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  My palms started to sweat, and my heartbeat, which had barely returned to a regular resting rate, started pounding as fast as hoofbeats once again. I felt like I was invading Mom’s privacy, reading her diary. Not that she deserved any privacy. She’d left Susannah and me and never looked back.

  And so I kept going.

  I didn’t mean for this to happen. I suppose that’s how it always starts. No one says they want to be a bank robber or a drug dealer when they grow up. And no one says they want to have an affair.

  Questions rushed into my brain faster than I could read the answers. Mom had had an affair before Dad left? With whom? And how did she meet him? How long did it last?

  I wanted to have a normal life, and on paper I have one—a husband, a child.

  A husband. Okay, it was when Dad was still around.

  So my sister is a little messed up. At least she has character.

  Oh, sure, Gigi had a lot of “character.” I wondered if that was what Mom told herself when she left Susannah and me in her care.

  I should be perfectly happy. I was mostly happy. Except for the times I’d wake up in the middle of the night with an inexplicable sense of loss, and I’d resent Keith next to me, sleeping the sleep of the dead. He’d worked hard to get where he was, from the rockiness of his childhood, to the rebellion and addiction of his young adulthood, to this normal life, and he never seemed to want any more than we had. The mornings after those sleepless nights, I’d come back to understanding his contentment. It seemed crazy—that I’d been so upset, and that I’d resented him for nothing I could even explain. I’d put on the coffee, and he’d shuffle papers into his briefcase, and we’d kiss the baby good-bye, and it all seemed to be the way it was supposed to be. And I was happy.

  But things happen. A particular set of circumstances lead you to a particular place. A restaurant on the corner of Forty-ninth and Third. Your friend’s late for dinner. A man sits alone at the next table. And suddenly your life is split in two. One life is your apartment and your husband and your kid. And the other life is just this man and nothing else. Everything else falls away. You tell yourself it doesn’t mean anything. But then you keep going back—even though you know you shouldn’t. It feels so good. So you go back again. And again and again.

  I decided I wasn’t surprised that my mom had betrayed her family for something that felt good for a moment. That kind of impulse was the same kind as the one that got her to leave her children for good. I flipped the page, but it was stuck to a clump of others. My fingers fumbled to pull them apart. “Shit,” I said as I tore them instead of separating them. I pushed past the ruined pages to the next section.

  I said I had a business trip, and then I got on a plane to meet him. Of course I called home to check in. Lorrie got on the phone to tell me about her day. Then she told me I had to say hi to each of her stuffed animals.

  I thought back to the deepest recesses of my brain, to remember a phone call with my mom and a line of stuffed animals I’d made her greet. But I couldn’t remember any of it. I couldn’t even remember caring about my stuffed animals like that. That was Susannah’s kind of thing.

  Junior came into the room as I was greeting the hippo and the pig and the donkey.

  Junior? What kind of a name was Junior?

  I don’t know why I was self-conscious. He’s a parent, too. Up until now we’ve had an unspoken rule not to talk about our families. The names of our spouses and our children are verboten. But suddenly he wanted to know about other things I did with Lorrie. I told him all of our little traditions, but I left out any mention of Keith. As if we were a family of two and not three.

  I felt bad for the child version of myself, on the phone with Mom. Of course, I’d had no idea what Mom was really thinking at the time. I wondered if she’d rushed me off once her boyfriend walked into the room. I flipped the page again.

  Junior and I had no fewer than a thousand conversations about it, and in the end he’d always come to the same conclusion: Telling the truth would be so messy.

  But life is messy. That’s what I kept telling him. You make messes, and you clean them up as best you can, and then you make more messes. And so it goes. I thought maybe if I made this particular mess first, we’d clean it up together. So I told Keith the baby wasn’t his.

  The baby? Did she mean Susannah? Was Susannah not my father’s child? Oh God. My sister. My sister wasn’t my sister. At least, not entirely.

