by Cecilia Lyra
“Have you read it?” I ask.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I don’t think anyone has, except Bertie.”
“Then I need to read it first.”
“Why?”
Because Nana knew my secret. Because it’s possible she wrote about it in this letter—not likely, but possible. And because Cassie can never find out.
“Do you know why Cassie and I don’t talk to each other?”
“I know what Bertie told me,” he says. “It happened after Cassie’s mom found out that your dad and your mom were…together. She killed herself, didn’t she? Cassie didn’t handle it very well. Bertie said she became distant with her…with everyone.”
“Katherine found out about the affair,” I say. “But it was more than that. She found out Cassie knew. Someone sent her pictures of my mom and my dad throughout the years, at my house. Pictures that showed we were a family, too. And in one of those pictures, Cassie was at my apartment with me. You could even see a little bit of my mom because she was standing in front of a mirror. Katherine had no idea we were even friends.”
“How could she not know?”
“We were both good liars,” I say. “We had to be. Or else we couldn’t have been sisters. Katherine wouldn’t have understood. She was really sick.”
“She had to be, to do what she did.” He pauses. “Did your mom send the pictures?”
“No,” I say. A one-two punch: first relief, then dread. I know I have to tell him. I knew it the second I held the envelope from Nana.
It’s not the answer he expected. I can tell he’s trying to hide his surprise.
I take a deep breath. Once I confess, it’ll all be different. He’ll never again cup his hand in mine. We won’t share our first kiss. He probably won’t want me to babysit his children again. Still, I have to come clean. I might be angry at her, but I’d still rather lose him than Cassie. I’d rather lose anyone than Cassie. “I did.”
He frowns, searching my face for signs of misunderstanding.
“I sent those pictures,” I say again. “And my grandmother knew. So if she wrote about it, Cassie can’t see it.”
A silence falls between us. I lower my head, my eyes on the rug.
I can’t bear to see the look on his face, whatever it is.
Forty-Three
Julie
Wednesday, July 18th
Cassie is waiting for me when I walk in the house.
“Jul, I crossed a line.” She pulls herself up from the couch and takes lumbering steps towards me. “And I want you to know that I’m really sorry for—”
I lift an open palm. “What exactly did you do? Read my messages? My emails?”
“I read everything,” she whispers, looking at her bandaged foot. I follow her gaze.
Does she expect me to feel sorry for her because she’s injured? Well, I don’t. Though I do want to ask if she’s used the ointment I bought at the store. Her ankle does not look good—it’s swollen and bruised. She should also take Advil. But I can’t think about that now—I’m supposed to be upset with her. I am upset with her.
What does she mean by everything? Since leaving her at the parking lot, I’ve looked over my phone, trying to imagine what she now thinks of me. My life is a mess—and it shows. My mother is blackmailing me. My husband is emotionally unavailable and controlling.
And then, it hits me. My stories.
“Did you look through my notes?” I ask.
She nods quietly, pain and pity dancing behind her eyes. She really has read everything.
My face burns hot—I’m no longer angry, just embarrassed. It’s like I told Craig: I don’t have the right to be angry. I killed her mother.
Craig disagrees—he says I was just a kid when it happened, only seventeen, that I didn’t mean to cause Katherine’s death. That it was a foolish impulse, one for which I should forgive myself. He encouraged me to come clean, to tell Cassie everything. He’s convinced that she’ll find it in her heart to forgive me. I hadn’t expected him to be so understanding. He really is kindness personified. But while I appreciate his words, I don’t agree with them. There’s no way Cassie will ever forgive me.
Which is why Cassie can’t ever find out. And she won’t. Craig and I steamed the letter open. It was his idea.
“Can we sit?” she asks.
I pick the armchair. She flops down on the couch, elevating her right ankle like the doctor recommended. I make a mental note to find Nana’s ice pack.
“I made a mistake,” she says.
“It’s not just that you went through my phone. You lied to me.”
“I know. But that’s not the mistake I mean.” She takes a deep breath. “I made a mistake when I told you I didn’t want you in my life. Jul, I…I was in a dark place. A really dark place. It lasted a long time—years. I kept finding ways to punish myself because I blamed myself for my mom’s death. And not being your sister, that was the biggest punishment of all. I’ve been in therapy because of it for years. I’m not making excuses, just offering context.”
I swallow. She’s saying all the things I’ve dreamed of hearing for the past fourteen years.
“I knew I was hurting me when I chose to stay away,” she continues. “But I didn’t think of how I was hurting you. All I can say for myself is that I’m a selfish idiot. You defended me, lied to your mom to protect me, wrote these beautiful stories about two girls and a magic necklace. And I repaid you by being awful.”
I don’t understand why she’s getting up until she moves closer to me. Her hand is grazing my cheek, catching the tears that are falling. I hadn’t noticed I was crying. I don’t want her to see me like this. She’s seen too much already.
“I’m so sorry.” She cups my hand. I have orange nail polish on. Kiki and I applied it together. It’s smudged and streaky—and I love it. “Please don’t cry.” The softness in her voice cracks something inside me. I thought this side of hers was gone. I thought she’d been hardened beyond recognition.
“I feel embarrassed. What you read, it was…really personal.”
“I know. I had no right. I’m more sorry than you’ll ever know.”
That’s not true. Regret is a stalker, following me wherever I go.
“Once I started, I couldn’t stop,” she says. “You became real to me again. I’d forced myself to think of you as a concept, not a person. You became the guilt I felt, the pain. The anger. But then I saw your phone and…I don’t know. I saw my sister again.”
I search her eyes. An alarm goes off in my mind—she sounds sincere, but she could be playing me again. I think back to what I told Craig: we’re both good liars. We had to be.
But then it happens.
I look at Cassie and I see me. I see Nana. I see our summers together, our shared secrets, our childhood. I see us growing up, becoming young women, making plans to tackle the world, both of us unafraid because we had each other.
Her eyes. My eyes. They’re finally open, almost like she lifted an additional lizard-like membrane. A protective layer. This is why she pretended not to see me. Why she yelled at me. It was fear. With Cassie, anger is a shield she puts up when she’s afraid.
“Can we get past this?” she asks. “I want us to be…us again.”
A slight nod from me. But I’m afraid, too.
“Yeah?” There’s doubt in her tone. Uncertainty. It is very strange to hear Cassie uncertain about anything. “I understand if you need time,” she says. “I don’t expect us to, I don’t know, braid each other’s hair and play twenty-one questions.”
Another nod from me. Though the truth is, I’d like that. There’s so much I want to know. What’s it like to be famous? Does she love her job as much as she seems to? How did she and Daniel meet? Why hasn’t he left his wife? Is it because she doesn’t want to get married? Does she still not want to get married? Who are her friends? What has she been up to?
Most of all, there’s this: Has she missed me?
“What I’m trying t
o say,” she continues, “is that I’d like to work on repairing our relationship. I want to prove Nana right in bringing us here, to put the past behind us. Start over as sisters with a clean slate.”
A clean slate. A do-over. It’s all I ever wanted. But it always felt like a dream.
“I want that, too,” I say. A cowardly move, accepting her offer. She doesn’t have all the facts, doesn’t know the full story.
She moves in to hug me—and I let her. This is wrong. Spineless. I’m a wicked, despicable person for not telling her the whole truth.
But it’s Cassie—my sister, my flesh and blood. My best friend.
I can deal with being wicked and despicable, as long as she’s in my life.
And so I hug her back. I hear her low laugh, and then my own. When we part, she’s doing something I haven’t seen her do ever since she got here: she’s smiling. I am, too—smiling and crying, feeling both relieved and terrified.
“There’s something else,” she says. “I really did see our father.”
Wait—what?
“When?” I ask.
“Almost two weeks ago. Near The Fudge Company.” A pause, she tilts her head. “He was buying sunflowers.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“Positive.” She nods. “I thought the flowers were for you. They’re your favorite.”
They are, though I haven’t gotten sunflowers in ages. Patrick always gives me roses or orchids. And I never buy flowers for myself. It’s one of the things Sophie taught me.
“If Dad’s here, then he didn’t tell me.” I don’t add that I don’t think he’d do that. She’s probably mistaken. It’s the downside of being so confident: it never occurs to Cassie that she could genuinely be wrong.
“I believe you,” she says. There isn’t a hint of skepticism in her tone. “But I know what I saw. And that was the same day that you got home singing his favorite song.”
“I don’t even know Dad’s favorite song.” I knew Cassie was a naturally suspicious person, but I had no idea she was this paranoid. And it’s strange that she remembers Dad’s favorite song. Maybe she imagined the whole thing.
“‘The First Cut is the Deepest’,” she says. “By Cat Stevens?”
A memory floats up. She’s right: I was singing the song. I remember feeling overjoyed that I got to sing, to whistle.
“You remember,” she says, reading me.
“Yeah.” I nod slowly. “I was humming it because…” I stop myself.
“Because?” She narrows her eyes at me.
It’s not just the song I remember. I remember where I heard it, too. It was on the day I started babysitting. The day Craig and I shared our first beers on the porch. The day he called me a storyteller.
“I heard it from Craig,” I say. “He was singing it when he got home. He said he heard it from a friend he’d just seen.”
Forty-Four
Cassie
Wednesday, July 18th
Dear Cassie and Julie,
If you’re reading this then it means that I’ve crossed over the rainbow bridge (Cassie, kindly stop rolling your eyes, just because you’re an atheist doesn’t mean we all have to be) and met my maker. It also means that my plan to bring you to the Hamptons for one final summer is working. Didn’t see that one coming from your old grandmother, did you? Turns out I’m quite the master strategist! You both got your smarts from me, of course.
I’m predicting that you will receive this before the end of your first week at the house. I had the privilege of watching the two of you get to know each other as friends and as sisters. I saw the bond you forged and believe with every fiber in me that, while it may have gotten rusty with time, it is too strong to be broken.
