As Close as Sisters

by Colleen Faulkner

  “So it’s true? You really killed someone, Aunt Aurora?” Maura asked. “He was your relative, right, Aunt Janine? Oh my God,” she murmured then. “He was your father, wasn’t he? The obituary said he was forty-one when he died.”

  I lowered my forehead to my knees, drawing myself into a tight ball. Aurora didn’t dare touch me, but her voice was a caress.

  “You’re okay,” she murmured in my ear. “You’re going to be fine.”

  And I was fine. Surprisingly enough.

  Aurora told the story. She kept it brief, but she didn’t sugarcoat it. What would have been the point of that? What, with Wikipedia out there?

  “We were all staying at the beach house. Janine and her family lived there year-round. It was Janine and her mom and dad and us. Her little brother wasn’t there,” Aurora explained. “My room now—that was Todd’s. I was sleeping in his room that night because. . . I don’t know. I slept in there sometimes. It was a Friday night in September. Rainy.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to concentrate on the sound of the waves and not the sound of my father’s footsteps outside my bedroom door.

  “I got up to go to the bathroom, and I heard your aunt Janine in her bedroom. She was crying.” Aurora’s voice broke.

  The girls sat motionless in the dark. Neither made a sound.

  “She was talking to someone. Begging him . . .” Aurora sat in the sand in her jeans, her legs stretched out in front of her. We’d all left our shoes in the Jeep. She had dark polish on her toenails. Blue.

  Aurora glanced at the girls, then at the water again. “I opened the bedroom door to see what was wrong.”

  I rocked very gently back and forth. The sand was wet under me. Cold. I vaguely wondered if I should go back to the Jeep for towels. Mia and Maura might be cold.

  “I opened the door, and there he was. Buddy McCollister.” She spoke his name as if he were a plague upon the earth. Which, of course, he was. “He was in Janine’s bed.”

  “Oh my God,” Mia breathed, starting to cry softly. “Aunt Janine, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You mean, like, in her bed?” Maura asked, clearly trying to wrap her head around what Aurora was saying. “Like—”

  “Yeah,” Aurora said. “Come to find out, the fucking bastard had been raping his own daughter for two years.”

  I listened to the sound of the waves, trying to block out Aurora’s voice. People describe it as a crash, but it’s not really a crash. A crash is the sound of glass shattering, metal buckling. Like in an automobile accident. The waves are just white noise. There’s no violence in their sound.

  I tightened my arms around my knees and wondered how it could be twenty-eight years later and Buddy could still bring me into a fetal position.

  Aurora went on talking. “He was drunk. Crazy. When he saw me, he got out of her bed. He came after me. He knew I’d tell.”

  “Where did you get the gun?” Maura breathed.

  “He was a cop and a dick. There were guns all over the house. Loaded. He liked them. A lot. He was always talking about how he hoped someone would break in so he could blow their head off. I guess he had one with him when he went into Janine’s room. His way of keeping her quiet. Guys like him, they do that kind of shit,” Aurora told the girls.

  She was sticking to the story she’d told the cops. Only the four of us knew that Aurora had gone downstairs and gotten the gun out of the kitchen cabinet where Buddy kept it. I sometimes wondered if my mom knew the truth. If she did, she had never voiced it. Not to the investigating officers. Not even to me.

  “So how did you get his gun?”

  “It was on this table near Janine’s bed. We were doing a big puzzle on it that afternoon after school. Because it was raining.” Aurora stopped for a minute.

  I looked at her. She was staring out at the ocean. Dry-eyed. She was glad she killed Buddy. She’d always been glad. I’d never heard a breath of regret from her. She’d done what I hadn’t had the guts to do. She’d saved me.

  “We both went for it, and I beat him. He knocked over the table. The puzzle pieces went flying.”

  That part was true. About the puzzle. He did throw it over. As he went down. It was a Goonies puzzle. My brother’s. I remember the box. The color of the pieces.

