The Good Sister (19 page)

“We need to talk,” he says from his position at the coffee bar.

I have been avoiding him, and he knows it. He reminds me too much of me sometimes, the way he could just wreck Sarah's life and go on living like everything's pretty much A-fucking-OK.

I wipe up a spilled bit of cream from the black countertop and don't look at him. When I am finished with the counter, I turn and try to look busy with the espresso machine. I will make one for myself and pretend it's for a customer. I will do whatever I can to keep him from thinking I can leave now.

“Don't you get off work at three?” he calls over my shoulder.

I shake my head no and continue with this all–important task.

“You can't ignore me forever.”

He underestimates me. He really does.

“What can I get for you?” I hear Lindsey, my shift replacement, ask him, and then I know my gig is up.

“Actually, I'm just waiting for Rachel,” David says.

“Oh, she can leave now.”

I want to strangle Lindsey with my apron ties. She smiles at me when I turn from the espresso maker, and I glare.

Why must I work with such freaking idiots?

I take off my apron and have an idea. Maybe it's a good thing David has shown up today. I can catch a ride home with him, and with any luck Lena will be there, and she can experience the joy of seeing us together.

She doesn't know about me and David yet. Not that I have been trying to hide it, but she's been so caught up in her own fabulous problems she hasn't been around enough to notice anything about my life.

This could be sweet.

I am picking at the scab again, and I don't know why I do this shit. Half of me doesn't want anything to do with David, or with what happened before Sarah died, and half of me can't turn away from it.

“Give me a ride home?” I ask, and David nods.

I flash a smile, which I can see immediately confuses him. Even better if he thinks there's still a chance between us.

I never expected him to fall for me so hard, which is why this whole extended breakup thing has been so difficult. I mean, if it was just sex for me, then how could it have been more for him? Stupid question, but still the idea intrigues me.

When we are in the car alone together, he doesn't start up the engine. Instead, he clears his throat and turns to me. “I'm beginning to feel like you were just using me.” His handsome cheeks redden a bit.

“Why would you think that?” I'm not ready to give up all my cards. I don't know when David's thinking I love him might come in handy. And
using
is a harsh word. I don't think I was, exactly.

“Were you?”

“Of course not.”

“Maybe you just wanted to hurt Sarah. Maybe I was part of your whole sibling-rivalry thing.”

I lean over and take his hand in mine. Put on my most sincere face. “No. That's not true. I didn't mean for us to happen. We just did.”

He smiles a little at this. “Yeah. Fate, right?”

“Yes.”

I lean closer and kiss him on the lips, feeling not at all turned on, yet wondering whether we should go somewhere and get it on before he takes me home. If we've got that vibe about us, it'll only piss off Lena more.

“Can we go to your place for a while?” I say against his lips when I break the kiss.

“It's full of roommates right now, not exactly private. What about your house?”

I shrug. “Sure, we can try there.”

I imagine Lena walking in on us. Maybe even in her bed.

All of a sudden I feel as if I'm careening head-on over a cliff, and I can't stop myself.

I'm sitting in the seat where Sarah once sat, with the guy she once loved, and I am both repulsed and exhilarated. I don't know where this flood of feelings is coming from, but I welcome it. It's been a long time since I've felt anything this fucking real.

A few minutes pass and we are pulling into my driveway. Lena's car is there. I am not sure how best to play it, so I figure we'll just have to see how things roll.

“You're mom's home?”

“Looks like it.”

“Oh, God. I haven't seen Lena since the memorial.”

Right.

I glance over at him to gage his reaction to this idea. He seems a little on edge now, maybe thinking of his role in the whole betrayal thing.

Good. Let him squirm a bit. It can't hurt.

“Maybe this isn't such a good idea. I mean, does she even know about us?”

I shrug. “Who gives a damn what she knows?”

“I do.”

“Well, if you want us to be together, then you'd better get used to her knowing it.”

