by Mary Carter
“Right.” Grace took a deep breath and turned around. She didn’t want to lash out. She didn’t want a fight. “So. You’re married?” Something darkened over Carrie Ann’s face, and she gave a curt nod. “Kids?”
Carrie Ann looked away. Then took a drag of her cigarette and shook her head as she watched the smoke blow out. “Can you imagine me? A mom?” Actually, Grace could. She wouldn’t be perfect, but Grace could see Carrie Ann being a cool mom. “Hello, Mommy Dearest Two,” Carrie Ann said.
“That’s not true.”
“I didn’t exactly have role models. Unless you count your parents.” The look Carrie Ann flicked Grace’s way was a definite challenge. Grace let it go. “Do you have children, Gracie? A family of your own?”
“Not yet.”
“But you will. And you would be such a good mother, much better than me.”
“That’s not true—”
“I wouldn’t screw it up on purpose; in fact, I would fight to the death for my kids. But you—you probably wouldn’t have to fight at all. You would just know what to do.” Carrie Ann fumbled with her cigarette pack, withdrew a second, and lit it.
“You just finished a cigarette,” Grace said. Normally she didn’t lecture people. But she suddenly felt a surge of resentment over all the times she hadn’t spoken up for herself with Carrie Ann. The things she had been intimidated into doing.
“It’s Europe; I’m an adult; I can chain-smoke if I want to chain-smoke.”
“Who books such an expensive trip for someone she hasn’t said two words to in fifteen years?”
“It’s not my fault we haven’t talked.” Carrie Ann’s voice rose above the din. “I was the one cast out of the family.”
“That’s not entirely fair.”
“I knew I was taking a gamble. But the money—who cares. And the apartment belongs to my friend Rafael’s parents, so that didn’t cost me anything. I thought the price of two plane tickets was worth the chance to heal my deepest childhood wound.”
It was out there, in the open. Childhood, and wound. Big, festering, still-infected wound.
“I just feel a little ambushed,” Grace said. “And there’s a lot of water under the bridge.”
“Enough to drown,” Carrie Ann said. She threw the rest of her cigarette to the ground, and they both stared at the orange ember for a few seconds before Carrie Ann crushed this one out too. “Maybe I could have gone about this in a better way. But I had to see you. I need you, Grace. I’m in trouble. I’m in really, really big trouble. Believe me. Hear me. I really need you to hear me. I didn’t have any other choice.”
CHAPTER 12
I didn’t have any other choice. Carrie Ann’s words echoed down the alley.
Of course you did, Grace thought. You’ve always had a choice. And you always make the wrong one. You haven’t changed. You thrive on trouble. Drama is like oxygen to you, Carrie Ann. You aren’t allowed to need someone you haven’t seen in fifteen years. On the other hand, now that Carrie Ann was here in front of her, it didn’t seem like fifteen years at all. It had been yesterday, and this was her sister.
“It’s getting lonely in there.” Jake stepped out into the alley. Grace wondered if he had heard Carrie Ann’s last comment. She was happy to see him either way.
“It’s getting late,” Carrie Ann said. “We should go.” Was she kidding? She just said that she was in big trouble, and now she was acting like nothing was wrong. Typical. “We can walk,” Carrie Ann said. “I’ll just leave money for the—”
“It’s paid,” Jake said.
“Thank you.”
“Hardly a dent when you consider what you’ve paid for,” Jake said.
Grace couldn’t tell whether he was being facetious or not. She wondered if he liked Carrie Ann. Did she even want him to like Carrie Ann? The thought of mixing her past with her present was jarring. “Jake,” Grace said. “I hate to do this to you, but Carrie Ann and I were right in the middle of discussing something—”
“Nonsense,” Carrie Ann said. She put her hand on Grace’s arm. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“But you said you were in—”
“Tomorrow,” Carrie Ann said, a little more insistent. “It just hit me how exhausted I am. I wouldn’t even be able to hold up a conversation.”
