by Lisa Beazley
I spent ninety dollars in the Hudson News store at the airport, buying a big bottle of water, a couple of granola bars, a pack of Dramamine, a book of essays, and magazines—People, Us Weekly, Monocle, Harper’s, New York, Newsweek, InStyle, Nylon, Vogue, Elle Decor, and Dwell. I may have gone a little overboard, but I was daunted by the twenty-four-hour flight ahead of me and desperate for some distraction from the mess at hand.
At the gate I had a moment of panic when I matched my flight number to that on the board, which read ZURICH. Afraid that in my haste, I had somehow purchased the wrong flight and wasn’t even going to Singapore, I approached the gate agent. “Is this right? My final destination is Singapore. Shouldn’t I be headed east?” The uniformed woman with perfect makeup and an ambiguous European accent quickly sorted me out—but not without first making me feel like an unworldly dummy. As it turns out, Singapore is so far away that you can jet either way around the globe and not have it affect your flight time by much. I was literally flying halfway around the world to tell my sister the truth and to ask for her forgiveness. If this wasn’t a grand gesture, I didn’t know what was. Of course, Sid was no stranger to grand gestures. In high school, Jeremy Kowalski had her initials tattooed on his calf after they’d broken up; she’d been the subject of at least two songs by Tet Offensive, the high school band that played all the dances; and Ryan Wilcox once had six dozen daisies delivered to her at the frozen yogurt shop where she worked in order to persuade her to go to the prom with him. The point is, a phone call wasn’t going to cut it. By the time I landed in Switzerland, I’d watched two movies and four TED Talks, taken a nap, tried and failed to write Leo a letter, but not opened a single magazine, so I lugged the stack of them with me to the next flight. I passed a line of people in kiosks on their cell phones and wondered if I should call and tell her I was coming. What if no one is home when I arrive? Where will I go? Perhaps I should have bought a Singapore guidebook instead of all of these magazines. Wrestling with the unwieldy pile through the Zurich airport, wearing my ratty old clothes and carrying my canvas tote bag, I felt like a frumpy schoolteacher plodding down the corridor at an elite boarding school among her more sophisticated and better-dressed students and colleagues. On board flight number two, I distractedly leafed through the Us Weekly back to front. When I had nearly finished, I came upon a quarter-page piece that read: WILL THE REAL SLOW NEWS SISTERS PLEASE STAND UP?
In the wake of the sudden popularity and equally as sudden disappearance of the popular blog Slow News Sisters, which recorded the letters of two sisters navigating their troubled marriages and messy lives, several would-be SN sisters are popping up to take credit. Speculation also abounds that the blog was created by the PR department at Warner Bros. Entertainment, who is rumored to have a movie of the same name under development. We choose to believe that the Slow News Sisters are real, if only they would reveal themselves. You would think that since I’d had some time to wrap my head around the situation and I’d already seen my blog on the pages of a magazine, I might have taken it in stride. But the wound was still fresh enough that any change in the wind was a painful reminder that this thing was real. At the same time, I was perversely indignant that other people were taking credit for it. I wondered if this is how Al Qaeda feels when Hezbollah claims to be the perpetrator of one of their bombings. I arrived in Singapore at eight o’clock in the evening. I found a currency-exchange booth and handed over ten twenty-dollar bills in exchange for nearly three hundred slick pastel-colored Singapore dollars. The long line at Customs and Immigration moved quickly, and when I handed over my card with the little box for “pleasure” checked as the reason for my visit, I hoped it would play out that way. Soon I was in a taxi, reciting the address I knew by heart to the driver. We drove down a wide palm-tree-lined boulevard, then onto an expressway that passed through what I presumed was downtown: buildings on my right, a giant Ferris wheel on