The Good Sister (24 page)

“Maybe you should have talked to us about that
before
you decided to get married,” Asha says under her breath.

“I'm sorry, what was that?” Lena asks.

“Nothing.” Asha sighs.

“I've thought about this a great deal, and I don't think I should go on living in a house that reminds me so much of Sarah. It's not good for my healing process.”

Oh my fucking God. I eye the fork, wondering if I have the nerve to fling it at her head.

“So what? We're moving?” Asha says, her tone making it clear exactly how she feels about that idea.

“I'm going to move into Ron's house,” Lena says. “It's a two-bedroom though, and he uses the second as his office, so we were thinking, perhaps…”

“Perhaps,” Ron cuts in, “you'd like to strike out on your own, either at the current rental house or elsewhere.”

I blink at this, none of it making any sense. My brain hasn't caught up with the meaning of the words.

“Or,” Lena adds, “you could move in with your father now that he's back in Marin.”

“Those are our choices? Ravi or the street?” Asha says, her voice rising, and I can tell she's very, very close to making a scene.

My feral cat of a mother is kicking me out of the house. That's what I finally realize.

I am not sure who to hate more—Lena for making this decision or myself for not being thrilled at the idea that I am set free. No option of living at home now, so that should be a good thing, right?

Then why do I feel like total crap?

I look over at Asha, who is seething. What does she care? She doesn't want to live with us anyway—and she manages not to half the time.

Lena is saying something about starting a new chapter of our lives or some shit, but I can't focus on her words. I want to push the table over and storm out of the restaurant like the star of some reality-TV show, but it feels like lead weights are holding me down, pressing me into this chair.

I look over at Ron, who is busy texting on his phone. Texting? Right now, in the middle of our big family moment? I'd expect that of myself or one of my friends, but not of a guy my former-hippie, antitechnology mother is about to marry. I feel like everything I thought I knew is suddenly wrong, like all the rules of this stupid universe have been rewritten.

My gaze falls again to the huge diamond sparkling on her ring finger, and I see a glimmer of the truth. Lena has full-on sold out. She has been bought for the price of a two-carat rock, and she doesn't need me anymore. I'm not a part of the new Lena Kinsey–de Graas life story. I'm only going to get in the way, like one too many hyphenated names she will need to drop to make room for the new.

“What if I don't want to move?” Asha says, her eyes darker than usual as she glares at Lena now.

“Darling, we all have to make adjustments to this new situation. I simply can't continue living in a house that reminds me so much of Sarah.”

Ron looks up then. “Like I said, there is the possibility of you and Rachel remaining at your mother's house, if the two of you can pay the utilities and half the rent. I'd be willing to chip in the other half. It would be cheaper than remodeling my current house.”

Something about this idea makes me want to puke.

Me and Asha, living on our own? A sixteen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old? Even I think this idea sounds stupid. Neither of us knows how to cook anything besides a grilled-cheese sandwich. Lena's selling us out for this moron?

“Oh, right. I'll just quit school and come up with a thousand dollars a month, no problem,” Asha says as she lets her fork clatter to the plate.

“I don't even earn enough to buy groceries,” I squawk, sounding like an idiot.

The rent on our house is two thousand freaking dollars a month, and that's a bargain in our town from what I can tell.

“It could be a good education in money management,” Lena says. “Now that you're eighteen, you can work full-time. It's a chance to learn what it takes to budget and plan.”

I can learn what it takes to live in a homeless shelter is more like it. Already I am regretting having lost both David and AJ in one fucked-up day. At least I could have lived with one of them, maybe, and then I start calculating what it would take to get either of them back in my life in a serious way. Except I don't want to move to Oakland, and I don't like David enough to live with him.

“I'm moving in with Sin,” Asha announces. “And you don't need to call me your daughter anymore since you have no idea how to behave like a mother.”

With that my little sister stands up and sends her chair flying backward, startling everyone around us in the restaurant. She heads for the door, and I watch her for only a moment before I realize I want to follow. For once, I feel nothing but admiration for Asha and her relentless anger.

I stand up, and Lena looks at me with thin, pinched lips. “Sit down, Rachel. We will discuss what your options are.”

I feel a giant
Fuck you
hovering on my lips, but I don't say it. Instead, I drop my napkin in my plate of pasta and walk away.

Outside, I see Asha standing at the stoplight waiting to cross the street. It's not a terrible walk, the two miles back to our house from here, unless you are wearing freaking four-inch platform heels like I am.

“Asha, wait!” I call out.

She turns and stares at me, no particular expression on her face. But when the light turns green, she does wait as I hurry over to her. I stop at the corner and take off my shoes, figuring it will be easier to walk barefoot.

“I hate Lena,” she says quietly, not one little bit of emotion in her voice.

I wish I knew how she did that. “I'll walk with you.”

“I can't believe they're doing this.”

“I can. We're not exactly the perfect fucking family, now are we?” My voice sounds all choked up, which is embarrassing as hell.

Maybe this is the first time I am admitting to myself that my big sister is truly gone. There is not going to be a Sarah around for me to resent ever again. There is not even going to be the memory of her getting in our way if Lena just leaves behind our family home and goes to live with some new guy.

Whatever we were, whatever shaky, fucked-up little bit of a family we made, will be gone for good.

We are walking along a side street headed back toward what will soon no longer be our home, and I realize that I want to tell Asha what happened. All of it. It doesn't matter anymore anyway. There's nothing for me to hide now that I don't have a family left to protect from the truth.

I am so much worse than any of them think, but Asha, who doesn't give a damn, I can tell. She'll understand, I think, after the way she glared at Lena in the restaurant.

“I need to tell you something,” I say.

She doesn't respond. Just keeps walking, staring straight ahead.

