Now Kennedy gazed up at the dormer windows that had been hers and Carter’s as girls. Gerry was already moving away from the BMW SUV, expecting she would easily walk back into this world, this affluence that wasn’t understood and made no impact at Heron Valley. They’d sent her away because the state wanted to make an example of her, send a message that rich kids go to jail too. That’s what their lawyers had told her and her parents. They’re threatening life no parole if we don’t plea out. After they’d been fighting for over a year it was Gerry who finally told her to take it. Even Laine had worn down.
Kennedy stood there so long that Gerry turned back, gave her a questioning glance.
In the garden in front of the dining room window the glass globe still shone atop its wrought iron stick: a recycled-glass sphere the size of a bowling ball, coiled with gold and teal strands of color. “I gave that to Mom for her fortieth birthday.”
Kennedy remembered Laine had cried when she opened it. Although now she wondered if her emotion came from some other place. Both girls had known their parents were heading for divorce, that they had turned into Bill and Hillary, keeping separate schedules for everything from dinner to TV watching. Eventually, their mother had moved out, three months before her death, because only Laine Wynn would initiate divorce while going through chemo. Taking care of her had been Carter’s job; taking care of Kennedy had been Gerry’s.
“You’re back, and she would be proud of you today,” Gerry said decisively. He clapped his hands together as if dusting them off. Done with it. Done with a long-ago tragedy in that way in which men try to own death, deciding when and where it matters and how long to grieve.
“I made up your room,” he said.
It hadn’t occurred to Kennedy that anything would need to be done. She edged into the foyer, removed her shoes, a new pair of black Mary Janes purchased by Carter—a little-girl shoe, almost as if her twin couldn’t conceive of her having aged in the time she’d been in prison. She noticed a wall had been removed between the foyer and the sitting room. The paint and furniture looked new: teal curtains, white paint, a textured brown wallpaper on the accent wall, and a long chocolate leather couch. Everything crisp, masculine. Like a luxury hotel where no object had meaning. She crossed the room and gazed at the new gas fireplace. Gerry came over, excited to tell her about the fuel efficiency and show her how to turn it on.
Above it, there was a large wood frame surrounding a photograph of Gerry just after Kennedy and Carter were born. His hair was longish, sandy, and he sported a mustache. He was holding a girl on each forearm, bundles light as loaves of bread. Kennedy had seen it many times, but in an old album years before.
“My decorator, Laura, found it, did some cleanup work on the print, had that specially mounted.”
“Which am I?” Kennedy asked.
They both stepped closer, peering at the long-ago babies. The one that had Gerry’s attention was crying. The other small face, only a few days old, was placid.
Gerry chuckled. “Laine didn’t always mark the photographs with your names, because she thought it was obvious which was which. And it was to us, at the time.”
He walked over to the sound system and flicked it on, keen to show her everything. He paused. “You looked identical, but you were different. She was born first . . .”
Ten minutes before her, but Kennedy was the more dominant personality from the start. Their mother said it was like that even in the womb—there was one side of her belly that kicked harder and she always implied it was Kennedy who did the kicking. Kennedy had always suspected Carter was her father’s favorite too—until Haley Kimberson was found in Blueheart Woods. Then he’d turned his attention to Kennedy, and she became his project.
Kennedy saw her reflection in the glass frame as she frowned and said, “She stopped visiting me.”
“I know.”
Kennedy nodded. She’d felt abandoned by her in the last few months of her sentence. But that wasn’t fair, was it? It sounded like her sister had gone through some things, if she’d really moved out from Alex’s. Life had gone on and Kennedy had been a madwoman locked in a tower. Who wants to deal with those bitches?
* * *
—
The chafing dishes set up along one side of the dining room presented a buffet dedicated to Kennedy’s favorite foods from age sixteen: lasagna, onion rings, fried rice, egg rolls, mini tacos, and mini samosas. There were ceramic bowls of dill pickles, egg salad, Chex Mix, and various sugared sour candies. The offerings would have been better suited to a kid’s birthday party than a welcome-home party with a guest list of two adult women and a fifty-seven-year-old man. Gerry told her the rest of the family would be there at one thirty. Even though Kennedy was pretty sure he hadn’t spoken to them in a decade, he’d apparently invited her mother’s sister, Aunt Jackie, and the cousins from that side. She remembered when catered buffets had been a normal part of her life—now “chow” meant a cafeteria line with barely recognizable offerings.
Gerry walked up behind Kennedy as she stood in the dining area. He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed down, gently massaging her. She realized she had stiffened. In fifteen years of living and speaking only with women, no one had once touched her without asking. They heard a car in the drive, and Gerry’s hands fell away.
“It’s Alex!”
Gerry paced eagerly to the window. His belly had expanded slightly, pushing against his shirt buttons, and his hair had grayed—things Kennedy didn’t notice when he came to visit at Heron Valley but that she saw now, observing him in contrast to the house and her memories of him there.
“If they’re not together why did you invite him?” Kennedy asked, defending her sister even in her absence.
“He was family too.”
“She said you never liked him.”
“I like him. He’s normal now.” When Carter had first met Alex he was in a band and wore a leather jacket and eyeliner.
The bell rang and Gerry left. Kennedy could hear them making small talk in the foyer. She walked over and plucked one of the sour candies from the dish. In her mouth, it felt like the past, sugary and sharp.
She walked upstairs to her bedroom, drew in a breath, and lingered in the doorframe. She hadn’t expected it to be the same.
As she slowly edged into the room, her gaze went immediately to the faraway boy handwriting on a cassette case on the floor. Extremities, Dirt & Various Repressed Emotions for Kennedy. Repressed. What had any of them repressed? She had loved Berk with an intensity she didn’t understand, and he’d seen that love—bright and pure—and turned away from it. He’d loved, instead, her best friend. It was why Kennedy, even though she’d continued to see him, had never given him the mixtape in return.