my left. Then a mile or two of identical, prominently numbered apartment buildings, followed by a long, winding jungly road. The car slowed, and I gasped when I saw the TANGLIN PARK sign, a name I’d written so many times. My heart started beating faster, and the shot of confidence I’d gained from handling the airport like a pro seemed a distant memory and a ridiculous thing to congratulate myself over: With its huge signs in multiple languages and an intuitive layout, it would have been a breeze for anyone. I thought of a framed cross-stitch on the wall at a kitschy nautical-themed coffee shop near Leo’s old apartment: SMOOTH SEAS DO NOT MAKE SKILLFUL SAILORS. I began to obsess over this saying, the full weight of the metaphor sinking in. In the scheme of things, my life had been remarkably smooth. No wonder I was so ill equipped to handle this whole disaster. My hand shook as I rang the doorbell at Sid’s place, and I held my breath at the click-clack of a lock being turned. When the door opened, I made an awkward little jazz-hands gesture and said, “Surprise!” My nephew, River, stared at me, looking more confused than surprised. “Whoa! Aunt Cassie! I didn’t know you were coming!” We hugged, and he grabbed my bag from behind me and brought it inside. River, eighteen now, seemed even taller and more grown-up than when I’d seen him at Christmas. “Nobody does. It’s a . . . a surprise,” I repeated. “Oh, man, I wished you would have called. Mom isn’t even here. She gets back from Bali tomorrow night.” “You’re kidding!” I moaned. “That’ll teach me to do something so impulsive,” trying to give the appearance of nonchalance, even though I was jittery with anxiety. That meant I’d have only about twenty-four hours with her. “Well, listen, I’m starving, and it’s nine a.m. my time, so how about I buy you a late dinner and we can catch up?” I said. River agreed and showed me to the guest room. The bed was piled with meditation books and yoga magazines. “Oh, sorry, Aunt Cassie. I can move all of Mom’s stuff off for you.” “No worries,” I said, invoking one of Sid’s trademark phrases. It sounded strange coming from my mouth, like when I swear in front of my parents. “I’ll move it later. Just give me ten minutes to freshen up and I’ll be ready.” “Cool,” he said. River and I walked out of their condo down a quiet and winding street dense with giant trees that looked like a sprawling and exotic version of what I knew to be oaks. “This is the back way to a cluster of restaurants in some old British military barracks from World War II,” he explained. Though the sun had been down for hours, it must have been ninety degrees or more. The heavy air was reminiscent of the F train platform in August, but instead of garbage and urine, the smells were of plants and flowers (which may sound nice but makes the heat only slightly less oppressive). River told me to watch out for tree snakes, which are known to drop down and scare the crap out of people. While mildly venomous, they almost never bite, he explained. I let out a nervous giggle that must have triggered some hidden reserve of mirth inside of me, because I was seized by a fit of deep laughter that lasted much longer than was appropriate, given the situation. Poor River didn’t know what to make of me gripping his arm for support while I doubled over, shrieking. Wiping the tears from my face, which had combined with sweat and tinted moisturizer to form a paste, I was glad I had opted not to apply mascara. “Just be careful what you wish for,” I gasped finally. “What do you mean?” he asked, starting to laugh a bit himself. “It’s just that I was complaining to your mom a few months ago that my life was boring.” “Okay,” he said, eyeing me sideways and probably forever designating me his weird aunt Cassie. I let out a last groan and composed myself. “And, well, now I’m trekking through a snake-infested jungle in a foreign country with my little nephew, who is suddenly a grown man. It’s just . . . just not boring.” What I didn’t mention was that this was merely the icing on the cake of my life that could now be read about in Us Weekly, complete with adjectives including “troubled” and “messy.” After a few minutes we arrived at a charming and busy café. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it didn’t seem foreign at all. Its tasteful modern furniture, blackboard menu on the wall, and f