  “It all happened so fast,” Aurora told the girls. “I don’t exactly remember it. It’s like a movie in my head. Like I saw it, but not like I did it. He lunged for me. I aimed the gun. He said terrible, awful things. He kept coming. I pulled the trigger.”

  “Just once?” Maura whispered.

  Aurora looked right at her. “All it took.”

  14

  McKenzie

  Lilly was making tea when I walked into the kitchen the morning of the Fourth of July.

  “Hey.” She smiled, all bright and sunshiny.

  “We the first ones up?” I asked. It was almost nine.

  “Yup. I don’t know how long they stayed up after we went to bed. How you feeling? You look better.” She studied me intently, making me feel self-conscious. “Your color is better.”

  I adjusted my turban. “Good. I’m good.” I was feeling surprisingly good. I’d had one brief bout on the toilet around four a.m., but other than that, I’d slept well.

  “You look good.”

  She was so cute in her short, white, flowered robe over her pink nightgown. She’d tied the robe high, making her belly seem even bigger this morning than it had the previous night. Maybe it was bigger. She’d parted her hair down the middle and sported little spiky pigtails behind each ear. Adorable. I, on the other hand, was wearing men’s boxer shorts and a ratty T-shirt, and I knew for a fact that my face was blotchy. The lavender terrycloth turban didn’t add much to my ensemble.

  “You want tea?” Lilly asked.

  “Yeah.” I came around the counter. “But I can get it myself.”

  “I’ll make it. You sit. Rest.”

  “I rested all night.”

  “Let me do this for you. For me, if not for you. I feel bad that there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do for you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You being here. For a whole month. That’s for me.” I opened my arms wide. “Let’s face it. This is all for me.”

  Lilly flitted around the kitchen like a bee. She poured water from the teakettle into the mugs. She took out a pitcher of orange juice. She popped an English muffin in the toaster. “Butter or strawberry jam?”

  “I don’t think I want—”

  “Sit. I’ll get both. You’ve got to eat something. You’re too skinny. You don’t want your boobs to get saggy.”

  I didn’t dignify that with an answer. It was already too late to save them. “Coins in a sock” was the phrase that came to mind. I sat on a stool.

  “Were you sick last night?” She took a yellow plastic tray from one of the cupboards. She’d brought it from home a summer or two ago. Lilly was into serving trays. She had a bunch of them at her house, themed for holidays and the seasons. “We should eat out on the porch. The rain’s passed. It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

  I watched as she set the mugs on the tray, added a plate with an English muffin, and popped another muffin into the toaster. Next, she put the sugar bowl on the tray. She didn’t get milk. She never drank milk in her tea, being Asian, I suppose, and she knew I wasn’t doing dairy.

  “Weird that Janine’s not up.” I glanced over my shoulder in the general direction of the staircase. “She never sleeps in.”

  “I heard her early this morning. Like . . . five thirty or six. She was letting Fritz out.”

  “Doubly weird. He never gets up at night.” Surprised that I was actually a little hungry, I reached for a half of the muffin on the plate.

  “Jam?” Lilly held up a butter knife. “It’s strawberry. From the farmers’ market in Lewes, Janine said.”

  “Dry is perfect.” I waved the crispy muffin half at her.

  She leaned forward, forearms on the counter, and lowered he
r voice. On her left hand she wore a platinum wedding band and an enormous marquise diamond. “So what’s Janine said to you about the new girlfriend?”

  I shook my head. Nibbled. “Not much. She’s a psychologist. I think she does work for the state police and that’s how Janine met her.”

  “How long have they been dating?”

  “You know how Janine is; she never wants to share the juicy details. A while, I think though. Eight or nine months?”

  “They living together?”

  I shrugged.

  Lilly lifted one of the tea bags out of a yellow mug and, using a spoon, wrapped the tag around it and squeezed the tea from it. She tossed the tea bag in the trash under the sink and came back for the other. “You ask her about her?”

  “Tried. She wasn’t all that forthcoming.”

  “So why do you think all the secrecy?” She wound the tag around the second tea bag. “Think it’s just an eff-buddy kind of thing.”

  I laughed.

  “What?” Her eyes got big.

