by Jen Malone
“Yes,” I murmur.
Sam elaborates. “She’s who he listed on his emergency contact form. Our tour company owner is just waiting for a decent hour to call her in California.”
“Of course,” the man answers.
I pull out all the information Mrs. Bellamy sent to Sam’s email, including Mr. Fenton’s date of birth and his home address, and turn his passport over to the man behind the desk.
“Another formality, but we like to have a statement on file from those he was traveling with or those who were witness to the, er, event. Would you mind giving me the details of how you came to discover the deceased?”
Sam takes my hand and holds it firmly in his as I tell this stranger about finding Mr. Fenton’s body. The man types as I talk and when I finish, a small printer beside him spits out a page.
“Thank you for going through that. I’ll have you on your way shortly. Just need to grab your signature on this. I also need a copy of your passport to include with the file, please.”
I thought he might ask for this. When I fastened my money belt around my waist back at the hotel, I took a moment to replace Elizabeth’s passport with my own. I’d put mine away after the flight, using hers instead for all the hotel check-ins in case anyone from the tour was beside me, but I thought a US consulate was probably not the best place to practice out-and-out fraud.
And even if it was, I can’t do that to Mr. Fenton. I’m glad he got to know me as Aubree, even for a short time, and I’d be letting him down if I signed these documents as Elizabeth. I fork over my passport, keeping it tightly closed as I do so.
The man takes it without glancing down. “Be right back.”
He steps out of the room with the documents, leaving the door open so we can watch him place my passport facedown on a copy machine in the hallway.
I study my hands in my lap until the man returns and passes my passport across the desk, saying, “I’m so sorry. I’ve been calling you Elizabeth all this time. I don’t know why I got that name stuck in my head. Anyway, my apologies, Aubree.”
Sam opens his mouth to correct the man, but I grab his arm and say, “Oh, uh, it’s fine, no worries. Thank you for your help.” Sam looks baffled and stiffens in his chair, but says nothing.
The man reaches across the desk and shakes both of our hands. “My pleasure. I’m so sorry again for your loss and I wish we could have met under better circumstances. Please have good travels and a safe return home.”
Sam waits until we’re on the curb before turning to me. “Why didn’t you correct him when he called you Aubree?” His eyes are nothing but confusion, but I know his expression is about to get a lot worse as I swallow away the lump in my throat. It had to happen sometime.
The thing is, this trip has turned me into an excellent liar. I’ve had a few minutes to think and I’m confident I can talk my way out of this. But I’ve had a few minutes to think. And the one thing I can’t get out of my mind is Mr. Fenton’s words to me about how owning up to my mistakes is the sign of a true grown-up.
I need to confess.
Not to hurt Elizabeth or even to try to preserve things with Sam, but to be true to the me I’m becoming. I need to be honest for myself.
I wordlessly hand Sam my passport.
He opens it and studies the picture. He takes in the name. And the date of birth. Then he looks at me.
“I don’t—” He sounds like a little boy.
It turns out I’m not all cried out after all. Fresh tears form in my eyes. But I force them aside so I can give Sam a proper explanation. He at least deserves that.
I put my hands on his arms and silently will him to hear me out. “My older sister is Elizabeth and she was the one your mom hired. She knew how much your mom was counting on her, and my sister is not one to shirk her responsibilities, trust me. She got into an, um, situation and couldn’t come and she thought this would be the best way of solving the problem.”
Sam just stares at me. Oh boy. This is not good.
“I don’t understand,” he finally says.
I sigh deeply. Telling him is so much harder than I thought it would be and I fight to keep my voice from cracking. “The thing is, my sister got arrested. It was a huge misunderstanding and she’s completely innocent. But the conditions of her bail meant she couldn’t leave the state and at that point it was so close to the time the tour was going to start and she couldn’t think of what else to do, so . . .”