ashionable and ethnically diverse diners wouldn’t have been out of place in any large US city. “Inside or outside?” the hostess asked us. “Inside!” I offered a little too quickly, feeling slightly ill from the heat. We were led to a small table in the middle of the black-and-white space. When the server came, we both ordered burgers and waters, plus a local beer—a Tiger—for me. “So you like it here?” I asked River. “Yeah. It’s cool.” “I don’t know about cool,” I said, motioning to my sweaty face and upper body, the aftereffects of my recent outburst combined with my encroaching jet lag making me a bit punch-drunk. “Yeah. It took me about six months to stop sweating profusely every time I left the house. It’s funny—the expats here are always coming and going, and you can tell a newcomer by how pink and sweaty they are.” By the time our food arrived, I had changed the subject to Sid. “So I can’t wait to see your mom. How is she doing?” “She’s good. Superbusy with all the stuff she does for the helpers—and she’s gotten really into yoga.” And then his voice changed a bit. “So, um, look, this is kind of awkward, Aunt Cassie, but there’s something I feel like I should tell you.” “Okay,” I said, tensing up. “I saw the blog.” Likely prompted by my deer-in-headlights expression, he added, “With all the letters.” “Oh,” I said. I consciously shifted my demeanor. No longer the loopy and expressive aunt of five minutes ago, I needed to be serious, contrite. I put down my burger, wiped my hands and mouth, and took a sip of my beer, the familiar roar of panic surging through my body. “Yeah,” he said, wincing at me as if to indicate that we were going to have to talk about it. I took a deep breath. “That’s why I’m here. I took the blog down—in fact, it was never meant to be live in the first place.” He looked at me like I was nuts. “Then why did you do it?” “I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m not as smart as I look,” I said, attempting a joke. I felt like a child being questioned by my father, which was disconcerting, considering I’d changed this kid’s diaper. I was dying to turn the tables and grill him on how much exactly he’d read, how he’d found out about it, and what Sid knew. But he had the upper hand. So I went with it, offering my pathetic explanation, which I hoped would sound better by the time I gave it to Sid. “It was meant to be private—I made it private, as a way to save them for posterity, but Fishfood’s server crashed and I didn’t realize it became public, and by the time I found out, it had blown up.” “Oh, man. That’s crazy,” he said. “Yep. I still can’t believe it. So has she seen it?” “No. I was going to show her, actually. But when I went to bring it back up, it was gone. So I didn’t bother—I figured it would be too hard to explain. You know Mom—she’s old-school. She barely even e-mails. “She is an original,” I said, glad that the subject seemed to be changing but at the same time anxious to get a bit more information from him. “Yeah—it’s annoying sometimes when things I’m talking about go right over her head. But it’s also cool in some ways. I mean, some of my friends’ parents are their Facebook friends and friending all of their friends, and it can get kind of awkward.” “Hey, I’m your Facebook friend! You know you can unfriend me if you don’t want your lame old aunt knowing all your business.” “Nah—that’s all right. I think Mom feels better knowing you’re there. She probably figures you’ll tell her if I do anything totally stupid, like post a bunch of private letters on the Internet for the world to see.” I groaned and buried my head in my hands for a moment, and when I looked up, River and I made smiling eye contact. He was a cool kid: kind and charismatic like his mother, and tall and bright-eyed like his father. I wonder if he turned out how he was going to turn out, or if Sid’s parenting was the secret. Sometimes when I read about boys from seemingly nice families who become date rapists or merciless bullies, I become terrified that I will somehow neglect to teach the boys basic human decency, or even if I do, they still won’t turn out okay. That they shared DNA with River was a comforting thought. • • • I had an awful night’s sleep, tossing