by Portia Moore
“I don’t know what to say to you, Will,” I force the words from my throat.
He pushes the door open and stalks past me to the center of the living room. I shut the door and cross my arms.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I say, cautiously approaching him.
“We all have a choice!” he roars.
I don’t say anything. I know that he’s not done, and I don’t want his yelling to wake up Willa. With how he is now, they’d have an awful first meeting.
“You could have talked to me first. Given me some type of warning. I was blindsided! Chris will never forgive me for this!” he says frantically, walking closer to me so we’re only inches apart.
“We haven’t talked in a very long time. You wanted it that way, remember?” I say harshly.
His eyes widen. “So this is your way of getting back at me? Years later and at the worst possible time?”
“This isn’t about getting back at you. How could you think that? This is about doing the right thing. I thought that it would help Chris!” I yell back.
“Help him? You think destroying his family is the way to help him?” He laughs condescendingly.
“I thought that—I just thought that maybe if he knew the truth, about us and what he saw before he started to act differently, that it would help his treatment.” Tears start to fall from my eyes. Not for William, not for me, but for Chris.
“Him not remembering what happened between us was the best thing that ever happened. Not just for you and me but for him! You broke him. That was something that never had to be brought up. He was doing fine. You saw it!” His tone is desperate and I don’t know if he’s trying to convince me or himself.
We are both guilty. We relished in the secret that was gratefully forgotten. It was almost like a do-over with Chris. When I came back home after college and realized that not only had he forgiven me but, it was like it had never happened, it was a gift. Or so I thought then. I let out a deep breath.
“Chris hasn’t been fine since he saw us that night. He’s been seeing a therapist on and off for years. Him not remembering seeing us together wasn’t a blessing, it’s his curse, a repressed memory that has been tearing him apart. We always knew it. No one just simply forgets seeing his father fucking his best friend!” I yell back at him. He lowers his head and shakes it.
“I thought that maybe he had really forgiven us. That he chose to not ever bring it up because he didn’t want to hurt his mom. I didn’t literally think that he repressed seeing us together,” I say pleadingly. He looks up at me with a scowl.
“Well, let me just say, Dr. Lisa, that he is still not fine. None of us are after your confession,” he says with a forced laugh, and tears slip from his eyes. He wipes them away quickly.
“Is he okay?” I ask desperately.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“Lisa, I can’t sleep with all the yelling,” Willa says quietly, standing in the doorway.
“I’m sorry, honey. My friend is just upset. Go back to bed and watch some cartoons, okay?” I say before ushering her back to the bedroom.
When I return to the living room, Will’s face is expressionless. His wide blue eyes glisten. “Is that her?”
I feel butterflies in my stomach. I’ve imagined this moment so many times, but it was never like this. In my imagination, the daydreams of a nineteen-year-old girl, I would call him right before I went into labor. He would rush to my side and tell me everything would be okay, and I would have my family. Then it didn’t matter if I had to share him with the other one. When you’re young, you don’t see life for what it is. You disregard its harsh realities. You think if you just wish hard enough and say your wishes aloud, believe in them long enough, you can give them life and they can be granted. Life doesn’t necessarily turn out like that.
“Yes,” I say quietly.
He nods, makes his way slowly to the couch, and sits. I look at the man I had my first crush on, whom I gave myself to, whom I wanted to not just love me but be in love with me more than anything. After he ended us, he ended me for a while. I was heartbroken, I was lovesick, and I went into mourning.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he says, his eyes finding mine.
For the first time in years, I’m drawn in once more. I remember everything between us, everything I’ve pretended for eight years never happened, and I close my eyes to break the spell. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
I sit next to him, keeping the requisite inches between us. He puts his head in his hands and lets out a deep sigh.
“For who?” he mutters.
“For all of you. For Chris, for Gwen,” I say, feeling guilty even saying her name. As much as I grew to love Will, my love didn’t stop the guilt growing inside me, knowing what I was doing to her. A woman who had only shown me kindness. She never looked at me as anything other than Chris’s friend. She didn’t judge me based on who my mother was or what she did, and knowing that I was what everyone said I would be hurt more than anything.
“Does she know that I’m her—her father?”
I sigh. “She doesn’t even know that I’m her mother.” I chuckle sadly.
He looks at me questioningly. “How is that possible?”
I roll my eyes. It’s funny that he thinks I could balance a life as a preschool teacher and bartender and secretly be a mom. “She hasn’t been with me, Will.”
“Where has she been?” he asks, his eyes zeroed in on his hands.
“With Aunt Dani. I went to live with her after I found out I was pregnant. I knew she’d make a better mother than me,” I say honestly.
His head snaps up. I now have his full attention.
“And what about her father?” he asks angrily.
“What father? The father who was married and had a family? The father she’d have been a bastard to?” I say, tears falling from my eyes.
“That’s not fair. If anyone knew how much a child would mean to me, it would’ve been you,” he says.
I ignore the stab of guilt. “Tell me, if I had come to you and told you that I was pregnant—or better yet, after she was born—what would you have done? Would you have accepted her with open arms, or would she have been a secret love child? Is that what you would have wanted for our daughter?”
