“Why are you determined to inflict pain on a child?”
“I’m not—”
“Emmy is surrounded by love,” Lev says over me. “I told you this. She has a father who loves her. She has countless members in The Project who all love her, who want her to be happy, who fill the gaps. I thought you understood and that it might inspire you to be brave enough to take this opportunity to fill those gaps in your own life … but now I see you just want to pull Emmy into your pain so you don’t have to be so alone with it.”
“Fuck you—”
“I won’t let you poison my family.”
“She’s my family too!”
A small movement out of the corner of my eye: Emmy, clearly upset, cowering in the hall, the conversation itself so far beyond her years, but the anger driving it easy enough to parse at any age. She starts to cry and Lev goes to her, lifting her from the ground. Emmy buries her head into his shoulder and he rubs her back, soothing her from the nightmare that is me.
“I only ever asked you to write a profile,” he tells me. “You need to leave.”
The drive from the station back to Morel takes me past the cemetery. I watch it come up on my phone. I tell my cabdriver to stop, to let me out.
I stand outside the gate.
Bea buried our parents while I was unconscious. The consequence was an awful, unfinished feeling inside me; this faint belief that Mom and Dad could step through the door at any moment and tell me it was all a dream. Patty always tried to get me to visit, as though seeing the grave would help resolve the open-ended note Bea left me on, but I refused. Worse than the lingering expectation that my parents were still alive was the reality they were not.
I can’t bring myself to step inside.
My phone rings, the sound awful, startling.
I dig into my pocket to answer it.
I want it to be Lev.
I want him to tell me he was wrong.
“Hello?”
The silence that greets me is crushing in its familiarity and the day has left me feeling so defeated, I can’t even muster the will to disconnect. I just listen to the breathing on the other end of the line and then …
My grip tightens as a strange, sick thought takes hold of me.
“… Bea?”
The breathing on the line pauses, electrifying me: confirmation. I close my eyes and tears immediately form, slipping down my face. I can sense her impending hang-up and I say, quickly, desperately, “Wait.”
Silence.
“If it’s you, stay on. Stay on the line. Please.”
She doesn’t hang up.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
I bring my free hand to my eyes, covering them.
“I miss you so much.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I’m crying in earnest, can’t even hear her over the sounds of myself. I struggle to regain composure, quieting enough to be sure she’s still on the line. For one terrifying second, there’s nothing. “Bea?”
And then the relief of her breathing.
She’s still there.
“Where are you?”
She doesn’t respond. There’s a small shuffle of sound; maybe she’s holding her phone as tightly as I am mine, fingers going numb.
“Come back,” I beg. “Please.”
Still, nothing.
The absence of response is a weight I can barely breathe against. I believed—when I was younger, I always believed—once Bea was witness to my pain she would never be able to make herself the cause of it again. That I could finally be enough to make her stay.
“You told me … you told me Mom said being sisters was a promise no one but us could make and no one but us could break—remember? Do you remember that?” Still, nothing. I close my eyes. “So which is it, Bea?”
The breath on the line seems to hitch.
“Bea,” I say again, desperate. “Which is it?”
And then, her voice.
For the first time in years—her voice.
“Good-bye…”
She hangs up.
2013
The first week after Lo regained consciousness, she would ask Bea the same question over and over:
Who am I?
Her voice was raspy and broken from the abuse of the ventilator, the lack of use, but the question was desperate and her eyes were wild, fearful, as she awaited Bea’s answer.
Everything seemed to hinge on it.
You’re Lo. You’re my sister. You’re thirteen years old. You’ve been in a wreck.
Lo would cry in response every single time.
It upset Bea. She wasn’t comforted when the doctors told her Lo wasn’t fully present yet, that it was unlikely she’d even remember asking