I trail off and wait for Sam to say something, anything at all, but he’s still silent. I know I’m bungling this. There definitely won’t be any Sam clutching his sides and laughing at how adorable I am, the way he did when I confessed I didn’t have celiac disease.
“Sam, could you please say something?” I beg. “I know it wasn’t the smartest thing to do and if I had known any of this was going to happen or that I’d meet you, I never would have agreed to it. I swear, I wouldn’t have. But at the time we thought it was the perfect solution to make everyone happy.”
Sam gives me a sad smile. “Do I look happy, Lizzie? No, wait. What do I even call you now?”
“Aubree.” I drop my head. And no, he doesn’t look remotely happy.
I’m quiet, waiting for Sam to speak again so I can gauge his feelings. He studies his nail beds and then gives a tiny shake of his head before bringing his eyes to mine. “Last night?” he asks in a small voice.
Last night things changed with us. We didn’t say anything with words, but we still said a whole lot. I felt it and I know he did too. “Last night was—it meant everything to me, Sam.”
“Just not enough to be honest with me. I really thought . . .” He’s silent as he studies the ground. At one point in the trip I questioned if he even owned a frown, but the one he’s wearing now makes my heart twist. The ache is so physical, it makes me wonder what Mr. Fenton felt from his in those last minutes. I let the tears fall down my cheeks. I thought the time was right to tell Sam, but this coupled with Mr. Fenton—it’s too much at once. I step toward Sam, seeking the comfort of his arms the way I have all day, but he counters with a step backward. His eyes are still on the ground as he mumbles, “I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
“What? But—!”
Sam glances up at me and I see every bit of the betrayal he’s feeling on his face. “I need some time to process all this,” he says softly. “I’ll hop a train and see you back there.”
“Sam. Sam, wait, I—” But I’m speaking to his back, because he turns and walks away.
I return to the hotel to find no Sam, no seniors, and a series of messages for me. The first tells me the group has gone with Bento to Nice for the afternoon to “clear their heads.” The next few tell me Elizabeth has called. Three times.
My mouth goes dry. Did Sam call his mom from the train? Did his mom already confront Elizabeth? Could this day get any worse?
I make my way to the manager’s office and ask him if there is a computer I could use. We’ve become close friends since this morning. He directs me into an empty office and signs online for me, before slipping out and leaving me alone.
Moment of reckoning. I Skype Elizabeth.
She answers with a tentative smile. “Hey. I can’t stop thinking about our call the other day and I just wanted to check in with you and see if everything’s, you know, okay.”
So she doesn’t know. She just wants to make sure I’m still toeing the party line. I force a smile, but can only sustain it for half a second before I burst into tears. Again.
Elizabeth’s eyes go wide. “Aubree! What’s going on?”
Through sniffles, I fill her in on Mr. Fenton while she continues to mutter a lot of “oh my God”s. When I finish she has tears in her own eyes.
“I don’t even know what to say. I feel so responsible,” she says. “You’d never even be there if it wasn’t for me and my stupid idea. I honestly didn’t mean for things to turn out like this. I swear, I wish I’d never gotten us into this mess.”
My bra
in flashes through scenes from the last few weeks. The mad rush through the Amsterdam airport trying to get back to the binder, seeing all the castles on our drive along the Rhine, singing “Do-Re-Mi” in the Alps, Sam getting blasted by the fountains in Salzburg, horses and Ferris wheels in Vienna, riverside kisses in Prague, canalside kisses in Venice, skinny-dipping in Cinque Terre.
Mr. Fenton in his tux in the lobby last night.
“I don’t wish that,” I murmur.
She’s quiet as she studies me. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
I shrug.
She looks . . . I don’t know. Impressed, maybe? I want to savor it for as long as I can before it turns into something closer to the expression Sam just had on his face. For now she says, “It feels like you’re this whole different person over there, Bree.”
“It does kind of, doesn’t it?” I look directly at her and her eyebrows scrunch up.
“You just seem really mature all of a sudden.”
