The Bad Sister

by Kevin O'Brien

  Rachel looked very stylish in her black dress.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Wednesday, 3:29 P.M.

  “Oh, that stupid Goodwin woman and her big mouth,”

  Rachel grumbled.

  She paced back and forth in the living room in front of Hannah and Eden, who were seated on the sofa. As usual, Hannah couldn’t help admiring Rachel’s outfit—splashy pink, green and white floral-patterned slacks with a white sleeveless top that barely reached her tan, trim midriff. Rachel looked at them and shook her head. “You guys weren’t supposed to know, not just yet. I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

  “Well, why all the secrecy?” Hannah asked. “Why didn’t you just tell us right away?”

  Rachel sighed. “I wanted to see how well we got along first.”

  “Is that because of your last roommate?” Eden asked pointedly. “You gave her a scholarship, too, and you guys ended up hating each other.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Rachel murmured, looking uncomfortable. Her eyes suddenly avoided them. “Alden spoke out of turn about that. Kayla was just different. Anyway, I’m not about to bad-mouth her, because the poor girl’s dead. She got smashed up in a bicycle accident over the summer.”

  Her mouth open, Hannah said nothing. It took her a moment to realize that she’d been sleeping in this dead girl’s room.

  Eden folded her arms in front of her. “Well, Alden made it pretty clear you were smudging the place to get rid of her essence. So she must have been a real piece of work.”

  “I was smudging in there because she died. And okay, I’d be a hypocrite if I said we ended the school year the best of chums. But that was Kayla. With you guys, I could tell you were different from her. I liked you both right away.”

  “Which bed was hers?” Hannah had to ask.

  “Neither,” Rachel answered, rubbing her forehead. “She had this awful futon in there. It was hers. Kayla took it with her when she moved out. I admit, having her for a housemate was a mistake. I really should have met and screened her beforehand. This woman with Slate-Gannon who helps arrange the scholarships read about Kayla rescuing someone from drowning. It was written up in the local papers. She was a hero, and it sounded like she was in a financial pinch. So we figured she’d be an excellent candidate for a scholarship.”

  “Is that how you found us, too?” Hannah asked. “Did you read about us—and what happened to our family a couple of years ago?”

  “Yes, I read about you guys, but that’s not all of it.” She stopped pacing and let out an exasperated sigh. “I could wring Ellie Goodwin’s neck. What a blabbermouth. I wasn’t going to tell you about the scholarships until we discussed another matter.” She turned and headed for the stairs. “Wait here. I have to show you something...”

  Hannah watched her hurry up the stairs.

  Eden patted her arm and gave her a lopsided smile. “Gosh, now I’m really sorry I’m moving out,” she whispered. “I hope you enjoy having that dead girl’s bedroom all to yourself.”

  “Very funny,” Hannah hissed, jerking her arm away and squirming on the sofa.

  “Oh, relax,” Eden muttered. “It’s not like she croaked in there.”

  It took another minute before Rachel came down with a piece of paper in her hand. It looked like some kind of document. “I was going to wait until we got better acquainted before I sprung this on you guys.” She seemed a bit breathless. Hannah couldn’t tell if it was from running up and down the stairs—or if she was nervous. “Anyway, I may as well tell you now. I—well, I was adopted.”

  This was news to Hannah, who had already read several online articles about Rachel. But she wasn’t exactly stupefied by the revelation.

  Rachel rolled her eyes and then shrugged. “It’s no big secret. I grew up knowing. My parents couldn’t have children, and they arranged to adopt me when I was an infant. It was a private adoption. Anyway, last year, when I turned nineteen, I finally asked my mother and father about my birth parents. So... it turns out, that twenty years ago, there was this pregnant college student at the University of Oregon, and she wanted her baby to have a good home.”

  She handed the document to Hannah. “Anyway, I think you know these people.”

  Hannah gazed at the birth certificate for a baby girl. The mother’s name on the certificate was Mary Michelle Driscoll, Hannah’s aunt Molly, the one her mom had kept a secret for so many years.