and turning and checking my phone incessantly for any response from Leo, to whom I’d sent at least five messages through various channels. Around four a.m., I switched on the light and penned a desperate letter to Leo. One of those letters you think you’ll probably never send, but need to write anyway. It helped to settle my mind, and sleep eventually came sometime after I’d folded up the letter and stuck it inside my passport. When I emerged from the guest room late in the morning, River called to me from the living room. “Aunt Cassie! Come check it out!” He waved me over, and I walked out to join him on the patio, grinning because Joey says, “Come check it out!” in almost the exact same way. He pointed to the balcony one floor up and across the way, where three black-and-white birds the size of house cats were perched. They looked like toucans but seemed to have two beaks—a shorter one that sloped up atop a longer one that sloped down. “Those are hornbills. Ten years ago they were declared extinct, but they made a comeback somehow. And a group of them nests right around here—cool, right?” “Yeah. Cool. Wow,” I said as the trio clumsily took flight. Sid’s place was on the ground floor of one of a dozen identical six-story white stucco buildings centered around a courtyard with a playground, a swimming pool, and a meandering stream filled with giant goldfish. The whole place was overgrown with big green plants and a variety of trees. “I talked to Mom,” River said. “Oh! When?” I asked, my heart pounding. “She called earlier this morning. I told her you were here, and she freaked. She’s trying to get on an earlier flight.” Then Lulu toddled up the stairs from the courtyard to the patio, a short, plump, brown-skinned woman with shiny jet-black hair a half step behind her, ready to pounce should Lulu stumble. I squatted down to greet my niece, who wasn’t sure she remembered me, and I mentally ticked another X in the “cons” column of our little communication experiment. Had we been Skyping all this time, Lulu would have at least recognized me. “Good morning, ma’am!” said the woman following Lulu. “Hi. You must be Rose. I’m Sid’s sister, Cassie.” “Yes, ma’am. I can get you something to eat and drink, ma’am?” All this ma’aming was making me a bit uncomfortable, but I was enjoying listening to her accent. Leo and I’d had it all wrong when we imitated it all those months ago. Three hours later, I had showered, eaten a lunch of cold carrot soup and fried rice prepared by Rose, discussed River’s deferred acceptance to NYU, read Dear Zoo to Lulu seven or eight times, fed the fish, and pushed Lulu on the swing before Rose took her off for her nap. River left to go to a friend’s house and Rose got busy sweeping the floors. I didn’t know when exactly Sid was coming, but I sensed it was soon. Growing nervous again, I picked up a Yoga Life magazine and sat on her couch, hoping to glean a few relaxation techniques. I saw her before she saw me. She looked radiant, like a tanned and thin backpacker yoga girl. Her long hair was in a single dark-honey-colored braid that ended between her shoulder blades. She wore tiny gold hoops in her ears, a white tank top, and a floor-length lightweight olive-colored skirt. I stood there beholding my beautiful sister, hardly believing I was related to this exquisite creature. She slid open the glass patio door, let out a scream, dropped her bags, and put both hands on her heart. I felt a catch in my throat and couldn’t speak. I raised my hands, palms in, and waved them toward me, making a “come here” gesture while I walked to her. Sid has always been a full-body-contact, holds-on-a-few-seconds-too-long kind of hugger. I’m more of a quick sideways hugger, but I always made an exception for her. “You’re here,” she said, drawing out the word “here.” I nodded hard into her shoulder, fighting back tears. “Cass,” she said, pushing me away by the shoulders to look at me head-on and then pulling me back into an embrace. “My beautiful sister.” (I never liked it when she said things about my being beautiful because I felt that it brought into ironic focus the fact that I was clearly the less attractive one, but in that moment I didn’t even think about it.) Lulu shuffled in, bleary-eyed from her nap, and she and Sid went bonkers for each other.