“And now? Now what life do you want for her?” he asks, his eyes boring into mine.
I look away as memories of touches trying to fight their way to the forefront of my consciousness, feelings that I’ve fought to keep down for so long. “I want her to have a better life than I did,” is all I can say.
“Gwen kicked me out of the house. Chris is furious with me. I don’t know how he’s going to handle all of this.” His deep sigh contains palpable anguish as he runs his hand through his hair. “I’ve got to figure out a way to fix this. I can’t lose my family.”
I feel anger rising in me. This man whom I loved and gave my youth to, whose child I brought into the world, is talking about how he has to save his family as if the little girl in the next room isn’t his family. I try to calm my anger—I’m being selfish and unreasonable. I have to stop myself from lashing out at him.
“I’d like to meet her when I’m not like this,” he says, standing from the sofa. I immediately stand as well.
“Where are you going?” I ask him as I follow him toward the door.
“Right now, I don’t think I’d be a good father to anyone. I need to—I just need a little time. I’ll be back. I promise.”
When he leaves, I do something I haven’t done in years. I cry over him and hope this isn’t the beginning of a trend.
IF THERE WAS ever a complicated relationship between sisters, it would be Gia and me. My mother called us summer and winter; she not only called us that but named us that. Gwen Summer and Gia Winter are what’s on our birth certificates accompanied by our last name.
We’re different in almost every way. Gia has dark, almost coal-black, long hair with hazel eyes, taking after my mot
her. I’m my father’s child, with light brown hair—almost red in the light—green eyes, and pale skin. She was the perfect child: beautiful, well-mannered, eager to please, and enjoyed the things mothers want their little girls to do. I was born on the hottest day of summer, so my father said I was born to be temperamental. My mother had to practically fight me to get me into a dress, and I hid my homework under the ugly frilly things she tried to make me wear. I grated on my mother’s last nerve, but my father was always my knight in shining armor, swooping in to save me when things got rocky. My father was my best friend. He understood me. We were alike, different from my mother in every way. The old saying that opposites attract definitely applied to them.
My mother was raised to be the wife of someone prestigious. She came from New Orleans, her parents were very old money, and she was groomed to be the wife of a senator, governor, or a CEO—someone proper, important, and wealthy. My father was a musician passing through after a canceled gig in Texas. He was a free spirit who blew my mother away from all that she knew. Looking at my mother was like looking at Gia, and mother said I’d always been my father’s child.
Looking back, I admit I was jealous of Gia. I envied the relationship she had with my mother, how she so easily lived up to the image my mother had of her daughters, how it was never forced, how naturally elegant and beautiful she was. Beautiful in a classic way. Gia’s features are entirely symmetrical, her voice the perfect hint of feminine, and not only that, she’s smart and dainty but always a little cold.
Most people took her coldness as mysteriousness—at least boys did. If we hadn’t been born into the same family, in the same house, we would probably have never been friends. But since we were sisters, we were best friends. She was my secret-keeper, and I think she found my rambunctious, rebellious nature entertaining. Since my antics highlighted her attributes, I’m sure she didn’t mind them as much as an older sister normally would. When I was punished and my dad wasn’t around to save me from my mother’s iron will, I’d run to Gia and jump in her arms for protection. Gia always had a way of reasoning with my mother that calmed her and even calmed me—for a while, that is.
I haven’t seen Gia in almost seven months, a timeframe I couldn’t have imagined as a little girl. I’d like to say we grew apart, but the reality is a coincidence, a force of nature so to speak, almost tore us apart. It didn’t, but it had certainly left holes in what used to be a solid relationship. As I walk up the stairs to her home, the circumstance that damaged our relationship is no longer content to lay dormant. It has moved to the forefront of my mind, taunting me, teasing me, wrapping threads of the past all around me.
When I was younger, I imagined Gia in two scenarios: married to someone important and intellectual, like a professor or scientist, or the first woman president. Opposite sides of the coin but both easily conceivable for her. She was like that, able to be submissive or completely in control. Better said, she could appear to be submissive while always in control.
Her house is large and immaculate. White columns in the front, perfectly manicured lawn, and two luxury vehicles parked in the garage. Space in Madison doesn’t mean much, but in this Chicagoland suburb of Burr Ridge, space equals status. The bigger the house, the more money spent, and Gia’s house represents a lot of money well spent.
My fingers tingle after I ring her doorbell. She should be home because Gia surprised everyone by not becoming a governor or marrying a CEO but by becoming a bestselling novelist. She’s sold enough books that she wouldn’t have to write a sentence again in her life unless she wanted to and could still live well. It’s the novelist part that surprised me, not the bestselling part, because whatever Gia does, she does to absolute perfection. Even her editor thought so, swept off his feet by the brilliant mind of Gia Dwyer. Her editor, now her beloved husband.
“Gwen!” Her green eyes widen as they land on me, a small smile on her face. She’s surprised, but at least she’s happy to see me.
