As Close as Sisters (8 page)

“Hope,” she said. “There’s always that.”

I stopped in front of a wall of corn chips and pointed.

She tucked her shovel under her arm and grabbed a bag. I shook my head, and she grabbed the blue corn chips next to them.

“Yup.”

She tossed the bag in my basket. “Anything else?”

“Nope. You?”

“Got my shovel and my candle. I’ll get a bottle of gin next door.”

“What about your turn to make dinner tomorrow night?”

She laughed and walked away, headed in the direction of the cash registers. She raised the shovel over her head. “Takeout, baby.”

8

Aurora

“Y
ou think she’s okay? It’s not too hot out here for her?” Janine studied McKenzie through her mirrored cop sunglasses.

We were both standing in the water, a few yards offshore, one eye on the beach, the other on the waves coming in behind us. Janine was chin deep; I was nipple deep. The water was warm, at least to me. But then again, I’d swum in the English Channel.

We bobbed up and down as the waves rippled in. “She’s fine,” I said. “She’s got cancer. She’s not a retard. She’ll go inside if she gets too hot.”

“The medication she’s taking. She’s not really supposed to be out in the sun. And it’s
person with a mental disability
.” Janine cocked her head toward me. “Or
person with mental challenges
. No one says
retard,
Aurora. Try to join us in this decade.”

“So
what?
Cops have suddenly become sensitive to race, religion, and
persons with disabilities?
”

She looked at me like she was going to slug me. I gave her a push, laughing. “You’re
so
easy, Janine. Too easy.”

We both looked toward the shore again. Lilly and McKenzie were in beach chairs under a big white-and-teal-striped umbrella. Lilly was wearing a cute white one-piece, big belly, big straw hat, her same silly white designer sunglasses. McKenzie had on a ball cap and a baggy granny bathing suit. It was so ugly I was tempted to go buy her a new one, just so I wouldn’t have to look at the one she had on. Besides being ridiculous looking, it made it obvious how much weight she had lost. In shorts and a baggy T-shirt, I could ignore it, but here on the beach, it was right in my face.

We were quiet for a minute, then Janine said, “Aurora, I didn’t do it.”

I didn’t have to ask her what she was talking about. I knew. McKenzie had whispered to me earlier that she and Janine had talked about the lawsuit when we were at the market. I didn’t look at Janine. “I didn’t say you did.
Again,
too touchy.”

“McKenzie thinks I did it.”

I leaned back, wetting my head, slicking my hair back. I needed sunblock on my nose. I could feel it burning. “She does not.”

“She does, too. She thinks just because I lost my shit that one time—”

“McKenzie told you she thought you beat up that pregnant chick?” I didn’t usually interrupt people, but what she was saying was too stupid to let slide.

“You’re not listening to what I’m saying.” Janine lowered her voice. As if someone else in the Atlantic Ocean might hear her. “She thinks I hurt that woman. I could hear it in her voice when she said she knew I didn’t do it.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” I watched Lilly and McKenzie. Lilly was talking a mile a minute. McKenzie was looking at her romance novel. I couldn’t tell if she was listening to Lilly or not. This was good, giving the two of them time together. To talk about being a mom and that kind of crap. It was something Janine and I could never do with them. “Because you’re coming off a little nutty. What’s your shrink say?”

“About what? Big one.”

We both went under the surface of the water to keep from getting slammed by the wave. We popped back up after it went over us. Water streamed off Janine’s mirrored sunglasses, which looked cool as the bright sunlight glinted off the drops of water on the metal frames. I tucked the image in place in my brain to recall later, thinking I might be able to use something from it in my work.

“I don’t know,” I said, running my hands over my head so the water from my hair streamed down my back. “The whole thing. About you feeling like you need to keep telling people you didn’t do it.”

“I don’t need to tell
people
. Just you guys.”

“Okay. It’s just that the more often someone says they didn’t do something, the more likely it is that they
did
do it.”

I could feel Janine’s gaze boring into me.

“I need your support, Aurora.” Her voice was soft. She sounded vulnerable, which didn’t happen all that often.

“You’ve got my support.” I draped my arm around her muscular shoulder. Janine worked out at the gym regularly and has always had the most incredible shoulders. “Because I don’t give a fuck if you did it or not. If she came at me, I’d sure as—”

“What’s this?” Janine caught my wrist. She unwound my arm from her shoulder, but still held on to my hand. “Are those
ligature
marks?”

I wriggled my hand out of her grasp. “Incoming!”

We both went under. When I came up, I lifted my feet so I was floating and paddled backward. Janine swam after me. She was a good swimmer. Strong. If there were one word I would choose for Janine, it would be
strong
. Not just physically, but mentally. Everyone thinks I’m the strong one, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. Always has been. Janine is an iron woman.