Just like old times. Turning on a dime. How could she still be like this? A part of Grace wanted to push back, get everything out in the open tonight, but a larger part of her didn’t want to hear whatever tale Carrie Ann was about to spin. Grace looped her arm through Jake’s, and they began the walk back in silence, although there was plenty of noise from others on the street. It was comforting, in a way, to allow others to do the celebrating. A good night’s sleep. Maybe that’s all Grace needed. Whatever drama Carrie Ann was stirring up could wait.
“Where is your apartment?” Jake said. Grace was seized with instant, irrational jealousy as she imagined Jake sneaking into Carrie Ann’s apartment at night, slipping into her bed. God, where did this come from? She’d never distrusted Jake.
“One floor above you,” Carrie Ann said.
Grace thought of the coffee cup. Had Carrie Ann actually been in their room? She wondered if Jake was thinking the same thing. When they reached the building, Grace took Jake’s hand. “We’re going to take our nightly stroll in the square,” she said.
“Breakfast? Tomorrow?” Carrie Ann asked. “We have so much to catch up on.”
“Sure. There’s a great outdoor café. The first one as you exit the walkway from our building—”
“With the red umbrellas?”
“That’s the one.”
“Perfect.” She glanced at Jake. “I hate to be rude, but can we keep it just us girls?”
“Sure,” Jake said.
“But I’ve been dying for you to see this outdoor café,” Grace said to Jake. “With all the street performers? I want Jake to come.” Maybe she was afraid to be alone with Carrie Ann. Afraid it would be so easy to slip into their old roles. Grace, submissive, squashing her own instincts just to please Carrie Ann. But this was also her romantic holiday with Jake—no matter who had paid for it—and she wanted him by her side.
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to exclude you to be hurtful, Jake. It’s just Grace and I have some extremely personal things to talk about—”
“It’s no problem,” Jake said. “Really. You know me, Grace. I like my beauty sleep.”
“Say ten? I like my beauty sleep too.” Carrie Ann looked at Jake when she said that. As if they were kids and Carrie Ann was still the center of attention. Trying to manipulate him like he was Stan. Or was Grace reading too much into it?
“See you at ten,” Grace said. Then, without looking back, she took Jake’s hand and walked as quickly as she could away from Carrie Ann.
Jake stopped the minute they turned down an alley and were out of earshot. He just looked at her and shook his head.
“It’s a long story,” Grace said.
“Three years, Grace. We live together. We’ve talked marriage.”
You’ve talked marriage, Grace thought. But no proposal. “I’m sorry. But every single bad memory I have of childhood revolves around that girl.” Grace pointed in the direction where she had last seen Carrie Ann, although with any luck she would be long gone.
“We’re supposed to share the good and the bad. Especially the bad.”
“It’s really bad, Jake. It’s really, really bad.”
Jake sighed, ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, let’s sit down, and you can start at the beginning.”
“No.” Grace grabbed Jake’s arm as if to keep him in place. “Not tonight. Please. Please don’t make me relive all this tonight.”
“You have to tell me something.”
Grace knew he was right, but it was just too long and complicated a story. “We kind of bullied this kid named Stan, okay? I mean—bullied is the wrong word—it’s not what you’re thinking—”
“I’m not thinking anyth
ing yet.”
“She bullied him by being nice to him, okay?”
“She bullied him by being nice to him,” Jake repeated slowly.
“Yes. Because he thought she really liked him. But she didn’t. She couldn’t have.”
“Because?”
“Because Carrie Ann just liked to stir up trouble. She didn’t care what people were saying as long as they were talking about her. And he was the number one kid in school everyone made fun of. He was overweight, and his face was full of pimples, and he smelled, and he had greasy hair—but honestly none of that bothered me as much as how he used to stare at me. . . . He was so awkward and strange.”
“I was awkward and strange too,” Jake said.
Oh, God. He thought she was a jerk. Stan had given her the creeps. She shouldn’t have mentioned how he looked. “I sound horrible, I know. But there was something really off about him, Jake. He made me so uncomfortable.”
