My Sister, Myself

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Phyllis moved the salt and pepper shakers. “So what are you thinking now?”

  “That as long as I’m Christine, I’m safe.”

  “Christine has a job to do starting Monday.”

  “I know,” Tory said, her throat dry.

  “Christine said you never finished college.”

  “I never even went to college. Bruce didn’t want me on campus with all the college boys.”

  Both women were silent, the words they weren’t speaking hanging in the air. How could Tory possibly be Christine? Christine was a college professor.

  “You could always quit the job.”

  “And go where? Do what? My résumé says I’m a professor.”

  Every possibility had already occurred to Tory. She knew there was no way this could work. No way she could convince herself this was even a little bit right. She was just too weak to face the alternative.

  “Bruce will probably keep tabs on Christine for a little while. If she’s alive, she has to be teaching college. Anything else will make him suspicious.”

  “The bastard should be in prison.”

  Tory couldn’t travel that road. If she did, her bitterness would destroy her.

  “I have two choices,” she said, pushing congealed eggs around on her plate. “Either I come clean and spend the rest of my life trying to hide from Bruce and wearing his bruises every time I fail, or I show up at Montford University on Monday morning and teach English.”

  She used to believe there was a difference between right and wrong. That for every situation there was a correct choice, the right choice. She’d even vowed, when her married life had first become a living hell, worse than the life she’d had growing up, to always make that right choice. She’d believed it would eventually deliver her from cruelty, from pain.

  She didn’t believe that anymore.

  “The boxes Christine shipped are in the closet in the spare bedroom,” Phyllis said. “I’m using it as an office.”

  Tory watched the other woman scrape their uneaten food into the garbage, and then stack the two plates.

  “Her lessons plans are in there,” Phyllis continued, speaking unemotionally, as though they were discussing nothing more serious than what movie they were going to see. “They’ll be clear, concise and very detailed. You’ve got thirty-six hours before school starts.”

  Heart pounding, Tory said, “You don’t think I should even consider trying this, do you.”

  Phyllis looked Tory straight in the eye, her expression grave. “I don’t see that you have any other choice.”

  Tory held Phyllis’s gaze for as long as she could stand it, then dropped her eyes.

  “What would Christine think?” she whispered, the guilt rising up to choke her. She should be dead, not Christine. She’d have gladly given her life if it meant saving Christine’s.

  “She’s watching over you, Tory. Can’t you feel her?” Phyllis lowered her voice to a rough whisper, but the sharp conviction behind her words was unmistakable.

  Tears in her eyes, Tory shook her head. She wanted so badly to believe that Christine was still with her. She could hardly even breathe when she thought about facing the rest of her life without her sister. But she couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. Did Christine really want her to do this? Or was Tory’s mind, influenced by her cowardice, playing some sick game with her?

  “Christine told me once, not too long ago, that you were her only reason for living,” Phyllis said.

  “You were the only good thing in or about her life.”

  “She told me that, too, but she was just being kind. It didn’t really mean anything. How could it? She was an incredible woman, had the whole world at her feet.”

  “She didn’t think so.”

  The sincerity in Phyllis’s voice grabbed Tory, holding her until she had to admit that Phyllis might know more about her sister’s mental state in the past few years than she did herself.

  “She would insist that you do this, Tory,” Phyllis said firmly. “And she’d want me to help you in any way I can.”

  “WILL—DR. PARSONS—only met Christine once. Months ago. She’s had her hair cut since then. Lost some weight…”

  The two women were in the bedroom Phyllis had turned into an office, sitting on the floor and surrounded by opened packing boxes. They’d been at it most of the day, Phyllis administering the fastest teacher-education course in history.

  “Our eyes are what people notice most about us,” Tory said, trying, for Phyllis’s sake if nothing else, to get into the spirit of the plan.

  “They’re beautiful,” Phyllis said gently. “So large and such a striking blue. But mostly so expressive.”

