Chapter 23
HOLLY
I wasn’t expecting to see anyone from Zoe’s family until the end of our trip, least of all Leo.
Clearly, Anna’s thinking the same. She’s staring at him like he just stepped out of a UFO.
She tightens her hold on her bag, the one with Zoe’s urn, as though suspecting that he may be here to confiscate his sister.
“What are you doing here, Leo?” Anna asks exactly what I’m wondering.
“I want to tell you about Ava,” he says, his focus entirely on Anna.
That, I suppose, explains why he’s been reluctant to respond to her texts the last couple of days.
I notice, suddenly, that we’re creating a traffic jam in the lobby. “I’m going to get us checked in and have them move this mountain into our room,” I say, motioning at the mound of suitcases.
“Thanks, Hols,” Anna says, with a weary smile.
Check-in is quick and our luggage is whisked off to our room just as quickly. When I return, Anna and Leo are still standing awkwardly in the middle of the lobby.
“Why don’t we find a more private place to talk?” I suggest.
Leo starts walking toward where he was sitting when we arrived, but Anna points to a door leading outside. “There’s a patio out here.”
“Sounds good,” Leo mechanically agrees.
Anna leads us to a couple of open wicker chairs and a matching couch in the far corner. She puts Zoe on the table in front of us, and she and I both settle on the couch.
Leo eyeballs the urn as he sits in the chair next to Anna. “Throws me every time.”
I’m not sure that’s a sight anyone would get used to. We’ve been carrying her for days now, and I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around who is inside.
But this isn’t the first time Leo has had to deal with this.
“Zoe was a twin,” I muse, startling when I realize I spoke out loud.
“I forget sometimes that I had another sister.” Leo deflates into the seat under the weight of the truth, a burden he’s carried for years.
“Why here? Why now?” Anna asks him.
He sucks in air and says, “Zoe sent me.”
“She what?” Anna and I ask at once. Reflexively, we glance at the urn on the table.
“I didn’t know she wanted me to meet you until a couple of days ago when my father handed me the ticket,” Leo says. “Zoe was quite something. And who knew my dad could be so secretive?” He shakes his head, astonished.
“A couple of days ago.” Anna frowns, thinking. “We were in France. Zoe wrote to you that she was going to tell us about her twin. Is that why you’ve been ghosting me?”
“I didn’t know how much she planned to tell you, and when I found out she told you about Ava, I didn’t want to talk about her over the phone. I don’t know exactly what she wrote, but there’s so much to our story.”
My heartstrings tighten into a triple knot over his grief. I can’t imagine—no, I don’t want to imagine—what the Whitmores have been through. What drove them to shut away memories of a lost child and sister? How excruciating it must have been to continue living every day with a hole in their hearts.
“Zoe said they were best friends, that Ava was amazing,” Anna is saying, and I blink myself back to the patio.
Despite a slight breeze, it’s hot. I fan myself with a menu left on the table from whoever was sitting here before us. The menu offers no relief. All I’m managing to do is make a tiny wave of heat. I set it down, which apparently is the sign the waiter was watching for.
“Would you like to order drinks? Appetizers?” He looks at each of us expectantly. Leo orders a bourbon, neat, and Anna orders a glass of Chardonnay. I opt for iced coffee so I don’t faceplant from exhaustion on my way up to our room.
“How was the flight from France?” Leo asks, reluctant to return to the topic of his sisters.
“Long,” I say at the same time Anna says, “Tiring.”
After that first kerfuffle over the upgrade to first class, I gave in, and Anna has been upgrading us on each leg of the trip.
The extra room has been a godsend. It’s been a brutal eight days, but it would have been so much worse if we’d been stuffed into the sardine tin at the back of the plane.
Not to mention, there wouldn’t be space to have Zoe comfortably between us on the flights if we’d stayed in Economy.
As unsettling as it is to be traveling with an urn containing your best friend’s remains, I’ve noticed that both Anna and I visibly relax a notch the moment Zoe’s urn is in the open next to us. Not like old times, but she’s with us, nonetheless. And there’s comfort in that.
“You fly to…” Leo hesitates, then continues, “to your next destination tomorrow?”
“Day after,” I answer. I want to hug him for not saying “Greece” out loud.
Yes, it’s our next destination, and one I suspect we’re both equally dreading.
We haven’t talked about it, of course, but there’s the understanding that whatever precarious progress we’re making will be tested harder than any college admissions exam.
The waiter returns with our drinks. Anna raises her wine glass and says, “To Zoe.”
I raise my iced coffee and add, “To Zoe and Ava.”
Leo’s mouth curls up into a sad, grateful smile. “To Zoe and Ava,” he echoes.