We all played and chatted and had lemongrass iced tea and fresh tropical fruit, which Rose brought out to the patio. When Sid helped Lulu out of her chair and set her up to play at her sand table, I took a deep breath. “Sid, I have to talk to you about something,” I said. “Wait a sec,” she said. She was craning her neck to look inside. I turned in my chair and saw that Rose was talking to a uniformed man at their door. She turned and walked toward us, and Sid got up and went inside. I followed her. “Ma’am,” said Rose. “This man, they are coming here, he ask to see you, ma’am.” “Thanks, Rose. Could you keep an eye on Lu for a minute?” And then to the man, “Hello there.” “Hello. You are Sidney Sunday?” “Yes. Is everything okay?” “May I come in, Ms. Sunday?” “Who are you?” she asked politely, as if she simply needed a reminder. “I am Mr. Goh, Ministry of Manpower.” He flashed a badge. Sid glanced back at me with a frown and invited him in. I hovered around the edge of the room while she sat at the dining table with him. “Ms. Sunday, I regret to inform you that your dependent pass is being revoked.” He spoke in a rapid monotone; when he did occasionally stress a syllable, it was the opposite one that I would have stressed, so it took me a few extra seconds to understand what he was saying. “Excuse me?” Sid said. “It has come to our attention that you have been operating an unlicensed bank and interfering with the lives of some foreign domestic workers.” “Oh,” she said, a bit lower. “Ms. Sunday, we have chosen not to turn this matter over to the police, but I must insist that you relinquish your dependent pass and leave Singapore. You have until Monday.” “What about . . . ?” “Your husband has been informed. We just came from his office. Your son, River, is eighteen, so he is free to stay. Your daughter can stay with your husband.” “She stays with me,” she said quietly. As if on cue, Adrian walked in the door, looking frantic. He sat next to Sid at the table and nodded hello to Mr. Goh. Sid got up, went into the other room, and came back to hand two identification cards over. Mr. Goh had some papers for Sid to sign, and she and Adrian murmured to each other over the paperwork. Once Mr. Goh left, Adrian said, “We’ll talk about this tonight, okay? I have to get back to a meeting.” I don’t think he even saw me standing there. Meanwhile, I had a bad feeling. I wanted to get home, and I wanted Sid to come with me. Adrian was on his way out the door, and I stepped onto the patio to call Singapore Airlines. For several hundred dollars I could change my flight to one leaving early the next morning; there were additional seats available. “Hold on a minute,” I said to the operator. Sid was still standing at the door, now leaning back against it. “Sid, I know this is sudden and you must be in shock, but what if we left together tomorrow? There’s a six a.m. flight with space for us. I’ll help you pack.” “Oh my God, Cassie,” she said, clearly reeling. “Hon, I know. Crazy. What do you say? The airline is on the phone.” “Uuuum. All right.” She looked stunned but went to get passports and her credit card and handed them to me. I spent the next ten minutes booking flights for the four of us while she went into her room alone. When I finished with the tickets, I knocked on her door. She said to come in, and when I did, I found her sitting on her bed, looking unperturbed under the circumstances. “So it’s done?” she asked. “Yep. Just tell me what to do to help now.” “Let me call River first,” she said. Sid convinced River to come with us by promising to buy him a return ticket so he could come back and say goodbye to his friends. She then gave me some tasks and had a talk with Rose. We didn’t speak much for the rest of the day. There was too much to do in a short amount of time. At one point, Sid sat on the couch with a pen and some stationery I recognized. I didn’t ask about it, but felt a guilt-tinged pang of jealousy, wondering if she was exchanging letters with anyone else. When she finished writing, she snapped a photo of the letter with her phone, folded it, and placed it in an envelope. Has she been saving copies of all of the letters, too? Maybe she will understand what I did. She stood up and noticed me watching her. “Well, that was easier than I thought it’d be,” she said. “What?” I said. “My Dear John letter to Adrian.” “How come you took a picture of it?” “I don’t know. Just seemed important.” A teary-eyed and red-faced Filipina was knocking at the patio door. When Sid waved at her, she tentatively opened the door and poked her head in. “Ma’am Sid?” she said. “Hi, Sharon,” Sid said. “Come in.” “Is it true, ma’am?” a shaky-voiced Sharon asked. “You are going to jail?” “No! I’m just leaving Singapore. But I’m leaving early tomorrow. I’m sorry I’m not going to be able to say goodbye to everyone. Please give all of the girls big hugs for me, okay?” Sid’s voice was quavering now, too, and she had tears in her eyes as she hugged