  Tory leafed through the pages of the American literature anthology she held on her lap.

  “They were one of the first things I noticed about Christine,” Phyllis added.

  The familiar pang clutched Tory’s insides. “I’m so sorry, Phyllis,” she said, dropping a lesson plan for the third week of classes as she looked up. “I’ve been weeping all over the place about losing my sister, but you also lost a great deal, didn’t you? The way Christine talked about you, the two of you must have been very close.”

  Tears brimmed in Phyllis’s eyes, but her ready smile was evident, too. “We were. Your sister was very special.”

  Tory nodded, a measure of peace loosening the knots in her stomach. “I think you must be very special, too,” she said softly. “Do you know you’re the first real friend Christine ever had?”

  “No,” Phyllis said, her eyes wide. “I know she was a private person, but as sweet as she was, I’m sure there were others who scaled those walls of hers.”

  Scaled those walls. The words were threatening to Tory. She and Christine both had their walls. And the security in that was to think them unscalable.

  “Our colleagues at the college all flocked to her,” Phyllis said. She was assembling materials for the fourth week’s lesson plan. “It must have been the same for her in college. You probably just never met any of her friends, since she was five years older than you.”

  “She never had a friend,” Tory said with complete certainty.

  Any chance of friendship had ended when they’d tried to report their stepfather’s abuse. Everyone had been shocked. Ronald was well-known in the community, soft-spoken, active at church. He’d carpooled. He’d protested his innocence, incredibly hurt by then-twelve-year-old Christine’s allegations. They’d been assigned a caseworker, but of course there’d been nothing to find. Ronald had simply not had anything alcoholic to drink during the weeks of the investigation.

  And the confusing cruel truth was, when Ronald wasn’t drinking, he hadn’t been a bad father to them.

  They’d been made to feel so ashamed of their complaints they’d begun to blame themselves for the abuse. They’d also lost all faith in the system that was purported to protect them.

  “She lived at home when she went to college—probably because our stepfather wasn’t as rough with me when he had two of us to torment,” Tory said slowly. “Never once did she go out. Not on a date. Not to study. Nor did she ever have anyone over.”

  Neither of them had. Neither had had the courage to risk bringing another person into their home. For that person’s sake. And for their own.

  Bearing the violence privately was bad enough; to have it made known to others would have been intolerable. At least with no one else knowing, when they left the house, they left the violence behind. While they were safely at school, they were free. The real world was an escape neither of them had been willing to jeopardize.

  “OKAY, THE FIRST THING to remember when you walk into the classroom is that you’re the boss.”

  Exhausted, yet filled with nervous excitement, Tory sat on her bed, taking notes as Phyllis continued her crash course well past midnight Saturday night. They’d changed into their pajamas hours earlier, but hadn’t gotten around to turning in.

  “You have to establish your authorit
y immediately, and then you’re home free. The most important tool you’ll take into that class with you is confidence.”

  “Kinda hard to be confident when they’re all going to know more about my subject than I do,” Tory said dryly.

  “We’ll take care of that,” Phyllis replied, her entire body exuding positive energy. “Luckily you’re teaching five sections of American lit this semester. You’ll be teaching the same material five times, in other words. Now, we have all day tomorrow, to study the textbooks and Christine’s notes. For this next week, you only need to know Emerson and Thoreau, and you’re already familiar with a lot of that.” She was sitting on Christine’s bed, her legs crossed, her red hair framing her pretty face as though she’d just styled it an hour before, instead of the almost eighteen hours it had been.

  “Christine said you were extremely intelligent. She said that when she was in college you used to help her study for exams, reading her texts and asking her questions from study guides. According to her, you’d often know the answers as well as she did.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You must have a wonderful memory and a very acute, analytical brain.” Phyllis smiled. “Christine mentioned that you had some pretty stirring debates and some real differences of opinion. You’re obviously a natural.”