  It was the biggest revelation of my entire life, and I was learning about it alone in the barely lit attic surrounded by garbage. My heart was beating madly and erratically, my stomach was in knots, and a lone tear fell from all those welling in my eyes. Plop, onto the page. I smudged Mom’s words as I wiped it away and kept on reading.

  But afterward, it just didn’t work out the way I thought it would. My plan was, I’d tell Keith and report back to Junior, and he’d finally be prompted to tell his wife. It would be a hard year of adjustments—getting divorces and becoming stepparents to each other’s children. But other people have done it. We could do it, too. And in the end it would even be better than what we were living now. That’s what I told him.

  But he didn’t leave his wife. He said he didn’t want to. He said we were being selfish and this was something we shouldn’t have started at all. And Keith. I can barely stand to think about what this did to him. He threw away years of sobriety in one night. He said he never wanted to see me again. I cried and begged, “What about Lorrie?” But he said she reminded him too much of me and all he’d lost. He said she’d be better off without him.

  So now here I am—without my husband, without Junior. A single mom, with a new baby on the way.

  Was I supposed to feel sorry for her—because her husband and her boyfriend left her? It was only because of her own selfish choices, like Junior said.

  But my heart did break for Susannah. Memories from our childhood suddenly flashed into my mind. Like how she would ask to sleep in my bed almost every night. It’s so weird, being the older sister. Sometimes you’re not in the mood to be followed around or copied or needed. You don’t want a little sister. You want to be an only child again. And those nights I’d tell Susannah to get back to her own room. But then, sometimes, there’s no better feeling than having your younger sibling lying right beside you. In the mornings Susannah would let me brush her hair. I had a book of different braids, and Susannah was the model I practiced on to learn a fishtail, a French braid, a Dutch braid. The last one was her favorite. “It’s inside out!” she’d always squeal with delight.

  I looked back down at the journal on my lap. The words were a blur on the page, but I read them anyway, as if this time they’d spell out a different truth. I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me.

  “Lorrie?” Susannah called, and I jumped in surprise. Startled, Susannah dropped the candle she was holding. Mom’s diary fell to the floor, and I kicked it away so she wouldn’t see it. Susannah cried out, and for a second the only thing that registered was that the room was suddenly brighter. Then I realized she was on fire. Whatever synthetic tag-sale skirt she was wearing had gone up in flames, which were spreading quickly, licking her skin.

  “I’m burning!” she screamed.

  Stop, drop, and roll. That firefighting lesson from childhood popped into my head.

  Once, in a Hillyer science seminar we’d been taught that small animals like flies and hummingbirds experience time in slow motion. That’s what it was like for me as I tackled Susannah to the ground. She was wailing in pain, and the words I yelled out sounded distended and strange: “Help! Fire! Help!”

  18

  WE HAVE A PROBLEM

  “LORRIE,” SOMEONE WHISPERED. “LORRIE, WAKE UP.”

  A hand clamped down on my shoulder, and I screamed before I’d even opened my eyes.

  “Shh,” the voice said.

  It took me several seconds to focus on the man standing in front of me, dressed from head to toe in teddy-bear scrubs. I was in a
hospital, I remembered. I’d come screaming into the emergency room, barely two hours earlier: “My sister! My sister! Someone help her, please!”

  Now Susannah was lying in the bed next to me, and a machine beeped rhythmically, tracking her vital signs. I wondered what had happened to the car after we’d been checked in and treated. I’d pulled up right outside the ER door, and orderlies had come with a gurney to get Susannah from the backseat. One of them noticed my hand and brought me inside, too. No one had asked me to move the Mercedes. I think the keys were even still in it.

  “My car,” I whispered to Teddy-Bear Scrubs.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered back. “Someone parked it for you.”

  “The keys?”

  “They’re in the bag with your sister’s clothes,” he said. “Don’t worry. Can you come with me now, please?”

  I nodded, got up, and followed him into the hallway, where a woman was waiting. She was in a pantsuit that Lennox’s moms would characterize as “smart,” and she had a clipboard under her arm. Around her neck was a tag that read: C. HILLMAN.