Life is a beautiful but arduous journey. It tests us time and time again, until the very last day. It’s filled with sorrow and disappointment, but, for the lucky ones, it is also filled with hope and joy. I believe the lucky ones are those who get to walk through life with a companion. Sometimes this person is a spouse, like with your grandfather and me. Sometimes it’s a friend. But more often than you’d expect, that person is a sibling.
Know that wherever I am—personally, I am rooting for a magical land with unlimited marrons glacés and port wine!—I am happy to know that you two have moved in the right direction.
Love,
Nana
P.S. Don’t be mad at Craig. I asked him to keep this until he saw that you two showed signs of getting closer.
P.P.S. Julie, have the two of you fallen in love yet?
The letter is insulting. I say as much to Julie now.
“I thought it was sweet,” Julie says, dabbing her eyes.
“It’s manipulative, withholding information from us like that.” I feel a sting, like the prick of a needle, only it covers my entire body. “Losing Nana was hard enough. I would’ve killed to have gotten this letter when I heard the news. To know that I’d still hear from her, in a sense.” That’s the thing about being an atheist: when someone is gone, they’re gone. I know there is no afterlife with unlimited marrons glacés and port wine. I know I’ll never see Nana again.
“You’re not wrong,” Julie says. “But wasn’t it manipulative of her to bring us here?”
“Your point?”
A shrug. “Nana knows what she’s doing.”
I feel my shoulders drop. “I don’t like it.”
“Of course you don’t.” She smiles. “You love being in control. The irony is that you get that from Nana.”
I can’t argue with that. But even if I could, I don’t want to. Ever since our hug, I’ve felt a dam breaking inside me. Feelings I’d kept sealed for over a decade rushed into my heart. I’ve missed her so much—I can’t believe it took me this long to admit it. I don’t want us to argue ever again. “So now what? We wait until the next one? Or do we get a clue, like in a treasure hunt?”
“Craig didn’t say anything about other letters.” She’s pointed this out before.
“Mrs. Bunsen was very specific about there being letters. Plural.” I’ve filled Julie in on my conversation with Mrs. Bunsen and my subsequent reading with Mandy. It was nice, telling her about it. I’d forgotten how much I missed sharing my life with her. I love Christina and Rachel, but it’s different with Julie. She saw me grow up. Saw me becoming a fully formed person. It’s been years—my fault, of course—but talking to her feels natural, like returning to my native country.
“Mrs. Bunsen has a touch of dementia,” Julie says. She’s chewing on a celery stick, her jaw making a satisfying crunching noise as she chews.
“Well, we have to ask Craig about it,” I say. “If there are more letters, I want them now. Besides, don’t you want to ask him about the song?” I certainly do. I’ve been suspicious about Craig from the start.
“It’s a popular song.”
I’m fairly certain it is not a popular song. I only know it because of how often my father listened to it on the old stereo system we had. I like the song—and not just because of its melody. Hearing it meant my father wasn’t in a foul mood. It meant he probably wouldn’t break anything that day.
“Craig clearly knows more than he’s telling us.”
“What would we even ask him?”
“‘Have you seen our father?’ and ‘Are there other letters from Nana?’”
“What if waited a few days?” Her tone is pleading.
“What’s this really about?” I ask. “Why don’t you want to talk to him?” I soften my tone.
Julie chews on her bottom lip, her eyes darting. I know this look. I’ve seen it before.
“You like him,” I say. It’s not a question.
“I think I do.” Her cheeks are now pink. “Please don’t think less of me.”
“Why would I think less of you?”
“I’m married.”
“My boyfriend is married.” I lower my gaze.
She leans in. “So what’s the story there?”
“You first.”
There’s so much I want to know, especially after reading her messages to her husband. I know her, but I also don’t. I’ve missed fourteen years of her life. It would be easy to obsess over it, to spiral. But I force myself to stay present. And positive. Clean slate.
“Nothing’s happened with Craig. But I think about it. More often than I should,” she says. “I love my husband, but I’m not happy—Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if I still love him.”
I let the silence settle between us. She should share at her own pace.
“He’s a good provider,” she continues. “And he can be fun when we’re out with other people. He’s just very set in his ways. He’s older than me, that could be it. And he’s very…controlling. Maybe that word is harsh. I don’t know. But he has these rules for how things should be…for how I should be. And if I don’t follow them he retreats into silence. He doesn’t scream at me or anything. There’s no violence. But it still hurts. I feel lonely. And suffocated. It wasn’t always this way. I mean, he was always very strict, but in the beginning…I don’t know, I haven’t really figured out if I had more patience, or if he had fewer rules.” She sighs.
I rub my chin, thinking back to the messages I read on her phone. My invasion of her privacy has allowed me a small glimpse into her marriage—and from what I’ve seen it does not look good. I’d never say as much to Julie, not without listening to her first, but Patrick seems both unstable and tyrannical.
Julie must pick up on something in my face because she adds, quickly, “It’s not all bad. As long as I do everything his way, he’s very kind to me. And he tells me I’m beautiful all the time.” A pause. “I know it sounds, I don’t know, superficial. But it’s nice to hear. It’s nice to be wanted.”
I wince. I did accuse her of being superficial, didn’t I? Or something similar.