What My Sister Knew

by Nina Laurin

  I take out my phone and text Chris. Just got here. On my way. But the text remains unread as I turn off my phone and push past the door.

  It doesn’t look like a church. No religious doodads, no icons, only one cross, discreet, on the wall above the foldout table with the coffee and prepackaged baked goods, oatmeal cookies that taste like shortening, and oily muffins. I bet the religious AAs have home-baked stuff, courtesy of some soccer mom who once leaned too hard on the chardonnay.

  I just start thinking about how I wouldn’t mind a horrible decaf coffee and a Twinkie when I walk into the room, and it hits me what a bad idea this was. No one has noticed me yet and already the armpits of Milt’s T-shirt are turning damp. Ironically, I find myself craving a glass of wine.

  “Andrea!” Before I know it, Chris appears out of my blind spot and encases me in a hug. Which is alarming in itself, since Chris isn’t the hugging type normally. I remain awkwardly straight backed as she murmurs in my ear, “I told Gordon about the situation. Hopefully he can keep it under control.”

  Situation? Control? What the hell is happening? I extricate myself from her hug.

  “No one will quiz you. Unless you want to share.”

  “I don’t,” I say, maintaining my mouth in that careful close-lipped smile.

  Chris shakes her head. “I’m really sorry. A couple people…were talking. Maybe…” She trails off, and her gaze darts away.

  “Maybe what? I shouldn’t have come after all?”

  Chris grimaces. Her usually glossy chestnut hair looks unwashed. She fiddles with her keychain, its three-year badge glinting dully, and turns it around and around like a lucky rabbit’s foot.

  When I first started going to meetings—after Cynthia pretty much forced me to, under threat of pressing charges about the money I’d been stealing from her for months—I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t sure how to play it so I decided to try to get away with the bare minimum: I stole money and jewelry from my adoptive family. I pawned my engagement ring. I’m out of control, and I’m very sorry, and so on—that sort of thing. I wasn’t going to talk about Eli. I didn’t want to be That Guy’s Sister yet again.

  But despite my obligation to go under threat of prosecution, I found myself strangely drawn in. There was something about this circle of people, complete strangers to each other, opening up with their innermost secrets, sharing their most painful, low moments.

  And they weren’t happy with my basic, rudimentary facts, delivered in choppy, simple sentences. In Gordon’s words, I was holding back, which showed my lack of remorse. No, they needed all the juicy details, and I obliged. I spoke vividly about drunken benders, passing out in strange men’s apartments. Of cheating on my fiancé with a stranger for some cocaine and ending up pregnant, not realizing it until I had a miscarriage at a gas station. It was oddly liberating, and after a while, I started looking forward to the meetings.

  When Chris offered to be my sponsor when the time came, I jumped at the chance because, among other things, she didn’t seem to get quite so much morbid enjoyment out of hearing me or others recount the horrors of our existence. I figured she wouldn’t try to get more out of me or grill me about what I told her. At five foot two, she’s shorter than me and looks younger than her forty-three years. Chris was once married to a lawyer and had the dream life: handsome husband, big house, five-star vacations. Enter fertility problems, four rounds of failed IVF, two trips down into the wine cellar per day, and eventually the hormone shots gave way to Vicodin. Then, I’m not entirely clear on the exact circumstances, but she crashed her car into the Mercedes her husband gifted to his mistress. The husband and then mistress have twins now. Chris lives in a rented apartment on the outskirts of downtown.

  I knew going in that she (or Gordon or anyone else there) would never become a friend, let alone a confidant, but I have to admit that I grew to enjoy her company.

  “Chris,” I hiss, catching her sleeve, “what do you mean you told Gordon? I thought the whole point was—”

  “That it’s supposed to be anonymous, yeah,” she answers. “But I think it’s too late for that. Someone saw you on TV.”

  Great.

