“Why? Why are you afraid of it?” I asked. “Why couldn’t it mean something to him, too?”
“Zoey, come on!” She picked up her phone and typed, then started reading to me from the screen. “‘Later that night, he and Eris were spotted in an elevator—’”
“I don’t want to hear that story,” I interrupted her. “There’s no proof that it’s true.”
“But that’s the kind of guy he is,” she said. “The kind guy that would have a story like that about him, and people believe it!”
“Would you to be judged by how you acted in the past? He admits to being an idiot,” I said. “He talks about how dumb he was when he got into the league, how he was a jerk in college and in high school. But anyway, we’re not getting married or anything. It’s just for fun, like you said. Just for fun. Nothing serious, not emotional, none of that. Zero. Zilch.”
“Bull,” she told me. “I knew you’d fall for him like this. I don’t want him to hurt you.” Her beautiful eyes filled with tears. “I’ll kill him if he does.”
“Now you know how I felt about Boyd,” I said. “But even if things don’t work out the way I want them too, I’ll be ok. I’ll have my sister to rely on.”
“You will,” she said, and wiped her cheek with her fingers. “You do. It may be from jail if I actually murder him.” She took another napkin and carefully blotted her skin. “I didn’t want to get emotional yet.”
“What do you mean?” First we asked our server for water and said we needed to look more at the menus, and then I leaned forward. “What’s wrong?”
“I have to talk to you about something,” she said, and my heart started to pound. I deliberately kept my hands away from my head, and I waited. “It’s about your mom.”
That hadn’t been what I was expecting. “What?”
“She’s been texting me,” Willow explained. “I didn’t know why she was doing it, or if she was talking to you, too. She sent a bunch of weird stuff about different states, like how it was humid or whatever. Once she said something about a cute cat she saw, and I wasn’t even sure that it was her because she never did anything like that before. She hated me.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said quickly. “She hated the situation and you got punished for it.”
“I didn’t want to tell you about it because I knew how upset you were when she took off. Boyd and I have been talking about how hard that must have been, like, how you were trying to keep the house. I guess I didn’t really get it at the time.” She looked up at me. “Sorry.”
I nodded. “She’s been writing to me, too, but she won’t say why.”
“I know why.” She swallowed and looked very emotional. “I had guessed and then she confirmed it today. She kept asking me a lot about you, where you were working and if we still had our joint bank account—she wanted to know how much was in it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She wouldn’t tell me until I said that I was going to block her. Then she bullshitted a lot, but eventually she admitted that she wanted me to talk to you about sending her some money. She wanted me to convince you to do that,” my sister explained. “I guess the guy she left with isn’t too great after all.”
“She wants money? That was what all those messages were about?” That was why she was staying in contact—not out of love, but out of financial strain?
Willow shrugged. “She said that she wished she hadn’t taken off like she did, but…yeah, she wants money. Have you been giving it to her? You shouldn’t, Zo. I know that she’s your mom but still, you shouldn’t.”
“I haven’t been, and I won’t.” I sighed. “I was hoping that she was writing because she was sorry. Maybe she would come back.”
“Would that make up for what she did, running out on her life? She ran out on you and I’ll never forgive her for that. Boyd says she’s a bitch but he always hated her, even when we were in high school. I used to cry so much over the things she said to me and he couldn’t stand it.”
“You did?”
“It’s ok,” she told me. “It really is. I just felt like…I felt like I didn’t have anybody. Once, I saw a movie about a scientist who was alone in a research station in Antarctica. I kept thinking that I was that woman, like I was alone in the world but I wanted people so much. So I ended up acting whacko with Boyd, and I also did with some of my friends. I probably did with you, too.”
“I don’t mind that you need me. I need you, too,” I said.
“And that’s why I wanted to move out of our apartment,” she told me. “I didn’t want to be a kid that you had to take care of. But I should have talked to you about it, rather than running off like your mom. Boyd kept telling me that we should have a discussion like adults, but I was sure that you could talk me out of it and it’s been a good thing for me. I’m sorry for how I handled it.”
“I’m not mad. We can just move forward like Boyd said. Like adults,” I answered. “I’m trying to do that. I hope you can act better toward Everett than I did with him.”
She pressed her lips together. “I’ll try, too.” The words dragged out of her, and I imagined that was how I had also sounded when I’d talked about her boyfriend before. “But what are we going to do about your mom?”
I took out my own phone and read the texts about the rocky beach in California, the heat in Texas, the dog in Virginia, and all her expenses. Then I blocked that number. Willow nodded and did the same thing. “I’ll talk to her if she comes back, maybe,” I said. “She needs to apologize for a lot of stuff.”
“I don’t think she will come back. I know how it feels to lose your mother,” she said. “I know how it feels when she sucks, too. Mine did.”
