Maybe,” she said finally, “we both lost ourselves trying to save each other.”
Anneliese didn’t give up. “But you said he haunts your nightmares. Maybe if you heard his side—”
“His name was on that statement.” The words came out flat and final. “And when everything fell apart he went silent. He let me believe I mattered and then he disappeared.”
She couldn’t finish. The anger was too big and underneath it was something worse. The grief of letting herself hope and being wrong.
Anneliese lifted her hands. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”
Erika stared at the dashboard.
“You were trying to fix it,” she said, quieter. “But you can’t fix this, Annie. Not this time.”
Neither of them moved, and for a moment the car was the only contained space left in the world, small enough that nothing else could get in.
Then Anneliese said, “The article came out a few weeks ago. About Martin. About everything.”
“I know.” Flat.
“Did you read it?”
“No.” She couldn’t. The magazine had been in her drawer for four days and every morning she woke up knowing exactly where it was.
Anneliese kept her eyes on the windshield. “Stefan’s name is in it. He handed over evidence—Isabelle’s files, everything. He’s part of why the story broke.”
For one second, the world outside the car kept moving and everything inside it didn’t.
“I don’t care.” The words came out brittle.
Anneliese didn’t push. Just reached over and set her hand on Erika’s knee.
“It matters, Eri. I thought you should know.”
“It doesn’t.” But it came out thin, and they both heard it.
Anneliese squeezed once. “Okay. I’ll be here when you change your mind.”
Erika closed her eyes. The dark was easier.
“I’m never going to be ready.”
“That’s okay too.”
They sat there for another minute, maybe two—the engine ticking, the silence settling into something close to peace. Or just two people deciding not to push.
Anneliese opened her door, and the breeze that slipped in was enough to break the moment.
Inside, Bradley was at the stove. He looked up when they came in, and whatever he saw made him set down the spoon without a word—just crossed to Anneliese and pressed a kiss to her temple, one hand settling warm and steady on the small of her back.
“Hey. How’d it go?”
Anneliese leaned into him before pulling back. “Good. It was good.”
Erika looked away. She headed for the stairs before anyone could ask a follow-up question.
Her bedroom was exactly how she’d left it, the Klimt print still on the wall where she’d hung it. She looked away from it now without quite meaning to.
Silk pillows on the bed. And in the corner, the half-finished canvas she’d brought back from the Bahamas set, started during a week-two afternoon when the light went gold and broke off the water.
She hadn’t touched it since she got home.
Couldn’t. Every time she looked at it, she saw the set, and every time she saw the set, she saw Martin, and her hands shook.
She lay back on the bed. The ceiling cracks she’d been tracing since she moved in, constellations she’d invented during the weeks she’d lain awake. They hadn’t changed. She had.
Stefan’s name is in it. He handed over evidence. He’s part of why the story broke.
The magazine was in her drawer where she’d shoved it days ago.
She pulled it out, flipped to the article.
There it was—Stefan Cruz. Complicit bystander.
Witness who stayed silent. Eventually came forward with evidence.
The article didn’t call him a hero. It called him what he was, a man who knew and said nothing until it was too late.
She set it down and looked up.
Her eyes went back to the Klimt. She lifted the print carefully off the wall and set it face-down on the bed beside her half-packed boxes. Not throwing it away. Just not looking at it.