Secrets Whispered from the Sea - Emma St. Clair Page 0,18

eyes at her sister. “It’s called free building,” she said. “The house is cool. This is cooler.”

Camille started to snap back, and Ann held up a hand. “Girls. Both of you did a great job. Enough.”

Sophie stuck out her tongue at her sister, and Camille glared. The hairs on my arms stood up. This was like watching me and Ann years ago. I met her eyes, and she shook her head. She saw it too.

“The grown-ups need to talk. Head upstairs and do your homework, girls.”

I didn’t remember this tension between the twins, or such a dramatic difference in their personalities. As little girls, Ann had dressed them the same, and they didn’t seem to mind it. Their wide smiles had matched, always happy and willing to go along for whatever crazy adventure with Auntie Clem would have their mother rolling her eyes.

Now, I could see their distinctions more clearly, both in personalities and the way they dressed. Sophie wore what looked like boys’ athletic shorts and a T-shirt, while Camille had on khaki shorts and a floral top. Sophie’s hair hung long down her back and needed a good brushing, while Camille’s was tied up in a high ponytail with a ribbon.

Their matching groans were a comfort to me. At least they were united being annoyed with their mother. Even if everything else had changed. I slid the spaceship and house next to each other, studying them as though they’d reveal some secret about the twins that I’d missed.

“Sophie wants to join NASA,” Ann said. “Camille wants to have her own show on HGTV.”

“Wow. To already know that at nine. They remind me of …”

“Us. I feel like I’m stuck with the ghost of Christmas past in my own house,” Ann said.

I don’t know why her words stung so much, but they did. At the same time, I couldn’t blame her. I hated the awkwardness and friction between me and Ann now, all these years later. Watching a replay of it in my own children on a daily basis didn’t sound like a picnic.

I turned slightly in my stool to face Ann. “Why are we like that? Like this?”

The question hung in the air between us, waiting for an answer to illuminate it, like fragile particles of dust visible in the bright sunlight. Ann turned her coffee mug in her hands, and I could see that she had bitten her nails down to the quick. Sometimes, when I thought about the distance between us, I considered that we were just wired differently and butted heads.

Other times, I felt sure that it was because of Mom.

I didn’t have a lot of these conversations, vulnerable and honest. Especially not with Ann. We hardly talked at all.

Waiting for her to respond made my skin prickle with discomfort. Maybe we needed a little more preamble before I just dove in. I should have asked instead about how she was doing, how she was feeling about Nana being gone, or even about the girls or Tommy’s job. I knew he did something fancy related to finance that allowed him to work mostly from home, flying to New York every other week for a few days.

With no small amount of shame, I realized just how little I knew about my sister and her life.

But she knows just as little about me, I thought.

“We have different priorities,” Ann said, finally. “Different passions. Different personalities. We could not be more different.”

And just like in so many of our conversations, my hackles rose. Because she might have been saying different, but her tone of voice made it clear that she thought of her way as better. For once, I held back the quick response that wanted to escape, the sharp retort that would usually start us down the usual path to a fight. Before I could decide how to respond, Ann changed the subject.

“When will you go back to Houston?”

“I won’t. I’m looking for jobs in other places.”

Her next question was careful. “Anything here?”

“No.”

She seemed relieved to hear it, and that burned me. This whole conversation felt like rubbing coarse-grit sandpaper over the already raw places on my soul.

“You know, we could keep Nana’s and use it as a rental property or something.”

Ann looked down at her coffee. “We could really use the money now, not month to month.” She paused. “Things haven’t been going so well at Tommy’s work. Then there are the IVF expenses …”

“You’re going through IVF? Why didn’t you tell me?” That was a