  Everyone moves to take their seats. We don’t really sit in a circle—the room isn’t big enough for that. It’s rows of those desks with the chairs attached, like a classroom, because the rest of the week there are drawing classes here, a poetry workshop, and some kind of Bible study group. Gordon sits in front of us, like a teacher facing a class. Whenever someone gets up to talk, everyone else turns. It doesn’t sound too bad but try doing that thirty times in an hour. My neck always hurts after these meetings.

  Today, though, I can feel the unease. You’d think I were a black hole that would suck them in if they so much as glance at me. Others are noticing the tension too.

  Oddly, a part of me is relieved that this is an excuse to stop going to these things. But another part of me will miss them.

  Gordon starts to talk. Maybe I watched too much TV but before I started the meetings, I’d pictured our addict patron saint as the rangy, mottled type with a beard and faded Metallica T-shirt circa 1989. Gordon couldn’t be any further from that. He looks like a Sunday school teacher, and I’ve never seen him with so much as a five o’clock shadow on his still-handsome face. If he hadn’t stood right in front of us and told us, I never would have begun to guess at the sordid story behind the clean-cut façade. Under the sleeves of his sensible, well-pressed dress shirt, his arms are so gouged with injection scars that their surface looks like gnarled tree bark.

  He’s a compelling speaker. Once upon a time, he sold stocks or bonds or what have you. Now he sells sobriety to people who, for the most part, don’t have the insurance to get into rehab. It’s working, mostly. Since I started going, no one has yet to leave the group; on the contrary, three or four new faces have appeared in the crowd. There’s something karmic about the whole thing. I thought the place would be a giant self-pity circle jerk where we’d take turns blaming unhappy childhoods, abusive spouses, bad genes, chemtrails, whatever for our failings while everyone else nods and dabs their eyes with tissues—kind of like the support group Cynthia signed me up for postfire. But the first thing he told us was to stop feeling sorry for ourselves. That only by taking responsibility for our past actions can we take back control of our lives. If group therapy had been anything like that, maybe it would have actually worked.

  I may not belong here, not in any true sense, but I was always oddly transfixed by his speeches. Except today I can’t focus on anything.

  When I glance around, I notice I’m not the only one. I feel people’s eyes on me. I can’t remember anything like it. I never attended Eli’s trial, since I was in the burn ward until long after it was over.

  I force myself to focus on what Gordon’s saying. He’s talking about things that can make us fall off the wagon. Stresses, someone pipes up. That’s right, Diane, stresses.

  “Like somebody from our past,” drawls a woman’s voice behind me. Chairs and necks creak in unison as everyone turns. “Coming back into our lives.”

  I don’t remember the woman’s name. She has red hair and a redder face, rosacea exacerbated by years of drinking, most likely. She has her sticker name tag on her sweater but I can’t read it because her handwriting is so smudged. I think the first letter is a w. Wanda? Wendy? Wilma?

  “Somebody from our past coming back,” echoes Gordon behind me, his voice tense as he tries to take back control of the room. Wendy-Wanda isn’t looking right at me—she’s looking at the spot right above my head. But nobody is fooled. “Enablers,” Gordon says. “People who encourage you to do things you’ll later regret.”

  “I mean, that should definitely be something you share with the group,” Wanda-Wilma says pointedly. “Right?”

  “If it was relevant to the situation, sure.”

  My gaze darts from Gordon back to W, and this time it lands on hers like a fly in a flytrap. I’d expect her to look away, embarras
sed, but she doesn’t. She looks quite triumphant.

  In a split second, I decide I’m not going to let this continue. I stand up with a clatter of my chair-desk contraption.

  “Hey, Whitney.” It’s Whitney, of course—I remember now. Amphetamines Whitney who punched out a coworker’s teeth during a psychotic episode induced by too much meth in her morning coffee. She has to attend court-mandated meetings. “Since we know what you’re talking about anyway, maybe we should go outside, and there, you can ask me all your pressing questions.”

  “I just find it interesting, is all. That you never brought it up once.” The room starts to murmur. “I mean, we heard about you throwing up at your job interview and that miscarriage story. But you never mentioned—”

  “Whitney,” Gordon pipes up, but it’s too late. She’s too far gone—we both are. I hear Chris whispering my name but ignore it.