“I guess.” I shrug again.
She tilts her head to the side. “Can I ask you something? And you have to be honest.”
I hide my snort. If only she knew how far my honesty streak extended today. Which I’ll tell her, of course. But for now, I really need to know what she has to ask.
She gathers a breath and asks in a small voice, “Do you think I’ll be an okay politician? I don’t have much to go on in terms of how I’d conduct myself in a crisis except this experience with you, and I feel like I totally screwed things up. And I just keep thinking, how can I do right by my constituents if I can’t even do right by my sister?”
My emotions tumble over one another. Somehow it’s still all about her. How do I get her to see things from my perspective?
I say quietly, “You’re not a bad sister.” This day has kicked my ass already, so what do I have to lose? I might as well lay it all on the line. “You don’t . . . you don’t exactly make it easy for a girl to stand out. But that’s not really your fault. Let’s just say you shine pretty brightly, so of course I wanted to be just like you, and it used to really bother me that I never measured up.”
Her eyes are wide, but, duh. Of course she’s always known I idolized her. I force myself to stare into the screen. “The thing is, I don’t really feel like that anymore. It’s more like, I don’t know. I guess . . . I guess I just want you to say that who I am is good enough for you. Even if that’s not your clone.”
She’s quiet for a long time as her eyes study the keyboard. When she looks back up, they’re glistening. Of course, that makes tears stream down my face. Seriously, at what point do I need to worry about dehydration from excessive crying?
“Oh, Bree. How could you think you’re not?” she finally says. She swipes at her nose with a tissue. “But to be fair, I probably don’t spend enough time recognizing it. I have to be honest, it feels pretty good to be put up on a pedestal by your little sister, you know? I don’t know, maybe unconsciously or something, I thought if I paid too much attention to all the reasons you were cool in your own way, you wouldn’t look up to me as much. I swear, I didn’t realize that until just this second. You probably don’t have me all that high up there at the moment, huh?”
This is hard. Never having been disappointed by my sister has meant never having to tell her she let me down, but the truth is, I feel like she did. I didn’t do a good job explaining why it was important for me to come clean to Sam, but she didn’t do a great job listening either. And if I want to be a grown-up, that means saying the hard stuff, right?
“I don’t know, I guess I just feel like . . .”
I have a hard time finishing my thought. Elizabeth waits for a second, then prompts me. “Well, don’t hold back now. Geez.”
I glance over at the framed certificates on the manager’s wall, then back at her. Gathering a deep breath, I talk fast. “Fine. I wish you’d trust me to make my own decisions and make the right ones for me, even if it might not be the way you would handle things.”
“Even if those decisions might mean I don’t have a job this fall?” She practically whispers the words.
“Yeah.” I can’t look her in the face, knowing I’ve probably already ruined that for her. Though it’s not like she isn’t going to find out for herself soon when the fallout from my talk with Sam happens, so I might as well rip the Band-Aid off with Elizabeth too. Argh. This being-mature stuff is craptastic.
“About that . . .”
I fill her in on the events at the embassy.
“Oh” is all she has to say. Her eyes drop to her lap.
“Oh? That’s all?”
“I mean, it’s done now, isn’t it?” she answers. “I think it’s just going to take me a little bit to process what this means. I know I got myself into this mess, so I have to be willing to accept the consequences, but I guess . . .” She’s quiet for a second. “I don’t know, after all this time and everything going so well, I really thought this plan could work.”
Now it’s my turn to say “Oh.” I follow up with, “But, um, I mean . . . well, I was just hoping maybe you’d understand why I felt like I had to do it. Do you at all?”
“I don’t know yet. I guess, maybe.” She tries out a tiny smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
I wasn’t expecting jumping jacks and cartwheels, for sure, but I thought she’d be at least a little reassuring. Especially with the way the call started and how honest we were being with each other.
Are we gonna be okay after this?