“Remember when you asked about how Sarah died?”

It is easier to say this in the dark, her walking beside me so that I don't have to look into her eyes and see disgust.

“What?” she says so softly I can barely hear her.

“She didn't slip,” I say, for the first time aloud. “She jumped.”

Asha stops, so I have to turn and look at her. I see the devastation in her gaze and feel all of a sudden like the biggest shit in the world. I never realized until now, I was sort of protecting her by not admitting that part of Sarah's death.

“What do you mean she jumped?” she says with such vehemence, she sounds like a different person.

“I mean, she jumped. On purpose.”

Asha's expression is utter confusion. “How can you be sure? You
saw
her?”

“I was watching. I didn't expect her to do it, but she … She stood for a long time watching the surf, and then she dove off the rock. On purpose.”

Asha's face crumples in a way I'd never before seen. She clutched her hand against her stomach, and then, seeming to regain herself for a second, she said, “You're just saying this to hurt me. Sarah had no reason to commit suicide.”

Before I can explain any more, Asha turns and starts to run. Not wanting to go where I'm going, and not wanting to return to Lena and Ron, she chooses a third direction, down into the drainage ditch that lines the side of the road. It's a steep drop though, and after only a couple of steps, she cries out as it sounds like she loses her balance and falls the rest of the way down.

My stomach falls with her. I'm not ready to lose another sister, and while she's probably fine, I feel crazy panicked.

“Asha?” I call. “Are you okay?”

I start to make my way down to her, but it's pitch-dark and I can't even see where she has landed or where to step on my way down. “Asha?” I call again, holding my arms out for balance and cursing every time I take a step, as brush pokes into my bare feet.

I hear nothing from down below, and I start thinking of snakes and bugs and shit. I hate nature, in spite of my hippie upbringing, or maybe because of it. Now Asha is rustling in the brush, or at least I hope it is her.

“Please just say you're okay.”

“Fuck you,” she mutters.

With the sound of her voice, I am able to make my way over to her. Thank God I didn't slip, because I would fucking cry if I ruined my dress, but when my shin bumps against something solid, I lose my balance before I realize it's my sister I've fallen on.

“Shit,” she says as I fumble to climb off her. “Get the hell away from me.”

“Let me help you out of here.” I reach for her.

I don't usually touch my sister, not if I can help it. But now I am all of a sudden realizing she is the only one I've got, maybe the only family I've got, and I need to start figuring out how to get along with her without being a bitch all the time.

“I said get the hell away from me,” she shrieks, and starts clambering out of the ditch. I try to stand up to follow her, but I'm beginning to think this is a bad idea.

Yet, I don't want to be left alone here in the dark, so I start crawling back out as best I can without dragging my dress on the ground.

“I need to talk to you,” I call after Asha, but then I can hear footsteps on the pavement and I know she is running in the direction of home—or at least the place we once called home.

I chase after her for a while, but she disappears into the night, and I eventually give up and walk the rest of the way home. Finally I find her at the house. She could move a lot faster than I could in my bare feet, and she has already gotten a bag mostly packed with her stuff by the time I walk into her bedroom.

“Asha. Please just listen for a minute. I did something to Sarah. I have to tell you so you'll understand.”

She stops and looks at me then, her face expressionless.

This is probably as much attention as I'm ever going to get, so I start. “That shirt you found in Sarah's closet, and the newspaper article?”

Asha stares at me, says nothing.

“She was in the car that hit the guy. She was driving.”

“You're lying,” she says, but she sinks onto the edge of the bed as if I've pushed her.

“I was sleeping with David, and he was so freaked about the accident, he told me about it. I'm the only person besides them who knows.”

“Maybe David was driving. Maybe he lied.”

“I thought of that too. But here's the thing—I went hiking with Sarah to confront her about it, and she admitted everything.”

Asha just continues to stare at me, silent.

“I don't know why I wanted to confront her. Now I wish I hadn't.”

“You were sleeping with David,” she whispers as if she's just now finding that part out.

“David is a douche bag. He didn't deserve her.” I don't know where these words have come from, but I know they are true the moment they've escaped my lips.

“You did it to hurt her,” she says.

“Not exactly.”

“Then why?”

“I guess I just did it because I could.”

“Great reason.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, the words flat and so profoundly inadequate I almost laugh.

“Why are you telling me this?” Asha stands up and shoves the last of her clothes into her bag and zips it up.

“Because you want to know what happened.”

“It's not like you.”

“No, I guess not.”

Asha says nothing, but she sinks back onto the bed beside her bag.

“She was depressed,” Asha finally says slowly, as if she's figuring this out for herself. “That's why she didn't talk to me.”

I shrug, a spike of jealousy shooting through me. And I, the evil-bitch sister who practically pushed Sarah off the cliff, if not with my hands then at least with my words.

“It's my fault,” I say for the first time out loud. My voice kind of cracks, and I start to cry.

Big sobs escape my throat, but Asha just watches me, silent.

“It
is
your fault,” she then says. “If you hadn't slept with David, if you hadn't gone with her on that hike just to make her feel worse, she'd still be alive.”

And with that she stands up and leaves the house, leaving me to my pathetic sobbing.

Thirty-Five

Sarah

Deserving is a strange idea, or at least that's what I used to think. Who ever gets what they deserve? And how much of our lives do we spend expecting the deserving to get their due reward? I used to be at peace with the idea that it rarely happens, the reward thing. Did I deserve to have the combination of genes and bad luck that meant I would have cancer?

Maybe I did.

Maybe fate works backward, and what I was being punished for hadn't even happened yet. The more I think about it, the more I think that's just how it is. We never know if we're going to get our good luck now or later, or bad luck later or now or yesterday.