the woman. “Here, ma’am,” Sharon said, thrusting an envelope into Sid’s hands. “What’s this?” “We took up a collection.” I heard change jingling in the envelope. “That was fast,” said Sid, now laughing a bit. “But, please, Sharon, I’m okay. I promise. I’m going back to America with my sister,” she said, returning the envelope to Sharon. No one ever had an easy time saying goodbye to Sid, and over the next hour a line of brown-skinned women appeared at the back door. I remembered an article I read on the Huffington Post I’d been meaning to write to Sid about. It said that Singaporeans were ranked to be the least emotional people in the world and Filipinos the most. Judging by the stone-faced Mr. Goh compared to the procession of women forming on the back patio, many of whom were sobbing, I didn’t doubt it. We packed all day, and Sid spent a lot of time on the phone and receiving visitors. She put Lulu to bed and Rose served us dinner, a chicken stir-fry. I was (again) preparing to tell her the news when Adrian came home. Sid seemed surprised to see him. “I thought you were flying to Jakarta,” she said. “I canceled my trip, obviously,” he said. Then, “Cassie, hi. Nice to see you.” I gave him a flat, “Hey, Adrian,” and then, because I didn’t feel it was my place to inject any more drama, I got up and gave him a cursory hug. But he was dead to me already. “I didn’t know you were coming,” he said. Sid didn’t say anything about my visit being a surprise to her, too, so I said, “Yeah,” not wanting to waste any explanations on him and also enjoying the vague suggestion that maybe Sid had some secrets of her own. In the awkward silence that followed, I suddenly felt like a third wheel. Adrian clearly wanted to be alone with Sid. I excused myself to go take a shower and pack my bag. An hour or so later, I came out into the living room, hoping to have that talk with Sid, but she and Adrian were deep in conversation on the back patio. I returned to my room, set my phone alarm for a three thirty a.m. wake-up, and logged into my Yahoo account. I responded to the dozen or so e-mails regarding the blog, politely declining to participate in anything that might prolong this train wreck. Although the thought of that “lucrative” book deal was still exciting, anytime I gave it more than twenty seconds of thought, I came to the same conclusion: no fucking way. I also repeatedly checked the various mediums through which I’d reached out to Leo: no response or sign that he’d attempted to contact me via WhatsApp, Viber, iChat, Skype, or e-mail. As I stared at my phone, the fog of dumbfoundedness, panic, and dread I’d been living in since that day in the waiting room began to lift, and I started to feel something even worse: anger. I was angry about the blog. It should have stayed private. It would have stayed private if not for that freak server crash. I did everything right. (Well, unless you count not checking my Yahoo account for two weeks.) Leo, of all people, should understand this. I was so frustrated that he saw me as foolish for trusting the blog’s settings when I didn’t see it as foolish at all. Just not paranoid. I finally shut down my laptop and set my phone aside sometime around midnight. I hadn’t heard any movement and wondered if Sid and Adrian were still talking. I worried that Adrian had talked Sid into staying together and hoped he wasn’t hogging all of her forgiveness. Did she have a finite amount? If so, I felt I should have first dibs. I also had a sense that things couldn’t work out
for both our marriages, and I wanted first dibs on that, too. I’m the worst, I know. But in my mind, Adrian was somehow the real bad guy, while I was just a stupid person who made a big mistake. Does every bad guy think this? I wondered. Am I any better than Adrian? I drifted off to sleep feeling like the smallest version of myself I’d ever been. We’d been on the plane for four or five hours by the time Lulu and River were both asleep. Before Sid also decided to nap, I shifted in my seat and gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “Hey, did everything go all right with Adrian last night?” She let out a sigh and said, “I guess that depends on your definition of ‘all right.’” I laughed nervously. “Well, my bar is pretty low these days.” “We sketched out a plan for him to see Lulu every month, and I promised to come to Singapore later this year.” “So you’re definitely splitting up?” “Yep.” I squeezed her arm again, and we both sat in silence for a moment. Remembering how I’d felt the night before, I was ashamed. I just wanted to take all of her pain away. I wished I could go back in time and make Adrian a better husband and me a better—or at least a wiser—human being. With that familiar feeling of dread, I launched into the speech I’d been preparing in my head since I sat down in seat 14C. “Sid, listen, there is something else we need to talk about.” Startled, she replied, “Oh my gosh. That’s right.” She rotated her body to