“Let me see your wrist,” she said.

We were over our heads. I treaded water, staying out of her reach. “No. Mind your own business.”

“Aurora. Did someone hurt you?”

Lilly and I were laughing this morning about how we loved the way Janine could get all butchy and overprotective. It was a stereotype: lesbian female cops. But it was true. There was always some truth in stereotypes. I made a face like Janine was an idiot. “Of course no one
hurt
me.”

She treaded water with one hand, pushing her sunglasses up on her head with the other. Now I was getting the full-on stare. “Don’t lie to me. We don’t lie to each other about this kind of shit.”

I didn’t want to tell Janine anything about the brothers in Venice because she would make a big deal out of it. She would start in again on what she perceived as my suicidal behavior, which was bullshit, of course. She was a five-foot-five female cop, breaking up bar fights, and she thought
I
was suicidal?

We were both quiet for a couple of minutes. We paddled around. I contemplated taking a swim. My goggles were on the beach with my towel.

When Janine broke the silence, it wasn’t about the fading marks on my wrists. The subject was equally tender, though.

“How’s Jude?”

I closed my eyes. “Good.”

“Talk to him recently?”

It would have been easier to lie. I wasn’t up for this conversation. Not before cocktails. “Not recently.”

“When, Aurora?”

I went under. When I came back up, Janine was still there, treading water. Waiting.

“I don’t know,” I said. “A couple of months ago.”

“Aurora. He’s your son. You have to make the effort.”

I wanted to close my eyes and sink below the surface. Jude. The child of my body, who had never felt like mine. Not even when the nurse first put him in my arms after I spent twenty-one hours in labor and two hours pushing him out of my vag. He’d looked like an alien, red and squalling. When Hannad, my
ex
-boyfriend by then, said it would be better if he took Jude home, I let him. What was I going to do with a
baby?

“He’s good,” I told Janine. “He still likes Stanford. He’ll graduate next year. He’s got some sort of internship in the computer science department for the summer.”

“You going out to see him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. He’s, you know, busy.”

“You should fly out to Palo Alto.”

I ignored her. A middle-aged couple on the beach caught my eye. They were standing on the water’s edge, looking at something beyond us. The woman, in a flowered muumuu, pointed in our direction. Other people on the beach were looking now, too. I saw McKenzie lay her book on her lap and look up. I could tell that Lilly was still talking, but she was looking, too.

“Dolphins,” I said, paddling to turn around. “That or a big ass shark.”

“Where?” Janine did the same.

I scanned the water, bobbing up and down. And then I saw them . . . two . . . no, three Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. We watched them as they rose and fell gracefully, their glistening gray bodies throwing off spray as they cut through the water.

“Gorgeous,” Janine sighed, the tiny wrinkles around her mouth softening.

I treaded water beside her, watching the three dolphins as they swam south, becoming smaller and smaller until they were just dots in the distance.

“Ready for a drink?” I asked Janine. I swam past her. “I am. Race you.”

9

Janine

I
stared at the digital clock on the nightstand beside my bed. It was almost oh four hundred hours. I had dozed off almost immediately when I went to bed at midnight; the Jack always helped me fall asleep. But I only slept about two hours. A typical night. I fell asleep, exhausted or drunk, slept a few hours, then woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. My shrink said it’s PTSD. He was full of shit. I bet he slapped that diagnosis on every soldier he saw. I was an insomniac long before Afghanistan.

I groaned. I was lonely in my single bed in my empty room. I missed Chris.

I rolled over and stared up at the ceiling fan. Light from a streetlamp leaked around the accordion blinds, casting shadows across the end of my bed. I tried to relax, count perps or something, but I felt jumpy in my skin. Like there was something I needed to do. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and sat up.

Fritz, who slept on the floor under the window, lifted his head and looked at me. I could see his brown eyes in the semidarkness. He was used to me being awake in the middle of the night. He watched me for a minute, then lowered his head and closed his eyes. He knew I’d call him if I needed him.

I listened to the quiet house. I could hear the wind; one of the shutters rattled. I could hear the surf. I could imagine the white foam washing up on the sand.

I stared at the floor. For years, whenever I looked at my bedroom floor, I saw Buddy lying there. His eyes were always closed, which was weird; on TV, people died with their eyes open.

The good thing was, he appeared less and less on my floor, until I rarely saw him. He wasn’t there tonight.

I closed my eyes. My mouth was dry. At Lilly’s insistence, I’d had most of a bottle of water before I went to bed. Clearly, it hadn’t been enough. I had a slight headache. Dehydration. I grabbed the bottle and chugged the last couple of mouthfuls.