  She held out her hand to shake mine but then noticed my bandage and gave me a pat on the shoulder instead. “I’m Cheryl,” she said.

  First-name basis. So, she wasn’t a doctor. I was pretty sure she wasn’t a nurse, either.

  “And you’re Lorrie Hollander.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Of the Hollanders on Break Run?”

  My cheeks warmed. “Yes,” I said again.

  “No kidding,” Teddy-Bear Scrubs said. “I’ve driven by that place a hundred times. I’ve always wondered about the people who lived there.”

  I never knew what to say when my house’s reputation preceded me. Per usual I looked at the ground and didn’t say anything at all.

  “Why don’t we sit down?” Cheryl Hillman said. She beckoned me toward a set of chairs in bright primary colors.

  “But Susannah—” I started.

  “Dr. Cortes will be in soon,” Cheryl said. “And George can wait with her until he comes. Right, George?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Teddy-Bear Scrubs said.

  “All right, Lorrie?” Cheryl asked.

  “Yeah, all right.” I followed her to a blue plastic chair underneath a Winnie the Pooh decal. Cheryl pulled a cherry lollipop from her breast pocket and held it out to me. I didn’t think it was possible to feel any more diminished than I did right then. “Aren’t those for the little kids who come in here?” I asked.

  “They’re for anyone who needs a little pick-me-up,” she said. “I hear you’ve had a rough night.” I didn’t move to take the lollipop from her, even though I was starving, and she left it on the table between us. There were a couple of gossip magazines on the table, too, I guess for parents to read while they were waiting for news of their children. The headline on the top one proclaimed: DATE NIGHT FOR SHELBY AND HAYDEN. EXCLUSIVE PICTURES! I wondered if Charlie had seen it—not the magazine in particular, but the news in general that Shelby Rhodes and Hayden O’Conner had apparently been out on a date. And I wondered how he felt about it and if he’d thought about me at all when he heard. Was he thinking of me now the way I was thinking of him? I wished I was next to him, instead of next to Cheryl Hillman. I was supposed to be next to him—at Lennox’s for dinner. I wondered if they’d eaten without me, and what excuse Lennox had made up for not being able to get in touch with me, and if Charlie was worried.

  “Dr. Cortes filled me in a bit on what happened,” Cheryl Hillman said. “I just wanted to meet you and see how you’re feeling.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I mean, my hand hurts, but that’s to be expected.”

  “We can get you something for the pain.”

  “That nurse who was just here? George? He gave me a little something.”

  “He told me you were very brave.”

  My burns were all superficial. The worst one was a fiery blister in the center of my palm. George had covered it in ointment, wrapped it up with gauze, and given me Tylenol. Meanwhile my sister was in a hospital bed with tubes running in and out of her.

  “Not really that brave,” I said.

  “Being brave doesn’t mean you can’t also be scared.” Cheryl Hillman had one of those soft, measured, teacher-ish voices, and I could tell it was a line she’d delivered a few hundred times. “This is the top-rated hospital in the area, and Dr. Cortes said you and your sister are expected to make complete recoveries.”

  I curled my right hand, my bandaged hand, into a ball and felt a sharp pain. I uncurled it, then curled it again. Pain.

  “You’re safe here, Lorrie. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And at home? Any problems there?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you sure?”

  I knew she was only asking because my home had a reputation. The crumbling house that was bringing down the value of all the other mansions lining the road by the ocean. Surely the girls who lived there weren’t really fine at all.

  And we weren’t fine. Especially not now. We were in a hospital, for God’s sake. My sister had come up to the attic with a candle because it was getting dark and she knew I couldn’t just switch on a light like a normal person. It struck me that I wouldn’t have minded so much if the whole place had gone up in flames. But since my sister was the spark of the fire, I’d had to put it out. I’d thrown myself over her, and together we’d rolled on the floor until the flames died down. The tip of Susannah’s braid was on fire, and I’d cinched it with my hand.