  “It just sounds so funny. Eff-buddy. Coming out of you. Miss Priss.”

  “I’m not prissy. That’s not very nice.” She tossed the second tea bag in the trash. “I just don’t like the F word. It’s uncouth.”

  “Uncouth,” I repeated. Then laughed again.

  Lilly tried to look annoyed and retrieved the second muffin from the toaster. “I think you should ask Janine about Chris.” She set the plate on the tray and lifted the tray off the counter. “We need to know what’s going on.”

  “I can carry that.” I got off the stool.

  “I can do it.”

  We stood there regarding each other for a second. The pregnant woman versus the woman dying of cancer. I sighed and headed for the deck.

  “I told you. I already asked Janine about Chris.” I walked through the living room. “She didn’t want me to know anything about her.”

  “Did you tell her to invite her over?”

  I unlocked the door and opened it for Lilly. Leaving it open, I followed her out onto the deck. “If she doesn’t want to tell us anything about her, obviously she’s not going to invite her over. You’re probably right—she’s probably just a fuck buddy.”

  Lilly waited for me to sit, then set the plate with the English muffin with the bites out of it and the blue mug on the arm of my Adirondack. She put the tray on a little white wrought iron table between her chair and Aurora’s and sat down. “I think we should just tell her to invite her over.” She held the sugar bowl for me.

  I spooned sugar into my tea. “So you tell her.”

  “She’ll say to mind my own business. She’ll do it if you ask.”

  I sighed and picked up my naked muffin. “I don’t like this, you know.” I took a bite and looked out at the beautiful blue sky, the pale sand, and the water in the distance. It was the same sliver of earth that I had been looking at since I was in middle school, and it still didn’t fail to take my breath away. I liked the idea that the ocean, the dunes, the sea grass, even the rickety red dune fence would go on looking the same when I was gone. “Being the one with cancer,” I said.

  When Lilly didn’t answer, I glanced at her. Her eyes were full of tears.

  “Ah, sweetie, don’t.” I reached with my free hand and gave hers a squeeze.

  She pressed her lips together, trying hard not to cry.

  I took my hand back and sipped my tea. “Let’s talk about something more cheerful. How’s the nursery coming along? Did you go with owls or kangaroos?”

  “Owls. I got all the bedding and an owl lamp, and the rocking chair has an owl carved into the back.” She gestured as she explained, becoming instantly animated. “The walls are pale green, and I had that girl from the art school come in and paint a mural on the south wall. Trees and a big mama owl and a big papa owl and a baby owl. It’s gorgeous.”

  “Sounds like it. I want to see it.” I sipped the hot, sweet tea. “I’d like to.”

  “Of course you should come and see it. You should stay with us for a few nights next month. I know Matt would love to have you come and stay.”

  “How is Matt?”

  “He’s good. Great. We hired another optometrist last month. Business is booming.”

  “I meant how’s Matt with you? I know you guys had hit a rough patch a few months ago.” What I hadn’t known, at the time, was that she’d been pregnant. She’d been pregnant, and he’d been talking about moving out, which obviously concerned me, now that I knew.

  “We’re fine. He’s good.” She began to butter her muffin.

  “So he was unhappy in the marriage in March and now he’s happy?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I think he was bored or something. Or maybe it had just occurred to him that I was the only woman he’d ever sleep with again. I think some salesgirl who comes into our office was batting her eyelashes at him.” She rolled her eyes. She was trying to act like she wasn’t worried, but I could tell from the look on her face that she was.

  I sighed. I was hoping for an easy morning with no serious discussions. They could be so tiring. I just wanted to have a fun Fourth of July. “What’s going on, Lilly?”

  She took a bite of her neatly buttered muffin.

  “I can see it on your face, Lilly. Is it Matt? I swear to God, I’ll kick his ass if he’s done something stupid. I’ll send Janine to kick his ass. You know she’ll do it for me.”

  She set the muffin back on her plate and chewed slowly. “It’s not Matt.” She looked down at her hands now on her lap. “I mean it is, but . . . really, it’s me.”