face me. “Sorry, Cass. This is all so surreal. I’ve completely lost track of things. It seems like a million years ago River told me you were there at my house. Why did you come all this way? Are you okay?” Her eyes were searching mine. “Yeah. But you know the letters?” Sid started laughing. “Um, yes, I know the letters, Cassie.” I heard someone take a sharp inhale and then a head popped up over the seats in front of us. “Ohmigod, I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Are you the Slow News Sisters?” An American woman—in her late twenties, if I’d had to guess—was studying our faces. She had kinky dark brown hair and a voice like a Valley girl with a sinus infection. I immediately felt a physical disdain toward her. “What? The what? No,” I spat, furious that this idiot was about to ruin everything. “Oh, sorry. I just heard the names Sid and Cassie and you mentioned letters, and I had to ask. I’m obsessed with them. Obsessed,” she said, her eyes bugging out. “You know what I’m talking about, right?” “Uh-uh,” I said, shaking my head “no” while shooting death rays with my eyes. “But wait—this is so crazy! You have the same names as they do. You did say Cassie and Sid, right? And you’re sisters, right? You’ve got to be. You look so much alike.” I could see her wheels turning. “Okay, thanks. We’ll have to check that out,” I said with finality, reaching for the in-flight magazine. “Just Google ‘Slow News Sisters.’ The blog is down right now because one of the sisters is suing the other one, but hopefully it will be back up soon. Wait. Tell me the truth. Are you them?” I wanted to roll up that magazine and thwack her like a fly. “Please. I don’t mean to be rude, but could you leave us alone? This is starting to get weird,” I said. She gave me a mean look and popped back down without another word. Sid looked at me, bewildered. What the fuck? she mouthed. Even under the harsh little spotlight that shone from above her seat, Sid looked beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that I took a moment to revel in the fact that the horrible woman said that we looked alike. But I had to get down to business. I was determined to come clean to Sid before we got back to New York, even if I had to pull her into the bathroom to do it. Then I had a better idea. I fished my notebook and pen out of my bag and wrote, I’m sorry, then nudged her elbow and pointed to the notebook. Sid looked at me quizzically, awaiting my next move. I got the Us Weekly out of my bag and showed it to her. She stared at it for several minutes, expressionless. She looked at me and pointed to the magazine and then gestured to the two of us, a confused look on her face. I nodded. She pointed to the seat in front of us. I nodded again. She held the magazine close to her face and reread the paragraph and then laughed a deep and strangely Santa-esque “Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho,” as if blending “No” with laughter and shaking her head. Not smiling, but really not frowning, either. Shooting a dramatic look toward the seat in front of us, I thrust the pen at her. No words . . . she wrote. I grabbed the pen back and wrote, I wanted to save the letters forever, so I scanned them and then started a private, protected blog that no one was supposed to ever see, but a freak computer glitch made it go viral for a few weeks. It’s private again now. Before I passed the pen back to Sid, I made a frowny face, but she made no move to take it. She closed her eyes and rested her head on her chair. My heart pounded as I waited for a sign. She grabbed the pen and wrote, All of our letters? Yes. On the Internet? Yes. But not anymore. She looked out the window for a long time. I watched her, but she didn’t look back. After a few minutes, I nudged her and gave her my most pathetic “sorry” face. Sid took off her seat belt, stood up, and looked down at the woman in front of us. Satisfied that she was engrossed in her movie, she whispered to me, “I don’t know what you want me to say.” Ouch. Those felt like angry words, although her tone was gentle. “I just want you to know how sorry I am for violating your privacy. I didn’t mean to.” I could feel tears threatening, and Sid laid her hand on my arm and sighed. “It’s not the end of the world, Cass. It’s not like I’m never going to talk to you again. It’s just a lot to take in.” Lulu woke up and needed a diaper change, so Sid took her to the bathroom and then spent the next forty minutes or so following her as she toddled up and down the aisle. I just sat there, feeling helpless. The small amount of relief that came from having told Sid was countered by the frustrating inability to talk it through and the discomfort of being physically trapped on this plane with a few hundred strangers. We managed to squeeze in a few more mini conversations over the rest of the trip, but we weren’t really talking. I couldn’t even tell if Sid wanted to. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE