As Close as Sisters

by Colleen Faulkner

  I was skimming the Wikipedia entry. There was the usual stuff: what she was known for, how her work had impacted the art world. Down in the personal section there were particulars about where and when she was born, where she went to school, what famous person she studied under. I found a single line there that said, “At age fourteen, Boudreaux shot and killed Officer Buddy McCollister in self-defense. No charges were filed.”

  I looked up. “So Mia and Maura asked you?”

  Aurora nodded.

  I felt a twinge of something akin to jealousy that they hadn’t asked me, but if they had, I don’t know if I would have told them without Aurora present. It wasn’t my story to tell. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, I also felt a sense of relief. Now they knew and I didn’t have to be the one to tell them. Mia was still mad at me because I was the one who told her there was no Santa. It hadn’t mattered that she was ten, an age when kids didn’t believe any longer. Or that her sister was making fun of her. Or that I hadn’t killed Santa, just told her the truth of his nonexistence.

  I looked up at Aurora over the screen of the laptop. “How much did you tell them?”

  Janine leaned forward, clasping her hands and resting them on the table. “What needed to be told.”

  “O . . . kay.” I drew the word out. “And that was . . .”

  Lily waddled out of the bathroom. “I told you guys to wait.” She took her seat.

  “Wikipedia just says that Aurora killed Buddy in self-defense and that she wasn’t charged,” I told Lilly.

  Lilly looked at Aurora. “So you told them why you did it, right? About Buddy and Janine?”

  “Kind of hard to leave that part out,” Janine deadpanned.

  My turn. “Did they ask a lot of questions?”

  Aurora shook her head. “Not really. I think they were stunned. They knew their aunt Aurora had had her wild times, but I doubt they imagined me a murderess.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say that, Aurora,” Lilly said. “You know how I feel about it.”

  “They understood though . . . about Buddy?” I asked.

  “They understood.” Aurora’s tone was as flat as Janine’s had been. “Mia cried.”

  I couldn’t resist a sad smile. My Mia. Her heart went out to people. That was good. And bad. She was so easily hurt that I sometimes wished she were a little tougher—like Maura.

  I turned to Janine. “You okay with this?”

  Janine shrugged. “We should have told them sooner.”

  “I disagree,” Lilly countered. “Incest is a mature subject, and this wasn’t about some girl in a newspaper, a girl they didn’t know. This was about you, Janine.” She turned her attention to me. “I completely understand why you put off telling them.”

  “I didn’t mean to let it go this long.” I closed the laptop. I hated to ask, but I needed to know the specific details Aurora had given. I assumed she had told the same story she’d provided the police. The same story we all told. (Often when it first happened. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d told someone, though.) Even Janine’s mom. It was a story that had been with us so long that I almost believed it. Except that wasn’t the way it had happened.

  “Exactly what did you tell them?” I asked Aurora, taking care with my tone. As tough as she seemed, I knew that somewhere inside, Aurora still regretted taking a man’s life. Even a creepy crawler’s like Buddy.

  “You told them he had the gun in the room?” Lilly asked.

  “No, Lilly.” Aurora gave her one of her bored looks. The kind that didn’t work with us because no matter how hard she tried to pretend, we knew she wasn’t the heartless bitch she appeared to be. Her sarcasm was thick. “I told Maura and Mia that I opened the bedroom door, saw Buddy on top of Janine, and then I closed the door quietly. I told them I tiptoed down to the kitchen, got the handgun from the shelf with the Burger King glasses, and went back upstairs. I said I went into the room, hollered at Buddy, and when he got out of Janine’s bed and came at me, I aimed for his chest and shot him.”

  That was the truth. Buddy hadn’t taken the gun in with him. Aurora lied to the police that night. She lied to us all. It had been a good lie because no one questioned her story. Janine’s mom would have been the one to speak up if anyone would have, but she’d fully supported Aurora’s slightly altered version.

  Anyone who knew Buddy—extended family members, friends, coworkers—knew he was nuts. Everyone knew he kept guns all over the house. (And it was the ’80s; people weren’t as conscious of gun safety as they are now.) When people who knew him found out he was raping his fourteen-year-old daughter, and had been since she was twelve, I don’t think anyone cared how Aurora got the gun to shoot him. I think some of those people might have done the same thing, in Aurora’s circumstances.

  After it first happened, I had bouts of guilt. I actually considered going to my parents and telling them what really happened. The pangs faded over time. Now, I couldn’t say for sure if it had been the right thing to do or not. Buddy had been a violent man. Had Aurora just walked into Janine’s room that night, I don’t know what would have happened, if not then, then the next time he had Janine alone. Or Aurora for that matter. One thing I was sure of, Buddy had been capable of murder.

  Lilly’s eyes filled with tears, and she reached for Aurora’s hand.

  Aurora tried to pull away, but Lilly wouldn’t let her. Our gentle, sweet Lilly fought to hold on. “You came to Janine’s defense. You saved her from Buddy,” she said with a fierceness we didn’t often hear in her voice. “You made sure Buddy would never do that to her again.”

  Aurora sat there dry-eyed.

  I glanced at Janine. She was staring at the beer in her hand. I reached over and took her free hand. Squeezed it and let it go. She turned her head and half smiled, but didn’t make eye contact.

  I pressed my hands to the table, ignoring my cards, still lying facedown. “So why didn’t the girls tell me they knew?” I asked. “When I came down to the beach after I talked to Jared, someone should have said something to me right then.” I looked around the table. “One of you should have said something to me.”

  Lilly opened her water bottle. “We should have. We were going to. But the fireworks started and then the girls left right after.”

  “You were tired,” Janine explained. “You went right to bed.”

  “And this morning?” I asked.

  “We were all having a nice day and you seemed . . . like you were having a good day,” Lilly said.

  I picked up my cards, annoyed, but understanding. In their position, I’d probably have done the same thing. “Let’s play.”

  “Don’t be angry.” Janine drew her thumb across the label of the beer bottle, smoothing it. “Maura and Mia needed to be told. They’re old enough to know. They’ve been old enough for a while.”

  I didn’t know if Janine meant to criticize me, but I made the conscious decision not to take it that way. “Who won the last trick?”

  One by one, they picked up their cards. I waited for Lilly to put down the lead card. “What should I do?” I asked. “Call them to talk about it? Wait for them to call me?”

  “Call them tomorrow,” Lilly suggested.

  Janine waited for her turn, then tossed out a card. “Call them and tell them you’re ready to talk about it when they are. Give them some space.”

  I looked across the table at Aurora. She was going to say, “Let it go.” She was going to say that if Mia and Maura wanted to talk about it with me, they would. And if they didn’t, I needed to mind my own business. She was going to say that seventeen-year-old girls have the right to some privacy. That they didn’t have to discuss every thought that went through their silly little heads.

  I waited, watching her.

  She picked up her glass, trying to get another drop of gin from it. “I think you should call them and make a lunch date. Tell them you want to talk to them about what happened that night. Have lunch with them and explain to them why you ke
pt it from them. Tell them they can talk to you about it now or later. They can talk to any of us, anytime about it.”

  I was totally astonished by Aurora’s reaction. I think Lilly and Janine were, too. “You think you and I should both go?”

  “Nope. Aha! We won another one.” Aurora scooped up the cards. She looked at me across the table. “I think you’ve got to do this one on your own.”

  Aurora had just thrown down her lead card when Janine’s phone began to vibrate. And continued to vibrate. A call, not a text.

  She glanced down at the phone at the same time that I did. A name hadn’t come up, just a number. I was surprised when she picked it up. None of us picked up calls without a caller ID. She must have known the number.

  “Hello?” She paused. Then, “No, no. It’s fine. It’s cool.” Janine got up and walked toward the doors to the deck. Fritz was sitting in the doorway. He raised his head and looked at her.

  “Okay. Um, sure,” Janine said into the phone. She paused to listen again, glancing back at us. “No. I totally agree. You’re absolutely right.” She looked at us again. Lilly and I looked at her.