  But it was the father’s name that knocked the breath out of her: Dylan O’Rourke.

  “Oh my God,” Eden murmured, reading over her shoulder.

  Hannah couldn’t wrap her head around it—her father and her mother’s sister had had a baby together. She knew they’d had an affair. But she couldn’t believe her father had created yet another illegitimate child—and with his sister-in-law, no less. Did he even know? He hadn’t had any idea about Eden until she was sixteen and showed up at their door two years ago. Chances were her aunt Molly hadn’t said anything to him. Hannah figured her mom probably didn’t know either.

  Dumbfounded, she gazed up at Rachel. She swallowed hard. “Does my father know about you? Does my mother?”

  Rachel shook her head. She plopped down in the chair across from her. “That’s why I wanted to help you guys,” she said. “That’s why I felt it was so important we meet—and like each other. The three of us are sisters.”

  Hannah was so upset, she felt sick to her stomach.

  Eden took the birth certificate out of Hannah’s shaky hand and gave it back to Rachel. With a sigh, she leaned back on the couch again. “So... how do your parents feel about all this?”

  Rachel narrowed her eyes at her. “What do you mean?”

  “This whole setup,” Eden said with a look around the room. “You giving us scholarships and making us your roommates. How are they taking it?”

  Rachel glanced down at the birth certificate in her lap. “To be honest, they’re not exactly crazy about it. They pretty much leave me alone to work out the scholarships with the Slate-Gannon people. They just found out about all of this last week. Anyway, it was my decision, and they’ve accepted it.”

  “So, are you hoping to meet our father now or what?” Eden asked.

  “Not right away,” Rachel said. “I figured it was something the three of us could discuss and agree on. For now, I’d like to keep this between just the three of us—well, the three of us and Alden. But he’s sworn to secrecy.”

  Hannah still couldn’t fathom it. She looked across the coffee table at this young woman who was her older half-sister. She could see a family resemblance—especially to the photos of her aunt Molly.

  She turned to Eden. “You’re certainly taking this well. I don’t know how you can be so calm right now.”

  Eden looked at her and sighed. “I already knew about Dylan’s other love child.” She turned to Rachel. “I just didn’t know it was you. Cassandra, the woman who raised me, hired a private investigator to look into our father’s various extracurricular activities while he was married to Sheila. This started when I was a kid, and I guess, over the years, this detective kept digging up dirt on Dylan. I think Cassandra got a bunch of paperwork from him. She stored it away someplace. I don’t know where. And I never could find out the detective’s name. But I knew there was a daughter, a year older than me. My stepmother let that much slip. Every once in a while, she’d remind me of how lucky I was. ‘Don’t complain,’ she used to tell me. ‘I’m sure you’re a lot better off than his other bastard.’”

  Hannah let out a stunned little laugh. Considering that Rachel grew up in a palace on Chicago’s Gold Coast, the woman who had raised Eden had been way off in her assessment.

  “I never said anything,” Eden continued. “But I had a feeling the other child was born to Hannah’s aunt Molly. When you talked to your parents about this, Rachel, did they ever mention a private investigator?”

  With a baffled look on her face, Rachel shook her head.

  “My half-brother—I guess
our half-brother, Steve, got some weird emails a couple of years ago, just before everything went to shit. The emails were about Aunt Molly. We never found out who sent them. Do you know if your parents could have sent those emails—or some friend of your parents?”

  “I doubt it. I mean, why would they?”

  “And it wasn’t you—or maybe Alden?”

  Rachel frowned at her. “I told you. I didn’t even find out about my birth parents until after I turned twenty—last December third. And I didn’t tell Alden until last month.”

  “When you were a kid, did you have a stuffed animal named Micky? It was a monkey, Micky the Monkey . . .”

  Rachel slowly shook her head.

  “Back when my father was recuperating in the hospital, some young woman came by the nurses’ station and dropped off a stuffed monkey for him. She didn’t leave her name. The monkey used to belong to Hannah’s mom, Sheila, but then ‘Aunt Molly’ took it. And years later, it turned up on my father’s nightstand by his hospital bed—in Seattle.”