  “Why does it interest you so much anyhow? You worried I’ll go crazy too?”

  “Stop it,” Chris speaks up.

  “Or is it envy? Because I definitely won your bullshit little misery contest now.”

  The shocked look on Whitney’s face is worth it. To hell with this. Cynthia can press charges now if she wants. I’m out of here.

  I storm past the other desks, kicking someone’s purse out of the way, and throw my weight against the exit door.

  “Andrea!” Chris yells after me but I don’t stop. I feel bad for letting her down, and I wish I could tell her I hadn’t meant to deceive her the way I have. And that I’m sorry, deep down, for lying to all of them from the start.

  But of all things I have to feel bad for, frankly, it’s not the worst by a long shot.

  I narrowly avoid clipping another car as I pull the Cadillac out of the narrow parking spot. This gas-guzzler brings me nothing but problems, and I should probably give it back before Cynthia decides to report it stolen—I wouldn’t put it past her.

  So I stop, look up a car rental place close to Cynthia’s, and then call and reserve myself a nice, unremarkable Ford coupe. Then I drive the Cadillac back and leave it in the driveway. After an agonizing moment’s thought, I get back into the car, eject the CD, and take it with me.

  I can see even through the tightly closed curtains that the lights are on. I briefly contemplate ringing the doorbell—just to let her know I brought the car back. But Leeanne’s car is parked by the sidewalk in front, so I stop, hesitate, weigh the pros and cons—I’m not so sure I can handle Leeanne right now without doing something I’ll regret—and then turn around and start to walk away.

  Halfway to the sidewalk, the unmistakable sound of the front door opening makes me wince. No sneaking away now. The lantern next to the door flickers on, and my shadow falls, tall and misshapen, on the path ahead. I’ve been seen after all. The sound of Cynthia’s voice makes me stop.

  “You might as well come in,” she says. She sounds alarmingly hoarse. When I turn around, all I can see is the silhouette against that blinding porch light. She’s wearing a bathrobe, her hair piled up messily on top of her head.

  “You need to pick up your phone. Or at least check your messages.”

  My heart jumps into high gear. Oh God, what now? Eli—

  “Jim had a heart attack. He died this afternoon.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When I spoke to Warren after his sentencing, the whole experience struck me as profoundly bizarre. Even dressed in a faded mint-green jumpsuit and paper flip-flops, Eli Warren was still every bit the golden boy, the most popular kid in his class. His hair flopped carelessly over his blue eyes, like some singer from a boy band, and his white grin let you know that he knew full well the effect he still had on people. Fortunately, the staff at the facility are well trained to handle even such skilled emotional manipulators as Warren. But looking at him, lounging in that plastic chair like a rock star, was unsettling. In a macabre sense, he is a sort of star, subject of notoriety in certain obscure online forums, a cautionary tale in classrooms. And he seemed to be enjoying every minute of it.

  —Into Ashes: The Shocking Double Murder in the Suburbs by Jonathan Lamb, Eclipse Paperbacks, 2004, 1st ed.

  Fifteen years earlier: before the fire

  When it comes to the world of adults, Andrea knows next to nothing. She thinks she understands some things but others remain hopelessly out of reach. Is it a thing that comes naturally with age, she wonders, or will someone eventually have to explain the rules to her? Right now, it’s frustrating, like trying to read a book in a foreign language. You recognize the letters, but the words make no sense. Sorry you couldn’t do better.

  And if she doesn’t ever get it, who will explain it to her?

  Not her brother, that’s for sure.

  More and more often lately, she finds herself panic-stricken. It’s a physical feeling that overwhelms her. The first couple of times it happened, she thought she must have been dying. It was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. She’d struggle to breathe, but no matter how many deep breaths she pulled into her aching lungs, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was suffocating.

  She feels like everything is breaking apart and she’s being left behind. It’s bad enough that her mom has been angry and distant lately, always distracted. The other night, she left a pot on the stove, and no one noticed until the smell of acrid smoke penetrated all the way to the second floor. The bottom of the pot was scorched and deformed, and the pot had to be thrown out.

