From the living room, I hear her stir and turn over. I push the duvet aside and get out of bed quietly, anxious not to wake up Chase. She must have heard me, too, because she whispers hoarsely into the gloom.
“Alex, is that you?”
Of course it’s me. And she knows it. “Yes. It’s me.”
Silence. She’s thinking. I’m standing at the crack in my bedroom door.
“Remember when we were little and the wind would blow against the house?” Her sentence has a smile in it. “You used to think it was lions roaring.”
I was so small then, I could curl the whole of myself against Ruth’s body as she hugged me. She would stay like that, a canopy over me until I fell asleep. But it wasn’t just the two of us then. The memory’s swift and visceral. I feel him, right there with us, curled up beside me and Ruth, so close that I can feel his little heartbeat. I know what Ruth’s doing now, how she’s softening me. But still I let her. I close the door to my bedroom and walk down the few stairs toward her. “We were sure those lions were right under our window.”
Our voices are velvety in the high-vaulted space as I turn on the dim lamp by the television.
“That’s better,” Ruth says. “I can’t sleep in here. It’s too quiet, and the fridge keeps plinking.”
I don’t answer her. She’s sitting, stooped like a vagrant on a park bench.
“Alex,” she says again, her whisper softer. “I really need your help.”
She’s never said that before. Not once. Chills shiver down my back. I sit down next to her. She drags the sheet to hook it around my shoulders, but I shrug it off.
“Will you help me?”
There’s a swell in the deepest part of me, a heaving undulation. She’s shifting a rock at the bottom of the seabed, and I don’t think I want it moved.
“You’re my sister. The only one I have.” She edges closer. “Anyway, I thought coming here would be good.”
She reaches to move hair out of my face, just like the old days, but I dodge her.
“Good for who?” I ask. “For you?”
“Yes … yes, I suppose, but also good for you. After everything that’s happened, Alex, I thought the timing was right. We’ve both made mistakes.”
Both of us? Any mistakes I’ve made, Ruth was at their very center. How could her coming here pregnant and destitute, and wanting help, ever be good for me? I take a deep breath and remember Chase’s words about family, about being there.
“Are you clean?” I ask.
She nods.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Alex. Yes. I’ve been clean for years and years.” She glances across the room to the coat hooks, where her bag hangs in the shadows. “Totally. One hundred percent. I’m clean and sober.”
“Okay, that’s good,” I say, not that I believe her. But this does feel different. In the past, she would slide away from any answer, slippery as an eel.
“Go to sleep now. We’ll talk about this more in the morning.” I tiptoe toward my bed again, toward the safe blank slate of Chase. Her plea hangs in the air, but I refuse to give her an answer now. I need time to think.
“Sleep tight, Alex,” she says. “This could be good for you, you know.”
I feel the fire surging in my belly, but I don’t turn around. I don’t bite. I won’t dare say another word.
RUTH
I wake to the sound of a blender crunching ice in the kitchen. It’s midmorning, judging by the light streaming in through the window. I sit up, pulling the sheet around me, and see Chase by the counter.
“Hey,” he says, opening the lid of the blender and poking inside with a spoon. “Sorry about that. I guess I woke you.” He’s dressed in workout gear, complete with an enormous watch on his wrist. “I’ve got an acai berry immuno-enhancer going here. You’re welcome to a glass.”
“I’m good,” I say.
“You’re missing out.” He reaches up to a cupboard and grabs a glass from a perfectly symmetrical row. There are also white coffee mugs in there, identically spaced.
“Where’s Alex?” It’s so quiet: even with the window open, there are no sounds to suggest other people exist. I’m not used to being in such a small town anymore.
“Oh, she left at sevenish. Guess you’re a pretty deep sleeper, huh?” Chase pours the purple gloop into a glass. He tastes it, then sucks a thick foamy line from his upper lip. “She works eight till four at Family Services.”
Family Services? “That can’t be right,” I say, trying to keep my voice even.
Chase cocks his head to one side. “Don’t tell me you don’t even know what your sister does for a living.”
“I had no idea,” I say. And it’s true. Alex cut off all communication after I left.
“She’s a social worker. Child protection.”
I nod slowly, light dawning. Child protection. The irony is astounding.
“You really didn’t know?” He sets down his smoothie.
“We haven’t exactly been BFFs.” I get up, bunching the sheet into a ball behind me.
He takes a long draught of his juice, watching me over the rim of the glass. When he’s done, he wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. “But you were close as kids? You grew up together?”
“Oh, we did everything together,” I say. She’s told him nothing at all, I see that now.
“But it was a tiny town, right? Alex told me she grew up in North Dakota, but when I googled the town name—Horizon—I saw only grain silos and fields.”
“That’s all there is. That’s the heart of it.” Now would be a good time to excuse myself and take a shower or something, but I feel trapped here in men’s boxers and an oversize T-shirt.
“Can I ask you something?” Chase sits down on a stool, lacing his fingers in front of him. “Why did you leave it so long to get back in touch?”
“I couldn’t leave it a minute longer.”
He bites his lip for a few seconds. I’m giving him the answers he wants, and still he doesn’t like them.
“But you left in a hurry,” he says. “You’ve brought nothing with you. And what’s that—” He points at the side of my face until I rest my palm there. “There’s a mark. There—by your temple. That’s a bruise.”
“No, it’s not.” I pull my hair forward to how it was last night. “It’s nothing. I just banged myself against the window on the bus.”
He nods quietly in the way people do when they don’t believe you. He’s more observant than I’d given him credit for. It’s true I left in a rush. Packing would have raised suspicion, and it wasn’t safe for me to stay in Pittsburgh any longer, not after what I’d done. I push those thoughts away and take a seat at the island, wondering what he’ll ask next. Mostly I just want to find out more about him and Alex. I heard them whispering last night but couldn’t catch what they were saying.
“If someone’s hurt you, you can say so, you know.” He looks down at the countertop. “I don’t know much about that kind of stuff, but it would be okay.”