I got up. I wore my typical pajamas. Not Lilly’s pretty white or pink nightgown: boxers and an army green T-shirt with my last name stenciled on the inside of the collar. Not my whole name. Just part of it.

Fritz half rose.

“Stay, boy.”

He dropped to the floor obediently.

I was halfway down the staircase before I heard someone upchucking in the downstairs bathroom. McKenzie was the only one sleeping downstairs. I’d been awake for more than an hour. Neither Lilly nor Aurora had passed my room or even stirred. I stuck my head in McKenzie’s bedroom. The light was on. The bed was empty.

I padded barefoot down the hall. The bathroom door was closed. I hesitated, then knocked. “McKenzie?”

She didn’t answer right away. Her voice was strange when she did. “Yeah?” She sounded as if she were a million miles away.

I was going to ask her if she was okay, but she clearly wasn’t. I pressed my hand to the white door. It was cool to the touch. Lilly had the air conditioner cranked up. Apparently, being pregnant made you hot. “You . . . want some company?”

“While I puke my guts out?”

I smiled, my hand still on the door. “Anything I can get you? Water?”

“Go back to bed, Janine. I’m going to be here a while.”

I rested my cheek against the door. I wished it were me in the bathroom instead of McKenzie. I mean, if God wanted to kill one of us off, didn’t it make sense for it to be me? (And it wasn’t like He didn’t have the opportunity: Afghanistan, the Rusty Nut bar on any Saturday night.) McKenzie had her girls. She was a good person. A really good person. So many people would be broken when she died. Maybe too broken to want to live. I’d been thinking about that for months. If it were me dying of cancer, it wouldn’t be so bad. No kids. No spouse. No family to speak of. Who would really miss me? Aurora, McKenzie, and Lilly, sure. But wouldn’t they be a little relieved, too? Wasn’t I always the elephant in the room?

I sat down on the floor. It was dark in the hall, except for the glow from the back deck light shining through the kitchen windows.

McKenzie retched again, and I dropped my head to my hands. It tore me up, hearing her. Not being able to do anything for her. She was just dry heaving now, though. So maybe she’d feel better soon.

I waited. She flushed the toilet. I heard the water in the sink running.

“You sure I can’t do something?” I asked through the door.

“You could go to bed.” She sounded more like herself now. A little smart-assy. “And not listen to me puke.”

“Nah. Can’t sleep. Seems only fair I stay. How many times have you listened to me puke? Watched me?” I drew my knees up to my chest. My bare legs were bristly. Chris likes them shaved. The crazy thing is, I like shaving them for Chris. “I think I actually puked
on
you once.”

“More than once.” Her voice was getting closer. I imagined her crawling across the floor. The floor creaked, and the light coming from under the door changed. She was on the floor on the other side now. Just an inch of pine between us.

“You sick because of some kind of meds?” I asked, wondering if she was on painkillers.

“Yeah.”

We were both quiet for a minute. I could hear the surf. I didn’t know if she could hear it, too, from behind the door.

“The docs can’t change them up? I mean, with modern medicine and all, you’d think they could give you something to help that wouldn’t make you puke.” I was quiet again. “Of course, you’d think with modern medicine they’d be able to cure cancer, too.”

“You’d think.”

Again, we were quiet, but it was an okay quiet. I leaned my shoulder, my cheek against the door, and I could feel the heat from her body. Was that even possible? Maybe I was just imagining it.

“You okay, Janine?” McKenzie asked.

“Am
I
okay?” I sat up. “Okay with what? You puking in there? You dying? Hell no, I’m not
okay
.”

“I meant are you okay being here,” McKenzie said. “Sleeping in your room. You’re welcome to sleep with me. I’m lonely down here by myself.”

I’ve tried to explain, over the years, why I need to sleep at night alone, in my room. It’s like . . . I have to be there with Buddy. With the ghosts. As crazy as it sounds, it makes me stronger. Not weaker. Lying in my bed at night, here in the house with my girls, I find the courage to get up in the morning. Do what I do.

I didn’t answer her.

“You know,” McKenzie said after another long silence, “I don’t think you did it. The pregnant woman.”

Tears burned the backs of my eyes. But I didn’t cry. I tried never to cry.

“I know you wouldn’t, Janine,” McKenzie said. “I know you could never hurt—”

“That’s a lie, Mack. You know I
could
.” I drew my knees up closer, folding over them. “You guys know. It’s always been there. The . . . potential.”

“But you
wouldn’t
.”

I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I was sleepy. “I hope not.”