  Hannah stared at Eden, eyes narrowed. “How come I didn’t know about this?”

  “Because Dad told me,” Eden said. “I guess he didn’t tell you because you would have gotten all upset and made it all about you—like you usually do.” She turned to Rachel. “Are you sure you weren’t the one who gave him that monkey?”

  “I think I’d remember taking a trip to Seattle,” Rachel said, a bit huffily. “And I never had a stuffed animal monkey named Micky. I think I’d remember that, too.”

  “Well, somebody sent those emails, and I think that same somebody—a pretty, young woman, the nurse said—left that stuffed animal for our father in the hospital. If it wasn’t you, maybe it was someone you know.”

  Rachel shrugged, but she looked exasperated, too. “I’m telling you, I don’t know a thing about it. This is all new to me.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Hannah finally piped up. “I mean, what are we supposed to do now? Are we supposed to keep this a secret? What did you want us to do with this information?”

  “We’re sisters!” Rachel cried. “I wanted to help you out. I wanted us to be close! Is that asking too much? I grew up alone, knowing my real parents didn’t want me—”

  “So did I,” Eden interjected, “minus the silver spoon.”

  “Then you should understand how happy I was to realize I had two half-sisters. You should understand how much I’ve wanted to hear about my real parents. Is it so horrible that I wanted to help you guys and get to know you?”

  Before Hannah or Eden could answer, Rachel jumped to her feet. “Listen, I’m going to leave you guys alone to talk this over. It’ll give us all a chance to calm down. Maybe by the time I get back in a few hours, cooler heads will prevail.” She snatched her purse off the table near the stairs. “I must have been crazy to think this would be a happy thing. This isn’t how it was supposed to be, not at all.”

  She headed outside and slammed the door after her.

  Hannah sat in silence with Eden beside her.

  She watched the birth certificate flutter off the edge of the chair and gently land on the floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Wednesday, 9:49 P.M.

  “Actually, she’s my half-sister, but she’s your half-sister and your cousin,” Eden drolly pointed out as they gathered up their dirty clothes—Hannah, from the corner of their closet floor, and Eden, from wherever she’d dumped each item as she’d removed it from her body.

  “God, is our father a pig or what?” Hannah muttered, stripping her bed. “I think we should call home right now. He should know about this. And so should my mother.”

  “Why don’t we chill out a bit, and process it first?” Eden suggested. She sniffed a pair of socks that she had picked up off the floor and then tossed them in her laundry bag. “I think that’s one thing our big sister is right about. The three of us need to discuss it first before we let anyone else know. Besides, it’s really her scoop, not ours.”

  “I hate this,” Hannah said. “The Society of the Secret Sisterhood, that’s us. Just when I was starting to feel normal, we’re freaks all over again. Do you loathe our father as much as I do right now?” She stuffed her sheets into the laundry bag.

  “I grew up knowing all the dirt about him, so none of this is much of a surprise. He’s not that bad. He’s a nice guy and a pretty good father—just a shitty husband. I think—”

  Eden fell silent at the sound of the front door opening.

  “Hello?” It sounded like Alden.

  “We’re back here!” Hannah called. She automatically touched her hair to make sure it wasn’t a mess. Then it occurred to her that perhaps Alden had been nice to her all week merely because she was Rachel’s half-sister.

  She could hear him and Rachel whispering. Then he poked his head in their bedroom doorway. Rachel was behind him with her head on his shoulder. She looked half-asleep.

  Eden gave them both a flippant smile. “Hi, Alden. Hi, sis!”

  Rachel waved at them. “We were in Kenosha!” she announced, slurring her words.

  Alden nodded. “Only forty minutes to a tavern that never cards anybody, and we had a designated driver at our beck and call.”

  “Thank God for Perry,” Rachel said. “Did we drink to Perry? I forget.”

  “We sure did, hon,” he said.

  Hannah could tell he wasn’t drunk. But Rachel could barely stand. She backed away and leaned against the bar.