  I sipped my tea and waited.

  Finally, she looked up at me. “I know what you’re going to say, but . . . I think I need to tell him.”

  I instantly knew what she was referring to, even though we probably hadn’t discussed it in four or five years. “You don’t need to tell him.”

  “We’re having a baby together. He’s trying so hard to make it work. We’re all about honesty and telling each other how we feel. And what am I doing? Basically, I’m lying to him.”

  “You’re not lying to him.”

  “I’m keeping the truth from him. I never keep anything from him.”

  “I don’t think the same rules apply, not when you’re talking about the past. You were a kid. It was twenty-two years ago,” I argued. “Long before you met Matt, for heaven’s sake.” I opened my arms. “Matt probably has a past he doesn’t care to share, either.”

  “He doesn’t have the kind of past I have. I can guarantee you.” She sat there for a minute in silence. “It seems wrong.”

  “Eat your muffin,” I told her. “It’s getting cold.”

  She spread strawberry jam on her muffin, concentrating way too hard on it. “And it’s not just Matt. I feel like I’m lying to Janine and Aurora, too.”

  “You never lied to them, either. You just never . . . provided full disclosure.”

  Once, a long time ago, I might have felt guilty about me knowing about this part of Lilly’s life and Aurora and Janine not knowing, but at some point, I’d realized it just wasn’t that important. I’d only found out by sheer coincidence, and Lilly had been so ashamed that I’d agreed to keep it to myself. As the years passed, I sort of forgot about it. She hadn’t hurt anyone. She hadn’t stolen anything. It was just sex. Who didn’t have sex with someone when they were twenty that they wouldn’t care to admit to at forty-two? So she took money from these men. She only did it three times and decided that it didn’t matter how much she got paid, she wasn’t escort material.

  Lilly sat there, looking out over the railing.

  I exhaled. “I don’t want to see you make a mistake like this. A hormonal mistake. If you really want to tell Matt, I think you need to wait another six months. Wait until the baby’s been born. When you’re yourself again.” I shrugged. “Then tell him if you want. Tell everyone. Aurora and Janine, your dad, my girls, hell, tell my mother, if you want. It will give her something to bring up every time I m
ention one of you besides Aurora flashing the security guard at the football game our junior year in high school.”

  “You’re making fun of me. Trivializing a painful time in my life.”

  “I’m not. I swear I’m not.” I thought about it for a moment. “No, actually, I am because it is trivial.” I held up my hand, refusing to let her interrupt. “You were young. You made some bad choices. We all did. Remember Billy Locket? My junior year at UD? Basically, I had sex with him so I could go to fraternity parties and get free beer.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” she said.

  “It is. No one is going to fault you for mistakes you made twenty-two years ago. When you were twenty.” I had to hold back to keep from shouting the words at her.

  “Then why shouldn’t I tell Matt?”

  “Because he’ll fault you for it” is what I wanted to say. “Because, while I like him, he can be uptight and unforgiving.” But I didn’t say it. “Let’s talk about it with Aurora and Janine, okay?”

  She hesitated. “So you think I should tell them?”

  “Will it feel enough like a confession to keep you from telling your husband?”

  She considered my words. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She fiddled with a bread crumb on her plate. “I guess I need to think on it a little more. Don’t say anything to them, please?”

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  She waved her hand. “Let’s change the subject. I’m tired of talking about this. I’m tired of thinking about it and worrying about it.”

  I felt a little bit like I’d dodged a bullet. My initial reaction was to think, considering my circumstances, that this did seem trivial. But I knew I couldn’t look at it that way. My having cancer didn’t cancel out what Lilly had done or the shame she had felt afterward. Still felt, obviously. I had to keep that in mind sometimes. My terminal cancer didn’t trump everyone else’s problems. I was going to be gone someday, and they were still going to be here. With their problems.

  I reached for my mug. “Tell me your plans. How long are you taking off after the baby is born? Going back full time? Part time?”

  I could see her trying to shift gears. She did it, though. And I was proud of her for it.