Then his hands tighten around my baby fat arms, and I’m dangling. I press my eyes shut and he pulls me up, back onto the balcony, back to safety and my mom’s wet sobs.
* * *
After that last summer, we don’t return to Windermere. We don’t return to Herron Mills. Mom resolves to make things work with Dad, but two years later, he leaves for a better opportunity. Something better than us. LA, Mom tells me now. We move to a small apartment in Bay Ridge. Mom starts working one job, then two. I forget Zoe, mostly. Mostly, I forget Herron Mills. Until fourteen years later, when I’m offered a plum gig at the Bellamy estate, and bits and pieces of my early childhood start to catch at the corners of my eyes like wisps of shadows at the end of a long summer day.
* * *
Now, I’m taking one day at a time. Allowing Mom’s stories and pictures to pull my memories more clearly into focus. I turn the corner onto Eighty-Second, pass by the fruit market, the house with the purple awning. Kaylee found an apartment in Queens with Ian, which is okay for now, and she’s busy with community college, which is great.
No one has heard from Starr. We’ve retreated back into our guilty silence. Maybe she faked her death; maybe she’s living a new life somewhere amazing. I looked it up. People do it more than you’d think. I need to believe it’s possible, although deep down, I know the truth.
Martina and I text every day. She’s going to come out to Bay Ridge to spend the weekend with us, as soon as her parents agree to let her come. Hopefully by January, when I move up to New Paltz, there will be a new podcast everyone’s listening to. A new case to push the name Anna Cicconi far, far into the background.
Most nights, when I’m lying in bed and trying not to fall asleep, delaying the dreams I know will come, my mind wanders to Zoe and Aster. My sisters. The short gasps of time I got to spend with them both. Now that I understand who she was to me, I want Zoe back more than ever. She was my summer friend, and so much more we didn’t realize. Our parents’ secrets like a river running between us, pushing us to opposite banks, pushing us apart.
Aster was only a baby when our parents had an affair. If I ever met her when we were kids, I don’t remember it. Sometimes I think of her, and my vision goes white with fury. How she let me sit in Pathways for two months. How she must have hoped my confession would stick, that she’d get to keep the real story locked inside her heart. But then I remind myself that, in the end, she did the right thing.
She’s lucky. She’ll be held at home until trial. I’m glad she’s not in juvie, like I was, but I know things still can’t be easy. I’d like to visit her, but I’m not ready yet. Someday, I will be.
After all, she’s the only sister I have left.
36 October
Herron Mills, NY
I HAVE A SECRET. It’s not dirty or little or some cutesy catchphrase. It’s caustic, noxious, burning me from the inside.
I killed Zoe.
And it was a terrible, terrible mistake.
It began last year, when Mom had surgery to fix a torn rotator cuff. After the procedure, her doctors prescribed this painkiller Demerol, which she only took one time, to get through a dinner party she was hosting for Wayfare + Ramble. In typical Mom fashion, she refused to cancel it, even though she was barely out of the hospital and Dad said she needed to rest.
Mom drank that night, some champagne, then too much red wine. I watched her stumble into the bathroom, and the running water didn’t do much to block the sound of her retching over the toilet. After that, Mom shoved the Demerol to the back of the medicine cabinet and switched to Advil instead.
I wasn’t trying to kill anyone, and that’s the god’s honest truth. Like I told the detectives, I wanted to punish Caden for breaking my sister’s heart.
But there’s some stuff I didn’t tell: When I got to the stable that afternoon, the open bottle of whiskey was less than a quarter full. At first, I didn’t pour that much Demerol in. It was the liquid stuff, smelled a little like bananas.