  “Hardly,” Tory said, but she warmed at the compliment.

  Phyllis twisted the opal ring she wore on her right ring finger. “Have you ever had your IQ tested?”

  “No!” And Tory had no intention of doing so.

  “I’d hate to find out that I’m not as smart as I think I am.”

  “What if you found out you were smarter?”

  Tory was silent for a moment, wondering if her numbed mind was going to take in everything it had to in the next twenty-four hours. “I think I’d hate that, too,” she admitted softly. “Because then I’d know just how much I’ve wasted, how much I’ve lost.”

  “Hey,” Phyllis said, unfolding her legs as she reached across to squeeze Tory’s hand. “It’s not too late. You’ve got a whole new life ahead of you. Amazing things to accomplish.”

  Tory smiled, but inside, the familiar dread was spreading. Yeah, she had a whole new life.

  It just wasn’t her life.

  BEN WAS IN THE KITCHEN of his two-bedroom apartment, paper towel in hand, when his alarm went off Monday morning.

  “Okay, little buddy, you and I need to get some things straight,” he said, leaving the puddle in the kitchen as he scooped up the puppy and strode back to the master bedroom to turn off the alarm.

  “I’m the boss in this house and what I say goes, got that?” He kept the puppy firmly under his arm, out of harm’s way, off the carpet, and with those big imploring brown eyes out of his line of vision. Ben had been implored so much in the past two days—and had given in so often—he was making himself sick.

  “When I say it’s time for bed, bedtime it is.” He continued the lecture as he headed back to the mess awaiting him in the kitchen. “That means I lie down, you lie down, and we both sleep. There will be no barking.” He stepped over the gate he’d put up across the kitchen doorway. “No whining. And if—that’s a big if—I deign to take you into the bedroom with me, there will be no more biting on the ears.”

  Dropping the wad of paper towels on the puddle beneath the kitchen table, Ben soaked up the deposit, threw the towels in the special trash bag that would leave the house with him that morning, poured a generous amount of disinfectant on the soiled spot and with another wad of paper towels mopped that up, too.

  Only then did he put the puppy down. One set of urine-wet paw prints traipsing across the floor was enough for him. He was learning quickly.

  Buddy, which was what Ben had called the dog so far, darted around puppy-style, falling as much as he ran, coming to rest suddenly by a leg of the kitchen table.

  “No!” Ben hollered, grabbing him up before more damage was done. He took the puppy out the sliding glass door off the kitchen and out into the yard, where the little guy did his business. Ben was pleased. Between the two of them, they’d gotten it right that time.

  Yes, Ben praised himself, all in all, the training was coming along nicely.

  Shut in the bathroom with Ben, Buddy whined the entire time Ben was in the shower. Whether because he missed his master or because the sound of water scared him, Ben wasn’t sure.

  And because it couldn’t be proved either way, he chose to believe that Buddy missed him.

  “I’ve got school this morning, Bud,” he said as he dried off, pulled on some briefs and stood before the mirror to shave.

  Buddy chewed on his toes.

  And then on the new bath rug Ben had purchased the day before to replace the one Buddy had chewed Saturday night when Ben had shut the puppy in the bathroom so he could get some sleep.

  “We’ve already been over this,” Ben explained as he pulled the rug off the floor and flung it over the side of the tub. “No chewing on my things. Not on me, my rugs, my clothes or shoes, not anything that I don’t hand directly to you. Got that?”

  The eight-week-old wad of fur stared up at him, his big brown eyes expectant as he waited for the games to begin anew.

  “Don’t forget, my man, Zack said I could bring you back if I found you were too much to handle,” Ben threatened.