“Right,” he says, not sounding too confident.

I get out of the car and stand waiting for him in front of it until he gets his cowardly ass out and follows me into the house. Inside, I can hear Lena talking to someone in the kitchen. I contemplate taking David straight to her bedroom to create some real drama, but I can tell by his reaction that he won't go for that.

Instead, I lead him into the kitchen, where we sit down at the table and watch as Lena turns to see us there. She has her cell phone tucked between her face and her shoulder as she talks while dicing a cucumber on the cutting board.

I go to the fridge and take out two beers, pop the top on each, and hand one to David. I dare her with my eyes to say something when she turns and looks at us for a long moment. She is processing what she sees, but I can't tell exactly what her reaction is, so I take a long drink of the IPA I'm quite sure she didn't buy with me in mind.

“Look, I'm going to have to call you back,” she says into the phone. “Someone just arrived.”

After saying her good-byes and setting aside the phone, she turns to us. “Hello, David,” she says evenly. “It's good to see you.”

“Hi, Lena, good to see you too.”

“What's brought you here?”

David's face goes white, and he looks to me for help.

“Actually, Lena, David and I have been seeing each other.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I could take them back.

All the satisfaction I thought I'd get from twisting the knife is just an ugly, little feeling. Lena's expression goes from confused to angry in the blink of an eye.

Inexplicably, I think of Krishna, and I feel like an utter, absolute shit.

“Seeing each other?” She says the words slowly. “I don't understand.”

I can't say any more. I don't have the heart. I don't know why I was stupid enough to come here with David now, so soon after we scattered the ashes. Suddenly I hate myself for it. I want to be anywhere but here.

David looks at me again as if I might explain, but I can't make my mouth form words.

“It's kind of, uh, unexpected, I know,” he says.

Lena looks at me, and her expression hardens. “How could you?”

How could I not? is probably the better question.

Lena picks up a glass from the counter, looks as if she will throw it, then slams it down. It shatters, and her hand begins to bleed.

I am frozen, watching her.

“Oh, crap, your hand,” David says, springing forward to grab a towel.

Lena backs away from him. “Get out of my house.” She clutches her injured left hand with her right.

He stops, makes a gesture of surrender, and starts backing away.

Still frozen, I know one thing for sure—I don't ever want to see him again. So I guess we are breaking up for real now, but I don't bother to follow him out the door.

Asha

I was lying in bed halfheartedly reading my English homework—incomprehensible Faulkner—when Rachel and David pulled up in his car.

I have never seen the two of them together before, and the incongruity of it startles me for a moment. Maybe he bumped into her in the coffee shop, I think, and turn my attention back to my book, determined to stop drifting off and start sorting out all the different characters in the novel and whether any of them are likable enough to keep reading about. So far, every character in
As I Lay Dying
is pretty awful, and I'm not a big fan of the whole death theme, given recent events, but I'm sure the teacher didn't have me in mind when she selected this book.

I don't wonder about David and Rachel again until I hear Lena's raised voice and the sound of glass breaking. Soon after, David walks back out to the car, and I sit up, watching him intently, wondering.

Him and Rachel. Rachel and him, together. Why?

What besides
me
could have gotten Lena mad enough to raise her voice like that?

She and Rachel don't fight, at least not since Sarah's death, because Rachel has become the oddly obedient daughter lately. She goes to work, she comes home, she tests no limits other than smoking and drinking in the house.

I don't know why.

David pulls his car out of the driveway and heads east toward his place, so I make a decision. Now is as good a time as any to talk to him. I will ride my bike to his house and find out whatever he knows.

I put on a pair of black Converse and an old hoodie, pull my hair back in a ponytail, and creep down the stairs as quietly as I can, hoping to avoid any unnecessary talking to Lena now when she seems to be on a rampage.

I pause at the bottom of the stairs, where I can clearly hear voices in the kitchen.

