A voice—no, two voices—no,threeof them.
Three voices I haven’t heard in years.
I stumble out of the bathroom like a crazy person. My eyes are red and puffy, my face streaked with tears, my hair a mess. And at the door?—
“Euphie? Is that you, honey?”
“…Mom?”
20
MIA
For a second, I wonder if this isn’t all a fever dream. The letter, my parents—all of it.
But then my mom hugs me, and Iknow: It’s real.
Her scent wraps around me at the same time her arms do. Sea salt and oranges, like the breeze that blows in from our backyard. “M-Mom? How…?”
“Goodness, how you’ve grown!” She kisses both my cheeks, then steps back to look at me. “And you’re still the spitting image of your great-grandmother. Oh, if only she could see you!”
“Let our girl breathe, Doris.” Another voice—my dad’s. “Isn’t it time for your meds anyway? Ginny, dear, won’t you?—?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
The last voice belongs to my sister, Eugenia.
Her auburn curls finally come into view. A wave of nostalgia crashes over me. “Ginny?—”
“Save it.” She fishes out a pill box from her bag and heads to the kitchen without so much as a glance at me. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t absolutely have to. After all, you left us.”
Her words land like the backhanded bitch slap she intended them to be.
My mom’s expression turns severe. “You shouldn’t talk to your sister like that. You know she had her reasons.”
“All I know is she fed us a sob story about the town’s most respectable man secretly being a monster. Wasn’t that convenient? ‘Oh, no, he’s onto me; I have to leave,’ blah blah blah. Too bad there weren’t any cameras—the Academy would’ve been proud ofthatperformance.” Her eyes rove around skeptically. “Hey, weren’t you supposed to be pregnant? ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t see a kid anywhere.”
For a second, I’m speechless.Convenient? Performance?
Then fury takes over.
“He’s inschool,Ginny,” I growl. “What did you expect? It’s Wednesday morning.”
“I expected a couple more toys lying around, that’s for sure.”
“We literally just moved in!”
“Yeah, right. Like I said: convenient.”
She grabs a glass of water and hands it to Mom, along with a round, red pill.
Shock grips me at the sight.
Beta blockers? Since when is our mother on heart medication?
No—since when is she on any meds at all?
“Here,” Ginny says. “Bottoms up.”