  “Chris?” Lilly whispered to me.

  I made an I have no idea face.

  “If no one’s going to get me a drink, guess I’ll get it myself.” Aurora rose from her chair. “Tell your girlfriend we said hi,” she called to Janine.

  Janine was giving the address of the house. It had to be her girlfriend.

  I smiled at Lilly. We were both thinking the same thing. We’re going to meet her!

  Of course, I couldn’t believe that Janine would date someone as long as she’d been dating Chris (which of course we didn’t know because she wouldn’t tell us, but it had to be for some length of time, didn’t it? I mean, Janine clearly liked this girl) and not bring her here. Or at least show her where the beach house was. Janine rarely came here to stay without one of us.

  “Okay. Sounds good,” Janine was saying. “Should I come get you?” She had a weird look on her face. She snapped her fingers. Fritz was on his feet in an instant. Janine walked out onto the deck with the German shepherd. Fritz bounded down the steps into the dark.

  Janine remained on the phone out on the deck, but she was talking quietly. She didn’t seem excited. I wondered if Chris was insisting it was time she meet us, and Janine was only going along with it because she knew she was going to have to let us all meet her at some point.

  Janine ended the call and walked back into the room at the same time as Aurora.

  “Chris coming over?” Lilly asked, bubbly with excitement.

  Janine slid into her seat. “Would there be any way of avoiding it?”

  19

  Aurora

  I stood outside her bedroom door for a long time. The light was on, the door open just a little. The whole house was quiet. The doors and windows were closed; the heat pump was humming, blowing cool air through the ductwork.

  Janine and Lilly had gone to bed. We managed to finish the game of cards, but everyone had seemed pretty tired. Subdued.

  I rested my forehead on the doorjamb. I feel so sad and I don’t know why. It would have been easy to make the assumption that I felt bad because I’d had to tell Mia and Maura what a horrific fuck Buddy had been. Because of the horrendous thing that had happened to Janine. Or I could chalk up the heaviness in my heart to the fact that McKenzie is dying.

  But I know that isn’t why I’m sad. I mean I am, but the reality is that I’m sad because I’m a terrible person and I don’t want to be. I’m a liar. I’ve lied to the people who love me the most. I’ve lied to them over and over again. To the only people who have ever loved me. Will ever love me. They think I’m some kind of hero, but I’m not. I’m a selfish, self-centered bitch. I’m exactly what I seem to be.

  I knocked on the door and pushed in.

  McKenzie was lying in the bed, looking small and pale. And sick. She’d washed her face, so her eyebrows were gone. Her computer was on her lap, but I suspected she’d been dozing. She was wearing a fleece beanie on her head, one more appropriate for the ski slopes than the beach in July.

  “Cold?” I asked.

  She looked at me quizzically.

  I tapped the top of my head.

  She chuckled and patted the bed beside her.

  I stretched out beside her, propping my head up with my hand.

  “I wish you wouldn’t swim at night,” she said. I was in my swimsuit. My cap and towel were on the deck.

  “I know,” I said.

  “It’s dangerous. Half the time, we don’t even know you’re gone.”

  “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” I teased. “I could drown? A shark could eat me?”

  “There are no sharks big enough to do anything beyond nip at your toes in this water,” she argued.

  “Okay, so maybe a boat runs over me and cuts me up with the propeller.”

  “Eww.” She gave me a nudge.

  I went on. “What good would it do you, knowing I was out there? It’s not like you could do anything if I did get into trouble.”

  She looked at me, smiling but looking sad at the same time. “I worry about you.”

  “Which is why you don’t need to know when I go at night.”

  She dropped her head back on her pillow and closed her eyes for a minute.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She kept her eyes shut. “What have you done now?”

  I thought about my sadness. About the big lie. The lie I had allowed them to believe all these years. “About Maura and Mia. I didn’t mean to usurp your authority.”

  She laughed and opened her eyes, turning her head on her pillow to look at me. “Usurp my authority?”