“—don't understand how you could do that,” Lena is saying.

Silence from Rachel.

“Is this some kind of mutual-comfort-in-grief relationship?”

My stomach sinks. Rachel and David are
dating
?

“Whatever,” Rachel says. “I guess. We're not a couple. We're just, like,
whatever
. Friends now. Like you said, the whole grief thing.”

Something about the tone of her voice sets me on edge. What she's saying isn't the whole story, but Lena rarely chooses to question our lies because it's easier not to.

Lena sighs. “It can't lead anywhere positive. You have to know that. The karmic debt you'd owe—”

“Oh, what the fuck ever! Don't start in on my karmic debt. We're just hanging out a little is all!”

I hear a chair scrape on the floor, and a second later Rachel rushes past, out the door, never noticing me at the bottom of the stairs eavesdropping.

I watch her walk down the sidewalk, heading west toward the center of town, and decide I'm still safe to try talking to David now. I wait, holding my breath, hoping Lena stays put, and a few moments later I leave too.

It's a short ride to his house. My eyes water in the cool breeze on this windy day as I pedal up the hill. I have never talked to David on my own.

I never saw in him what Sarah saw. I mean, I guess it would be normal for me to be a little jealous or whatever, since she started spending more and more time with him, but I mostly just thought he wasn't good enough for her.

Then again, what guy
was
good enough?

I am both relieved and nervous when I see David's car parked in front of his house. I lean my bike against the front porch and climb the steps to his door, my nerves jangling in my stomach, but before I can knock, he is standing at the screen staring out at me.

“Oh, hey,” he says, sounding weary.

“Hi, David.”

“I was just at your house.”

“So was I.”

“Right. So you heard? Sorry about that.”

“About what?”

“That whole scene, your mom's hand…” He trails off when he sees my look of confusion.

I think of the broken-glass sound, Lena's raised voice. “I'm not here about that,” I say, hoping he'll relax and see me as an ally long enough to talk to me about Sarah.

“Oh. Do you want to come in?”

I glance toward the sounds of talking and a television inside. “Could we talk out here?”

“Sure.” He steps out and lets the wood screen door slam shut behind him.

He sits down on the top step of the porch, and I sit next to him. I think of the last time I was here, a few months ago, when I'd come to wait for Sarah to drive me to a dental appointment.

The thought of this turns my stomach. Another mundane detail of my life, forever rendered pointless and horrible by my sister's death. Will I think of her every time I go to the dentist? Every time I see this house? It feels like nothing can ever matter all that much again.

Or like it shouldn't matter.

None of it.

“I miss her a lot,” he says, his thin arms in a gray flannel shirt, resting on his knees.

I think of Rachel and him together earlier. How much is a lot?

“I've been thinking about the time before she died,” I say, “and how she died, and I guess I keep wondering what really happened, you know?”

The air between us shifts.

“What do you mean? She slipped and fell. Rachel saw it happen.”

“Why was she there with Rachel, though? Do you have any idea?”

He shrugs, and one of his knees begins to bounce. “Not a clue. I mean, I just figured they felt like going on a hike together.”

“They never went on hikes together,” I say, watching him.

“Really?
Never?
”

“Never. Except for that day.”

“Hmm.”

“Do you know if Sarah was maybe upset about something?”

He shakes his head. “No, nothing that I know of.”

I sit and stare over at him, hoping he might come up with something if I wait long enough, but he doesn't budge.

“So,” I finally ask, “why were you and Rachel together this afternoon?”

“Oh, that. Well, you know, now that you mention it, Sarah could have been upset about, um—”

He glances over at me, but when our gazes meet, he stops talking abruptly, leaving the statement ambiguous.

“What do you mean?”

He looks away, out at the street, and sighs. “It's just, we…”

I hold my breath, unable to fill in the blank for him. Whatever it is he's going to say, I don't think I want to hear it, even if it's the answer to the questions I have.