She ignores him, though. I can see this makes him simmer.
His neck tenses. “Take your coat off, Ruth—at least stay for dinner?”
That gets Alex’s attention, but she doesn’t utter a word.
“Thank you,” I say.
He pauses with his hands on his hips, then disappears to the far end of the loft, behind a sliding Japanese door that’s almost see-through but not quite. Alex sits stiffly.
“So why are you here? And where have you been for, you know, ages? You didn’t say.” Her hands are fists in her lap.
I bypass the sarcasm. “I’ve been out east. Here and there. You look good.”
“So you’ve been with him. With Hal?” She can’t hide the effort in having to say his name out loud.
Hal Nightingale, the lanky-legged drifter I dated, who she and Dad loathed when he worked that one summer on our farm. His car was a Plymouth Duster with a stereo so distorted the rock music blared out as fuzz. I bet she thinks I married him. She never knew why I hung out with him, except she did know. She knew all the disappointment that pushed me there, all the towering blame.
“I left him a long time ago,” I say. “You do realize that was ten years ago?”
Her eyes widen for just a second. “Right. Good for you.” Liar, she’s thinking.
“Are you okay, Alex? Is there something you want to say?”
“Isn’t it a little bit late for that?” she says.
My plan isn’t working. “Look at this place,” I say, forcing my voice lighter. But I can’t help adding, “It’s nothing like you.”
“What does that mean?” She takes a long strand of her hair and sucks it, just like she did when she was little and someone was cornering her. We sit in silence for a minute, a stilted agony more than a family reunion. Eventually I point to the giant canvas photograph by the door, the only artwork in the whole loft.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“It’s Chase. He’s a ski racer. Or he was. Now he works for Powderkeg, the local mountain.”
I stare at it. Who hangs a fuck-off-massive picture of himself on his own wall? Right on cue, Chase emerges from what must have been a thirty-second shower. Was he afraid to leave us alone for longer?
“I’ll just get dressed,” he says, “and then we can have some dinner. Take your time, no rush. You two must have a lot to catch up on.” He smiles broadly and heads into what looks like a walk-in closet.
When I shift my leg to move one knee over the other, the pointy glass corner of the coffee table stabs me at shin level. I wince. Chase is only half-right. Alex and I do have a lot to catch up on, except that we don’t. There’s so much to be said that we can’t say anything. I might not have seen my sister since she was fifteen, but I can already tell what her adult life has been, already sense the ease of it—while mine has been the opposite—and the lies behind it all, our whole family, including me, willfully forgotten. We were forged in the same fire, though. In the end, it will all come out.
“He’s upbeat, isn’t he, your husband? He seems to have a very sunny disposition.”
Heat blotches at her throat. “He’s not my husband.” She looks down, notices the tattoo on the inside of my left wrist. My arrow, the end of it sharp and hard, but she doesn’t comment on it. “He already told you he’s my boyfriend. We’re living together, but we’re not married.”
“Is that allowed?” I venture a smile, but it’s not reciprocated. “Dad would lose his mind.”
She starts a sentence and stops it again. Tries several more times.
“Do you know about Dad?” she finally asks. “About what happened to him?”
“That he’s dead, you mean?” I say.
There’s a beat, a twist of hurt. “So you heard.” She sniffs. “It was four years ago, and I left Horizon as soon as he passed.”
“I don’t blame you. It was a shithole, let’s be honest.”
“And Mom? You know about her, too?”
“Listen, Alex, I didn’t come here to—”
“How could you get my messages and not get in touch with me? Why didn’t you come home?” She has bigger questions than that, though. She must have.
“You know why,” I say.
Alex sits rigidly next to me on the unforgiving couch. I can feel her low animal steadiness, the precision of her breathing. “So why are you here?”
I put both hands on my stomach and rest them there, around the well-disguised curve of me. She looks down at my fingers, up at my eyes, until recognition dawns on her.
“No,” she says finally. “No.”
“Yes, sister,” I say. “I’m pregnant.”
ALEX
We sit crowded around one end of the kitchen island to eat Chase’s paleo meal, our bowls almost touching. On one side of me, Ruth shovels the food in as though she hasn’t eaten in weeks. She still holds her spoon like it’s a bike handle. It brings me back: Dad must have told her a hundred times.
“So you’re just traveling through? Or…?” Chase lets the real question hang in the air.
“I don’t necessarily have a plan,” Ruth says. Her mouth is full, and a fleck of quinoa spits onto the marble countertop.
“She’s pregnant,” I say, pushing my food away. I’ve taken only a couple of bites. The quinoa coats my tongue like sand.
“Really?” Chase spills a little water on his chin. “Okay. Well, wow. Congratulations, then.” He checks my face to see if he’s responding the right way, but I’m fresh out of signals.
“Having a baby is like being reborn.” Ruth puts down her spoon. “Isn’t it, Alex?”
I say nothing, concentrate only on breathing quietly in and out.
“It’s all about getting it right. I have to build a nursery. I have to build it while the baby is still on the inside.”
“A crib, you mean?” Chase fills my wineglass, watching me.
“She’s being metaphorical.” My voice is as steady as I can make it. “She means she’s planning to be a good mother.” Has she wiped everything that happened before from her memory? If she believes she’s capable of being a mom, she’s blocked it all out. My hand trembles as I lift my wineglass.
Chase fills in the silence. “A nursery sounds like a great thing. And … where will this nursery be?”
I know he’s trying to help, but he’s so entirely literal. It’s as if he’s wandered into a movie halfway through and is trying to guess the plot.
“Your food’s delicious,” Ruth says. Typical, age-old avoidance.
“Thank you. It’s all organic, locally sourced.” Chase glances to the bay window as if the weather threatens, but it doesn’t. “Alex, it’s getting pretty late. Is your sister staying? Or is there somewhere we can take you, Ruth? Do you have a place to—”
I grip the wineglass. “She can stay here,” I say. “Just for tonight. Then she needs a better plan.”
“Thank you,” Ruth mutters. She keeps her head low and continues to eat.
Later, we set her up with clean sheets on the couch and Chase gives her a towel. She doesn’t shower. The bag she brought with her hangs by the front door. If there’s a toothbrush inside it, she doesn’t go looking for it. Once we’ve established that the couch is hers for the night, Chase and I can’t watch television, relax, or go anywhere in the loft except to the far end, where our own bedroom is. I pack a few things in the kitchen for work tomorrow, while Ruth sits with her back to me. Our good nights are lackluster and clipped.