  “They’re your kids,” I said. “I totally respect that.”

  “I know you do.”

  “And you’re a good mom. Janine and I didn’t mean to be critical, saying you should have told them before. What do we know? We’re not parents. And we all know why.”

  McKenzie raised her hand over her head and stared at the ceiling fan above the bed. I noticed that her cheeks were red, but not a flushed red. More like a rash.

  “Do you think so?” she asked me, sounding lost in her thoughts. “I mean . . . really?”

  “Do I think what?”

  “That I’m a good mom?” She hesitated, then turned her head to look at me again. “I have so many regrets, Aurora.”

  “Please. I’ve sobered up. You can’t do this to me. I’m not going to listen to you.”

  She smiled. Still sad.

  “I am serious,” I said. And I was. “You’ve been a good mom. A great mom. What did you do? You loved them. And that’s hard. I know how hard it is to love people. To do it right.” Emotion crept into my voice. I was going to have to cut this visit short if I couldn’t get ahold of myself. “You were selfless.” I took her hand. Her nails were short and neat. She’s always had nice hands. Feminine hands. “Not many parents can say that.”

  “I tried to do what was best for them,” McKenzie said. “I hope they realize that. After I’m gone.”

  “Oh, God,” I groaned. “Are we really going there? I just came to say good night.”

  “So you could sneak out of the house and go swimming.”

  “Something like that,” I agreed.

  “Fine, go get eaten by a shark.” She glanced at her laptop, balanced on her bony hips. “But you have to see this before Jaws gets you. I’ve been working on our video diary. I’m having so much fun.”

  She sat up, shifting the computer on her lap, and tapped on the keyboard. “I found this app. Downloaded it myself, without Maura’s or Mia’s help, thank you very much. I’m taking the videos I’ve been recording on my phone and downloading them to the computer, then editing them with this app. This is just a little piece, but you have to watch this.”

  I watched the screen as she hit play. It was a clip of Lilly holding up her finger, then hustling down the hall to disappear into the bathr
oom, followed by Lilly walking into the bathroom again, in a different outfit. Then Lilly holding up her finger saying, “Wait, I have to pee.” And practically running to the bathroom.

  “Wait, this is the best part,” McKenzie said, cracking up.

  I was laughing with her as I watched Lilly run into the bathroom, back up, and run in and back up twice more. McKenzie had rewound the same clip and played it multiple times, but it didn’t matter that it had obviously been manipulated. Dubbed over the top was Lilly saying, “Have to pee, have to pee, have to pee.”

  “Oh, Christ, that’s too funny. Play it again,” I said.

  She played it again, then we played it a third time, laughing so hard, I was afraid we were going to wake them upstairs.

  “That’s terrible,” I said, laughing so hard I was snorting. “Awful. Don’t show her. She’ll make you delete it. She’ll make you delete the whole video diary and possibly destroy your phone.”

  “I know.” McKenzie had to catch her breath. “Isn’t it hilarious? I think you guys should play it at my funeral. Anyone who knows her will be rolling in the aisle, laughing.”

  “She would kill you,” I said. Then, realizing what I’d just said, I looked at McKenzie. “Okay, that came out—”

  We both burst out laughing.

  “Go on,” she told me, reaching for a tissue from a box on the other side of the bed. “Go swimming. And let me know when you’re back.”

  I climbed out of bed. “That’s really not how I roll.”

  “Well, that’s how you’re going to roll tonight,” she told me, tapping on the keyboard, not bothering to even look up at me.

  “Back in an hour,” I whispered, slipping out of her room, into the darkness, and back into my cowardice.

  20

  Lilly

  “I brought some iced tea,” I said to Janine, walking onto the front deck, carrying a tray with a pitcher of freshly brewed tea and four glasses. “Where’s everybody else?”

  I was just making conversation. I knew McKenzie was taking a shower, getting ready for lunch with her girls, and I had seen Aurora leave a few minutes ago, headed out on one of her walks. She might be gone twenty minutes . . . or twenty days.