  “She’s really sorry you guys weren’t happy about the news,” Alden murmured. “Not that anybody blames you. But she was feeling pretty raw about it. Laundry night?”

  Hannah nodded and then she stuffed a pillowcase in her laundry bag.

  “We’re going to hydrate and put some solid food in our stomachs,” he said. “We’ve got a chicken basil pizza from Bellini’s. Do either of you want a piece before we whisk it away?”

  “I’m perfectly willing to share,” Rachel muttered, her back to them. “They’re my little sisters. What’s mine is theirs . . .”

  “Pizza?” Alden whispered to the two of them.

  Both Hannah and Eden shook their heads. “No thanks,” Hannah whispered.

  “I think it’s best if we take ourselves upstairs, give everyone a little space.” Alden led Rachel away. He stopped at the bar to grab the pizza box. “C’mon, Rachel. We’ll watch some bad TV up in your room.”

  Neither Hannah nor Eden said anything. Hannah could hear Rachel quietly whining about something. She sounded like a little girl on the verge of a crying fit.

  Alden shushed her. “Don’t worry. They’re nice girls. They’ll come around . . .”

  Hannah felt awful. She listened to the footsteps on the stairs. Then after a minute, there was a faint murmuring from the TV in Rachel’s room.

  She turned to Eden. “Do you feel like a complete shit? Because I sure do.”

  “You know how I feel?” Eden whispered. “Like you must have felt two years ago when I dropped in on your family and announced that I was your bastard sister. I didn’t expect anyone to be happy about it or throw a party for me. She’s a major delusionoid if she was expecting us to jump up and cheer. But I do feel sorry for her. I know how lonely it is for her right now—even though she’s got Cutie Pie and a pizza keeping her company at the moment. It still sucks to have your family reject you.”

  “We’re not rejecting her,” Hannah said. “We’re just trying to get used to the idea that she’s our sister.”

  “Believe me. I know. It feels like rejection.”

  Hannah finished loading her laundry bag. She was still in a daze. Rachel had obviously thought her revelation would bring the three of them closer together. Instead, it just made Hannah bond more with Eden, who seemed calm and levelheaded throughout the whole thing. Hannah was so grateful Eden hadn’t decided to go off on her own tonight, because she really needed her right now. She suddenly realized how much they had in common—besides their father. They’d spent the
last two years living under the same roof. And yes, they’d avoided each other most of that time. But they knew each other, too. She didn’t have to explain anything to Eden. She was the one person here at this school who didn’t feel like a stranger.

  She and Eden hunted around for quarters and then headed out of the bungalow with their bulging laundry bags. Hannah hoped no one else would be using the laundry room. She wanted to hang out there with Eden and talk. The three sets of coin-operated washers and dryers were in a one-room bungalow about half a block down the row of residence bungalows. It also had some plastic chairs and a couple of vending machines full of soda and junk food.

  It was a beautiful, clear night—with a whisper of fall in the air. Some of the trees along the winding street had started to shed their leaves. Moths fluttered around the streetlights. In the distance, music blared from one bungalow, and a girl’s laughter rang out from another.

  Hannah remembered how horrified she’d first been at the prospect of going away to college with Eden. But now, she was glad her half-sister was here beside her. She wanted to tell her so, but figured Eden would just say something sarcastic. So Hannah kept her mouth shut.

  “Y’know, Rachel seems to have the best of intentions,” Eden remarked, “even though the road to hell is paved with them. I mean, thanks to her, we’re here and not day-hopping at some community college in Seattle. I’d like to stay here—and stay on her good side. I don’t want her canceling our scholarships. I mean, I haven’t even explored downtown Chicago yet.”

  “Do you think she’d really do that?” Hannah asked. “Cancel our scholarships—just because she’s mad at us?”

  “You tell me,” Eden said. “You know her better than I do. Up until today, the two of you have been the best of chums. But I wonder if she’d still be paying that Kayla girl’s way through school if she hadn’t died in a bike accident.”

  They turned down the stone pathway to the laundry bungalow. Through the front window, Hannah noticed something flickering inside the room. At first, she thought it might be a faulty overhead light.