  None of it would’ve happened if our mother hadn’t left.

  Cheryl Hillman leaned in close. “You can talk to me, Lorrie,” she said.

  The words were on the tip of my tongue, and the tears were welling in my eyes, and I wondered how I’d possibly start this story. What words would I say? I never spoke the truth about my house. I only said things to cover it up.

  But if I told her now, then what? It wasn’t like Mom would come back, or that I’d get to go back to Hillyer. And if they managed to track down my alcoholic father, there was no way he’d sweep in and rescue us. He’d been off the scene for a decade and a half, and besides, I knew now that he wasn’t even related to Susannah.

  Instead, there’d be social workers dispatched, and Susannah and I would be taken out of Gigi’s custody and put into foster care. They’d probably split us up. And foster parents don’t necessarily sign up for being pet caretakers on top of caring for the kids they take in. I could practically hear my sister begging—screaming—to be able to take all her pets with her. The thought made me cringe.

  I wouldn’t be able to keep Orion, either. So maybe the house of horrors that we knew was better than what we didn’t.

  I curled and uncurled my hand again. Ironically the pain turned off the tears. “No problems at home,” I said.

  “You really can tell me anything, Lorrie. It’s my job to make sure you and Susannah are getting the care you need.”

  “We are,” I said. “We’re fine.”

  “With all due respect, Lorrie, you and your sister are in the hospital right now.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I clarified. “This was an accident. Accidents happen. You must see a lot of them.”

  “You’re right, I do. And sometimes they’re truly unavoidable. But you and your sister came in here alone. As I understand it, you drove yourself to the hospital.”

  “I was the only one home.” I’d screamed and screamed for Gigi, but she hadn’t come.

  “Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”

  “I . . . I thought it’d be faster,” I said. I couldn’t bear to tell her we didn’t have a phone.

  “In these situations, we’re often acting on adrenaline.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But if an adult had been present, perhaps he or she would have had the presence of mind to make the call for help. After all, I assume you’re not trained for medical emergencies. Susannah could have gone into sho
ck and needed attention while you were behind the wheel.”

  “But she didn’t,” I said, my voice low.

  “It seems to me that you have a lot on your shoulders. Sometimes what happens is a sign that we should intervene before there’s a next time.”

  “Listen, Ms. Hillman . . .” She looked back at me with eyebrows raised. “Or is it Dr. Hillman?”

  “Lorrie, I’m Cheryl.”

  “Cheryl,” I repeated.

  And now I knew why she’d told me to call her by her first name. It had nothing to do with being a doctor or a nurse. It was to disarm me—to give the illusion of familiarity between us, so I’d feel comfortable telling her my family’s deepest, darkest secrets.

  “I know you’re just doing your job, and I’m sure you’ve seen kids with terrible home lives who need your intervention. But my sister and I aren’t two kindergartners who were left home alone and didn’t know how to use the oven. I’m seventeen, and Susannah is fifteen. We do plenty of things on our own. And that’s not because we’re victims of neglect. It’s simply because we’re practically adults.”

  “All right, then,” she said. She paused and looked down at her clipboard. I could tell she was just fake-reading, buying time before she said what came next. “Lorrie, I know you have a lot on your mind right now, but I just wanted to check—it says here that your insurance is Blue Cross.”

  “That’s right. I don’t know the policy number—the card is at home. But I know it’s Blue Cross from when I’ve filled out my school insurance forms, and George said it wouldn’t be a problem to call and get the policy number.”

  “You fill out your own medical forms for school?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “No reason. It’s just usually a thing a parent does.”

  “Our aunt is our guardian.”

  Cheryl nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  If she knew, then why did she mention the thing about a parent?

  “So I’m going to be completely honest with you. We have a problem. We spoke to Blue Cross, and they said your family’s insurance policy has been canceled.”

  My cheeks heated up as if the room was on fire. “I’m sure when my aunt gets here, she’ll clear everything up,” I said.