She looks great, her thick dark hair falling in waves down her back. She’s fully dressed, wearing a cream-colored blazer covering a black shirt and jeans. That doesn’t mean that she’s headed out. Gia wouldn’t be caught dead with a hair out of place at any time of day. I think she sleeps looking perfect.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she says, pulling me into a tight hug.
I let out a sigh of relief as I hug her back. She steps back and takes in my appearance, frowning. Today isn’t a day when I particularly take pride in my appearance. My eyes have bags under them that could carry ten pounds of luggage. My hair hasn’t been washed in two days, and my oversized Packers sweatshirt isn’t doing anything for my figure. It’s funny I only think about things like that around my sister.
“What are you doing here? Not that I’m not glad to have you,” she says, flashing a wide pageant-girl smile.
On the drive here, I’d practiced managing my emotions, or at least containing them so as not to fall apart on her doorstep. I run my hand through my hair.
“Can I come in?” I say jokingly, and she laughs.
“Of course. I’m sorry. I’m just so shocked. When was the last time you landed on my doorstep unannounced?” She giggles, taking me by the hand and pulling me into the house. In less than a moment, we’re seated at her large kitchen table, and she’s making coffee. “So are you going to fill me in on what brings my little sister all the way from Podunk, Michigan?”
I can’t help but laugh. Gia has only been to my house three times in her whole life, for many reasons, but one is that she hates the country. Since I’m pretty much smack dab in the middle of Small Town Country, USA, my house isn’t very alluring to her.
“I missed you. I needed to see my sister,” I admit with a tight smile.
When she turns around, her eyes run over me. Her wide smile disappears into a concerned frown. She pulls up a chair next to me and angles her body toward mine. “What’s the matter?” Her tone is more serious, more concerned, and she focuses on me.
This change in her demeanor makes my tightly wound emotions want to unravel and reveal themselves. I take a deep breath and try to think of exactly what I want to say because once said, there’s no going back. Once I reveal what’s happened to my marriage, it will be a wound that will never close, a loose thread that can be pulled on to unravel my existence. Sometimes it’s a lot easier for you to move forward and possibly forgive the one who has done you wrong than it is for your family and friends. They can’t forgive and they never let you forget, and secrets like that can be ammunition used to destroy you when they see fit. She notices my hesitancy, which is ridiculous since I drove almost four hours to get here. I’m sitting in front of her as a ball of energy that’s so hard to contain I just want to release it all.
“Gwen, you can tell me anything. I’m your sister.”
The thing is I can’t tell her anything, because some things, no matter how badly you want to say them, can open doors that should remain locked, can create cracks in things that took years and years to rebuild. I feel my eyes well up, and I try to smile away my tears.
“Gwen, are you sick again?” Her eyes tighten as she grabs my hand and squeezes it.
“No. No, it’s nothing like that,” I tell her, and her arms wrap around me.
“Thank God,” she says, squeezing me tightly. “Then what is it? Is Christopher okay?” She pulls away, surveying my face.
“Not really,” I answer honestly.
“Is he having episodes again?” she asks urgently.
“No, it’s nothing like that,” I say, stifling my broken voice. “Not yet at least.” I shrug and laugh to cover my cry, but it’s unsuccessful.
Gia takes my hand again and lifts my chin. “You’re scaring me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
I stand up from the table and turn away from her. “You know. We don’t really talk about what happened.”
I don’t want to face her, but after a long stretch of silence, I do. Her face has gone dead, her eyes wide like she
’s seen a ghost, and that tells me she knows exactly what I’m talking about. She looks away from me.
“Some things are better not discussed,” she says quietly, but there’s an edge to her voice.
“I know.” Tears are streaming down my cheeks. I walk back to the table and sit across from her so she can see my face. “But I have to know now. Do you really . . . have you really forgiven me? Or have you just chosen to act like it didn’t happen?”
Her gaze doesn’t leave the table. “What does this have to do with anything?” Her frustration is evident in her voice.
“It has to do with everything for me. I need to know. Because right now, I have this hatred, this rage, this desire for vengeance coursing through me, and I have to know that it goes away, that I can let it go,” I beg.
Her eyes cut through me, and there’s a look on her face I haven’t seen in a long time. “You’re my sister. I had to let it go . . . and what does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
She looks at me closely, as if she’s trying to read my mind. She folds her hands in front of her and stares at them as if she’s frozen in place. “It still hurts sometimes.”
I feel a stab of pain. “Even after all of these years?”
“That type of pain doesn’t go away. It only dulls.” Then she shakes her head and smiles, returning to the woman she was earlier. “You were young. You always only thought about yourself. What does that have to do with why you’re here now? What’s going on?” She pours me a cup of coffee, and something in me makes me stand up from the table.
“Coming here was mistake,” I say, feeling my nerves colliding against one another.
She looks at me with confusion evident on her face.
“I’m sorry. I love you, but I shouldn’t have come,” I say, grabbing my purse and heading toward the living room door.
“Look, this is why we don’t talk about what happened. It doesn’t matter. Everything that happened in the past isn’t important. What’s important is that we made it past that. We didn’t let it destroy us. It could have, but it didn’t.” I have to get away from her before I burst into tears.