I’m about to speak again when there’s some kind of disturbance behind her. I see Elizabeth’s eyes widen and her hand reach up to close her laptop, but a split second after it goes dark, it gets bright again, and Mom’s face fills the screen at a sideways angle as she leans across a horrified Elizabeth.
“Aubree? Is that you? I didn’t know you had access to a computer, honey. How are you? How are the mosquitos? Did you get the bug spray I sent?” She squints and moves her face closer, like that will also bring the objects on the other side of the screen—namely, me—closer.
“Aubree?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Out the window behind you? Is that—? Aubree, why is there a yacht with an enormous French flag passing behind your head?”
TWENTY-NINE
“This is unbelievable. I mean that. I really cannot believe this,” my mom says for about the twentieth time in as many minutes. Dad is over her shoulder pacing back and forth while Elizabeth is on the couch, hugging her knees to her chest. I don’t know which of us my parents are more furious with.
“I can’t believe your sister got you into all of this, Bree. I can’t believe you went along with it. I can’t believe I thought you were in Maine this whole! Entire! Time!” Mom takes a deep breath and puts her hands on either side of the laptop as she leans over and hangs her head. “Who the hell got all my cookies?”
Behind her Elizabeth covers her mouth with her hand but is smart enough not to laugh out loud. Mom straightens. “I’ll tell you right now, Aubree, you are on the next flight home. The very next one.”
I sit up straight in the hotel manager’s chair. “That’s not fair, Mom. I can’t just walk out on my job. I have six senior citizens depending on me.”
Mom exchanges a look with my dad. “Are you hearing this, Mark? She can’t even remember to water the fern in her bedroom once a week and now she’s in charge of six senior citizens.”
I remember Mr. Fenton and it hits me like a punch to the gut. “Five, I mean,” I murmur, and a tear slips down my face.
Elizabeth looks up and bites her lip. “Mom, she’s almost eighteen. You can’t ground her like she’s a ten-year-old.”
“Like hell I can’t. She’s living under my roof, isn’t she?” Mom has a hand on her hip and has turned to face Elizabeth, who stands too and put both hands on her hips. She’s always been way less afraid to stand up to our mom than I have. Then again, of the two of us, she’s had way more practice asserting her independence.
Whatever Elizabeth is feeling toward me after our talk, it means a lot—a whole lot—that she’s standing up for me with Mom and Dad. If there’s one thing that unites a divided sisterhood, it’s forming a solid front against the parental units. I give her a grateful smile and she returns it.
“Mom, I don’t know how things are going to play out from here,” I say, “but I want to do whatever the tour wants. If they think I should stay and finish the rest of the itinerary, I’m going to. It’s only fair to them and it’s the responsible thing to do.”
My father stops pacing and studies me with a thoughtful expression. He comes and stands next to Mom, putting his arm around her and squeezing before saying, “I think she’s right, Nancy.”
My mom deflates. Dad looks at me and says, “I guess our baby’s growing up.”
I half smile, half whimper. I miss him so much right now. He’s wearing his Indians T-shirt, which means there’s a game tonight. If I were there in my living room I could curl up in his arms and he’d stroke my hair while I cried and then we’d watch baseball. But I’m not and I can’t. Instead I whisper, “Guess so, Dad,” and put my fingertip to the screen so he can touch it with his.
My mom sniffles too and nudges my dad out of the way. “I can see I’m outvoted, but I’m really not sure about this, Aubree. It makes me crazy to think of you all the way over there by yourself. Do you need anything? Do you have enough sunscreen?”
In spite of how miserable I am, I have to laugh. My mom will never, ever stop taking care of me, no matter how old I get or how far away I am. At the moment, that’s a really reassuring thought.
The conversation loosens up from there. Elizabeth says, “Now that we have that straightened out, tell Mom and Dad that thing about the girl in the tower in the German castle. Oh, and tell them about how small the gazebo from The Sound of Music is in real life!”