“So what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything—I mean besides not looking him in the eye. I swear I didn’t do anything.”
Jake was silent. He was probably thinking he didn’t know her at all. That the Grace Sawyer he knew was too nice to be a mean girl. But with Stan Gale she had felt something akin to repulsion-at-first-sight. The more she had expressed how she felt, the more Carrie Ann had brought him around. Like he was her new pet. It still made Grace shudder. Grace should have stood her ground, told Carrie Ann that she was not going to go along with Carrie Ann’s little game. The worst bit was—Stan had known it. He had known Grace was repulsed by him. She couldn’t hide it any more than he could hide his sad blue eyes.
“So I went along with it. I let him up in my tree house. I let him follow me home from school most days. And I tried to pretend we were his friends. And it just led to some pretty awful stuff, and I know you deserve to hear all the gory details—but I’m begging you. Not tonight.”
“But why didn’t you at least tell me the basics?” Jake said. “Like—oh, we did take in a girl once. Her name was Carrie Ann.”
“Because I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to pretend she doesn’t exist.”
“That makes the story sound really bad, Grace.”
Jake wasn’t going to settle for no explanation. Grace started to walk, not wanting to look at him while she talked. Jake followed her. When they got to a corner, they could hear tango music coming from below. They were standing in front of a set of stairs going down to a basement. A sign with the name of the club and a painting of tango dancers sat discreetly in a window halfway down. “Come on,” Jake said. “Let’s see if we can have a seat and get a drink.”
They descended into the little club. After entering through a screen door and then a beaded curtain, they were bathed in a glowing red light. It was a pretty tight room jammed with tables and a small bar in the back. It was halfway full. On the back wall was what barely passed for a stage. A pair of tango dancers gracefully danced back and forth on the allotted space. Grace and Jake took a minute to watch them. They made it seem easy. As if the nights were made for seduction. Grace wished she could feel so carefree. She and Jake quickly took a booth as far away from the music as possible. A few seconds later they had a pitcher of sangria and Jake had ordered some tapas off the menu. For a brief moment Grace felt as if they were on holiday again.
“You were talking about Stan,” Jake said.
Grace sighed, and absentmindedly picked up a matchbook on the table. “Speaking of Carrie Ann,” Jake said. Grace’s head shot up. Had she followed them here? “Relax,” Jake said. He pointed to the matchbook. Grace looked at it. It was the same one Grace had found on their mat. She flipped it open.
“Empty,” Grace said. “Carrie Ann wrote the message.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Jake said. “So. Continue.”
Grace knew there was no getting out of it. At least she had sangria and dramatic background music. Maybe every bad memory should be accompanied by the tango. “My mom didn’t like what Carrie Ann was doing to Stan. She wasn’t as worried when we were younger, but once we got to be teenagers. Well. She didn’t like how close Carrie Ann, Stan, and I were getting. She said it wasn’t healthy. To the point where she was even willing to let Carrie Ann go back into the foster system.”
“How close you were getting? Like. Romantically?”
“No, God, no. Just thick as thieves I guess you’d say.”
“I still don’t get why your mother would want to put Carrie Ann back in the foster system. That doesn’t sound like her.”
“Well, she did. I didn’t get it either. I was devastated. I broke down crying in art class.”
“Sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I would later be.”
“Huh?”
“My art teacher was Lydia Gale. Stan’s mother.”
“Wait. Your favorite teacher in the whole world? That Lydia? The one with the flowered skirts?”
Grace was flattered at how much Jake remembered. “That Lydia.” She had told Jake all about her. Well, everything except about her son, and her husband, and Carrie Ann. She had told him all the important parts; she had given him the cut-and-paste history. She had told him how exotic Lydia Gale had seemed to her, how she had loved her homemade flowered skirts and rebellious attitude. There was no right and wrong in her class, just “creating.” Most days they could work on absolutely any project they liked, and Lydia was a hundred percent supportive. On top of that the kids were told to call her “Lydia” unless a grown-up was around, at which point they had to call her “Mrs. Gale,” but only until the other adult was gone. Then, she was just Lydia again. Grace didn’t think there had ever been a single day that Lydia wasn’t smiling. It was for this reason that later, when Grace had found out Stan was Lydia’s son, Grace had almost refused to believe it. Had he been adopted? How could this surly child come from such a sunny woman?