  Zack Foster was the local vet—half of the Shelter Valley veterinarian clinic’s team. Zack’s partner, Cassie, had been out of the office—out of town—when Ben went there Saturday, looking to start his new family. He and Zack had hit it off immediately, spending half an hour talking about the town, what there was to do in the area, baseball scores and the chances of the Phoenix Suns making it to the playoffs that year. By the time he’d gotten around to his reason for being there, Ben had gladly taken the runt-of-the-litter Zack couldn’t find a home for. He’d given away the other three, but he’d had no takers for this one—and now Ben thought he knew why. But he’d assured Zack that no six-pound squat-bellied thing whose front and back legs couldn’t agree was going to get the better of him.

  There was no way, after that grandiose speech, that Ben could return the little bugger. But Buddy didn’t have to know that. It wasn’t beneath Ben to use whatever tactics he must to establish his authority in the house, once and for all.

  Ready for class, in spite of his high-maintenance housemate, Ben was just about to head out when he made a mistake. He looked at those big brown eyes.

  Dropping his backpack on the floor, Ben ran to his bedroom, grabbed the only spare blanket from the linen closet, ran back to the kitchen and made a bed for the little guy against a cupboard—on top of which stood the radio, turned down low and set to a classical station. Moving the water dish, and the potty pad, too, he gave the puppy one last scratch behind the ears.

  “Wish me luck.”

  Slinging his backpack over one shoulder, he locked up and climbed into his truck.

  He’d been waiting more than half his life for this day.

  It had finally begun.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE CAMPUS WAS beautiful. Though grass was at a premium in this desert town, Montford’s lawns were green and lush, so velvety thick Tory had an urge to lie down in it and pass the day there.

  She might have, too, if her kill-’em-with-love drill sergeant wasn’t marching along beside her. Students milled all around them, moving with purpose, every single one of them looking as though they belonged.

  “You’re going to do fine,” Phyllis was saying. Not that Tory had expressed her fears this morning. Phyllis just knew she was feeling them.

  “You’re sure you tested me on every aspect of the Emerson years?” Tory asked for the third time that morning.

  “You know it, Tory,” Phyllis assured her. “You had a lot of it down before we even started yesterday.”

  Tory shrugged, feeling stiff in her sister’s suit and low heels. Tory was used to less-formal clothes. And higher heels. Christine’s feet had been half a size lar
ger than Tory’s, but Phyllis had fixed that with some inserts. They’d go shopping for Tory’s school clothes later in the week.

  “I had no idea I’d retained so much from when I helped Christine study.”

  “I’d guess it was a good diversion from whatever else might have been going on in your house.”

  Tory stumbled, still not used to Phyllis’s open way of talking about her and Christine’s painful up-bringing. She wondered how Christine had dealt with her friend’s honesty. Wished, suddenly engulfed by an unexpected surge of grief, that Christine were there so she could ask her.

  “You’ve had your meeting with Dr. Parsons,” Phyllis said, motioning toward the sidewalk on the left when they came to a fork. “He didn’t suspect anything, and he was your toughest sell. The others who interviewed Christine only saw her for a few minutes back in April and then never spoke with her again. Christine got her hair cut. Had a makeover and lost a little weight over the summer, most recently due to her car accident.”

  “Dr. Parsons sure was nice,” Tory said, relaxing just a little as she replayed her early-morning meeting with the president of Montford University. He’d asked about the car accident and been very sympathetic about her sister’s death, agreeing not to say anything to anyone else about it, as no one knew her sister or knew that her sister had been coming to town. He understood her need to grieve in private.

  “He seemed to have a real affection for Christine, though he seemed surprised that she cut her hair.”

  “You cut your hair,” Phyllis corrected, slowing as they came to the side door of an old brick building. “You can’t keep thinking of Christine as someone else if you’re going to pull this off.”

  Tory looked up at the imposing building, afraid that it was their destination, that Christine’s new office, her new colleagues, were in there.

  “You make it sound as though we’re criminals,” Tory told Phyllis, staving off the panic that could send her right back into Bruce’s clutches.

  “I’m not up on criminal law,” Phyllis said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that we’re breaking a couple of laws.”