  Her parents had a huge fight that night. The Sergio she knew would have laughed it off and then poked fun at her mom for weeks about being forgetful. But instead, he blew up at her. What were you thinking? Are you trying to burn the house down? And she yelled right back, You could have installed the new smoke detectors like I asked you a million times. This went on for what felt like hours, until Andrea crept to her room and pressed a pillow over her head. Still, she could hear their voices from downstairs, right through the thin walls. And the smell—the nauseating smell wafted in the air for days after, a foul reminder that nothing was the same.

  Eli does his best to stay out of the way lately. Makes himself a ghost, slinking around corners, not appearing at meals, and the strange thing is, no one seems to notice, let alone care.

  The one upside seems to be that everyone also pays less and less attention to her. She glimpses things, overhears things that a month ago she never would have. Sergio has begun to smoke more and more openly and unapologetically. Her mom talks on the phone for hours, sniping about him to some friend of hers and not caring that Andrea is within earshot. And her brother—well, he does stuff that disgusts her and seems amused when she walks in on him. She thinks he sometimes leaves the bathroom door unlocked on purpose so she’ll stumble in.

  She’s wary of this new role, of being the invisible eyes and ears of the house. One day, she suspects, she will see or hear something she won’t be able to ignore.

  That night, she’s doing homework. This activity she once loathed has become a welcome respite from the silent tension that fills the house. A distraction. She’s alone in her room, with only the cozy glow of the orange desk lamp for company, and it’s strangely serene. Her brother is somewhere else in the house. Come to think of it, she hasn’t seen him do his homework in days. She can’t say she misses his company.

  The last assignment is finished. Andrea closes her notebooks, puts away her books, rearranges her gel pens, until finally there’s nothing left to do. She wishes she had a book to read other than the old textbooks and children’s books that gather dust on the lone shelf over the desk. Or better yet, a TV right here in her room that she could watch. She’s been meaning to ask for one for her birthday. But now she knows they have no money, so…

  She takes the lighter out of her pocket. She hasn’t parted with it since the incident with the hiding place, transferring it from one pair of pants to another or hiding it in the inside pocket of her backpack if she has to. She flicks it open, and with a satisfying click and a hissing
sound, the flame shoots out, the size of the fingernail on her pinky and so pale blue it’s almost transparent. For that reason, it seems extra hot, more than the typical orange flames of candles and matches. She could look at it forever, utterly fascinated.

  A noise from downstairs takes her by surprise. Her hand falters, the flame flickering, and she narrowly avoids dropping the lighter right onto the rug by her feet. She flicks it closed and puts it back in her pocket, her heart hammering. On shaky legs, she gets up and creeps to the door and then peers out into the hallway.

  Empty. The door of her parents’ bedroom is closed, and there’s no light under it. Her mom isn’t home—Andrea has no idea where she is because her mom no longer feels the need to tell her where she’s going or when she’ll be coming back. Andrea supposes she’s old enough to be left alone, and anyway, she isn’t alone. Her brother is home too.

  When she makes her way down the stairs, she sees a pair of work boots by the door and understands. Sergio is home. But she didn’t hear him come in, and he didn’t yell hello up the stairs like he normally does.

  There’s clanging in the kitchen. He’s probably making some food. Andrea feels bad; she could have made sure something was ready, even if it was just a frozen pizza she could have popped into the oven. Too late now. She should go say hi but something stops her.

  It’s not one set of footsteps she hears. There are other, lighter steps dancing around the heavy ones that belong to her stepfather.

  She advances cautiously toward the doorway to the kitchen until she hears her brother’s voice, lost among the clanging of dishes. She can’t quite make out what he says. She holds her breath.

  “…if I tell?”

  “Keep your mouth shut,” grumbles Sergio. Andrea feels a chill. She has never heard him use that tone with anyone. Not even with her mom when they’re fighting. It’s low and filled with simmering anger.