“The next thing I knew, Lydia and her husband were offering to take Carrie Ann.”
“That was good news, right?”
“It seemed like the perfect solution.” Except that it bound them even tighter to Stan. Grace didn’t say that part because Jake seemed on guard about the whole Stan business. Jake wouldn’t feel sorry for Stan if he’d ever met him. “Carrie Ann could stay at the same school, and I could sneak through the woods and down the road to see her.”
“Over the river and through the woods?” Jake said.
“No river,” Grace said. “Just woods.”
“Why did you have to sneak?”
“My mother didn’t want me seeing Carrie Ann any more at all.”
“That doesn’t sound like your mom.”
“I thought she was totally overreacting. And of course it made me want to go over there even more.”
Jake nodded, offered her some tapas. Grace shook her head. She’d lost her appetite for everything but sangria.
“Can I stop you for a second?” Jake asked.
“Please do,” Grace said.
“If Carrie Ann hadn’t shown up, do you think you would have told me any of this?”
“You mean on this trip?”
“I mean ever, Grace. Would you have ever told me any of this?”
Grace hesitated. She didn’t want to lie to Jake anymore. “No. Probably not.”
“My God.” Jake stared out the window for a moment, even though there was nothing beyond it but a dark stair well. When he turned his eyes on her again, she could see she had really hurt him. “Do I really know you?”
“Of course you do.” Jake didn’t look convinced. “Do I know all of your childhood secrets?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Okay. Like the time you killed a bird with a stone? That’s it? That’s all you got?”
“I wasn’t a serial bird-killer if that’s what you mean. And that haunted me forever. I told you that. It’s because of that poor bird and my guilt that I decided to become a veterinarian.”
“Well, how about grown-up secrets? You didn�
�t tell me Lyndsey wanted to jump your bones until this trip. Were you ever going to tell me about that?”
“If I thought it was important.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Having a sister is important, Grace.”
“You’re really stuck on that sister thing, aren’t you? She wasn’t actually related to me. Did you miss that part?”
“You’re getting angry. That’s not my intention. I just don’t want us to have secrets from each other.”
“Okay. No more secrets. A few weeks after Carrie Ann started staying with the Gales, she sent me a clue to come see her—”
“A clue?”
“Writing in the book? The matchbook? It’s classic Carrie Ann. I guess she’s always fancied herself a spy.”
“Got it. Go on.”
But Grace didn’t want to go on. She was tired. Drained. Seeing Carrie Ann again had been such a shock. Jake already hated Grace a little bit, and that’s because she hadn’t known how to describe how creepy and intense Stan had been. If she told the story tonight she might actually ruin their relationship. “I don’t want to keep secrets from you, Jake. I swear on my life. But I’m going to get too upset if I tell this tonight, and I won’t be able to sleep.”
“Well, maybe I won’t be able to sleep if you don’t tell it.”
“I started the story. Isn’t that enough?”
Jake took out his wallet and threw money down on the table. “Let’s go,” he said. They left the bar and started to walk again, this time toward the apartment without even discussing it. As if they knew there was nowhere else to go from here.
“Carrie Ann didn’t like living with the Gales,” Grace started to say when they were almost home. Jake put his hand up.
“No,” he said. “You’re right. You’ve said enough for one night. I don’t want to force you to tell me anything. I’m tired too, Gracie. I don’t want to fight.” Jake pulled Grace in to him and kissed the top of her head.
“You probably think Marsh Everett is right,” she said.
“What?”
“I guess I don’t sing my pain because I can’t even bring myself to talk about it. I think there’s something wrong with me. I think there’s something inside me that’s broken.”