“What were they like together?” Anna asks.
“Oh, wow. Um, they were unreal.” Leo’s frame melts into the chair and his smile widens at a memory of his sisters. “The Tornado Twins.”
That gets a laugh out of Anna and me.
“Those two could find trouble in whatever they did. God, they must have been five, I think, when Ava convinced Zoe to try our mom’s lipsticks.
They locked themselves in the bathroom and smeared lipstick all over their faces.
When Mom tried to get in, they freaked out and attempted to flush the evidence.
They made such a mess of the bathroom. Mom was furious.
But she could never stay mad at them for long. ”
I don’t remember Zoe wearing much, if any, makeup in all the years we were friends. Only really at the end, which I’m sure was an attempt to mask the ravages of the disease. And never lipstick. She said she hated the feeling. I imagine it reminded her of Ava.
“They did everything together,” Leo continues.
“When one of them wanted to try something, the other was immediately on board. Usually it was Ava, though, who was the instigator. Her curiosity and talent were endless. Zoe was happy following for the most part. Every once in a while, she would find something she was better at than Ava or had a momentary rebellion at being lumped in with her sister. But that never lasted. Ava always managed to turn Zoe around. It’s not that Ava didn’t want her twin to shine on her own—she did, and she helped Zoe all the time, but Ava was so competitive. ”
“Zoe was so not competitive,” Anna says.
“No, she wasn’t,” Leo agrees. “Ava was amazing at a lot of things, but she was terrible at taking tests. She hated history, couldn’t remember dates for the life of her.
I remember once, Zoe stayed up all night helping her prepare for a test. Ava ended up passing with a B.
Zoe ended up bombing her science test because she’d been too busy helping Ava study instead.
But it seemed she could care less. She was just so happy for Ava. ”
That’s so Zoe. Always looking out for everyone but herself. Anna and I exchange a look. We’re probably both remembering the number of times Zoe would curl up on Anna’s bed to quiz her on one subject or another, putting her own studies on the backburner.
“Then there was the time Ava announced she was going to learn to play the piano because Zoe played. Zoe had a feel for the piano from the very beginning. There was never that painful chopsticks period. It didn’t come as easily to Ava, which totally set her off.
She would practice for hours just to prove to everyone that she could master it better than Zoe.
When it became clear that music was something Ava would not excel at, Zoe quit. Just boom, done, refused to play.”
With a blink, the three of us are at a restaurant in Manhattan Beach, drinking fancy cocktails and laughing at a story Anna was sharing about the latest guy she’d been dating.
Zoe had gone quiet, but her fingers were moving on the edge of the table, playing along with the pianist by the bar.
She was watching the sun set over the ocean but her mind was elsewhere.
I remember watching her fingers dance in perfect unison to the music.
But when I asked if she played, she shrugged and said, “A little, long ago though.”
Like the proverbial pieces clinking together, an image of Zoe, perhaps the real Zoe, one that included the side she didn’t share with us, comes into focus.
“Zoe’s identity was defined by Ava,” I say, mostly to myself. “She felt second-best and she made it her mission to be the one who motivated success out of everyone else.” A sob clogs my throat as another piece clinks into place. “Without Ava, Zoe didn’t know who she was.”
Anna’s eyes glisten and out of the corner of my eye I catch Leo dip his head away from us and swallow hard.
It was only when we found each other that she suddenly rediscovered her purpose. She needed us to succeed. She needed us so that she could grow into the person she was meant to be.
To us, Zoe was love and heart and loyalty.
To her family, Zoe was the constant reminder of what they’d lost.
“Leo, why?” I ask, then clarify when he doesn’t respond. “Why didn’t Zoe tell us about Ava? Why was she a secret?”
“She wanted to. She told me once that it was killing her,” he winces at his choice of words, “not to confide in you. But it was such a deep wound for our entire family. Zoe was afraid to open it. For us and for herself.”
My heart shatters for Leo and for Zoe. This is why Zoe sent him here. He never gave himself permission to mourn Ava, and Zoe’s giving him the chance to do so when their parents hadn’t.
I also suspect she saw the sparks I’m now seeing between him and Anna. Zoe knew Anna is the one Leo needs to help him grieve.
Which is my cue to make myself scarce.
“I didn’t realize how late it’s getting. I’m going to leave the two of you, and Zoe and I are going to check in with Jack and Quinn.” I settle the urn into the crook of my arm. They both look up at me, surprised, but I can’t stop my smug smile when neither tries to change my mind.
“You done good, Z,” I whisper to the urn as I weave my way through the now crowded patio. There’s no way she could have foreseen how therapeutic this evening would have been, and yet, I feel like she’d known all along this was exactly what we needed and how it would play out.