The air is sticky, like it might start raining, and Sloane loops her arm through Gen’s free one, a sense of comfort blanketing the moment. Maybe it’s the twin thing or that she’s the only blood relative I really have, but something about her makes me feel at home in a way I don’t feel very often.
Sloane climbs into the back bench of my truck after insisting Gen ride up front, which I would’ve made sure of anyway, but seeing my sister rally behind this girl she barely knows has me grateful she’s here. Even if I still don’t know why.
I round the car and slide behind the wheel before turning over my shoulder to meet her eyes. “So…where am I taking you?” I ask pointedly and instantly see that mischievous smile I’ve come to associate my sister with.
“I figured where better to stay than with my brother. We need a little sibling bonding time after all.” Her tone is playful, but I know her well enough to know she’s hiding something.
“Where were you before?” Gen turns in her seat, grasping the back of it as she rests her chin on the dark leather. “I know it was an art thing…?”
“San Francisco. It was like an apprenticeship, a curator thing, but it ended upnotbeing my speed. I need very loose constraints to be productive.” I catch her shrug in the rearview mirror, my eyes turning to slits as I try to decipher what could’ve happened.
“Oh my god!” Gen’s small gasp is adorable and distracting, and I have to force myself to keep my eyes off her and on the road. “Our set designer needs assistants for the painted murals. I don’t know if painting is your thing, but I know she’s looking for people who won’t need a lot of hand holding?”
“Ah—say less. Yes! Yes, yes, yes. That’s the perfect thing to help me get my footing here. What’s your number?”
They exchange numbers and make small talk, and I fixate on Sloane’s apparent need to get her “footing here.”
“Are you going to tell me why you left?” I ask, trying to be patient but my tone still comes off as irritated.
I love my sister. From a young age she’s been adored by everyone from adults to our peers alike—everyone except our parents. I think her knack for quitting things before they get started or the way she seemed to care about both everything and nothing at all disenchanted them while simultaneously enchanting the strangers who came across her.
“I just said.” Her flippant tone is one I know all too well.
“Sloane,” I start, keeping my tone even as I pull into the parking lot of a fast food joint. I know her, and she has a tendency to back away if she feels like she’s being cornered.
“Thank god!” she all but shouts, and I give her a look raising my eyebrows.
“Tell me what’s going on or I will leave the drive thru line.” Gen sits up in her seat, about to interject. “Don’t worry. I’m feeding you, regardless,” I say, pleased at the way she settles back in her seat, a satisfied smirk on her face.
Sloane’s features are so expressive that you can see the contemplation written across her face. She bites her lips, her eyes gazing longingly at the poster depicting a large burger and milkshake taped up across the side of the building.
“I came to see Mom,” she relents and I instantly feel confused. I squint at her, pulling up as the next car moves to the ordering window.
“Here? I didn’t think they were coming up until our season opener. And they didn’t say any?—”
“I said ourmom, not Evie,” she says with the slightest hint of irritation.
I feel my fingers grip the steering wheel harder. It feels like someone carved my stomach out, that familiar hollowness ringing inside me. It has me remembering the first time Sloane and I were sent to separate group homes. I think Sloane probably etched it out of her memory, just as she seems to have done with most things concerning our birth mother. We were so young, yet these memories that seem to have evaporated for her still haunt me: the day Connie came to visit me after we’d been adopted, the pull-out at Uncle David’s, the bare walls of Social Services, the unknown numbers still calling me today.
The car is quiet and still, until we hear the drive thru speaker scratch.
An overly chipper voice scrapes out, “Welcome to Burger Farm, would you like to try our new value meal?”Sloane leans up from behind my seat, speaking loudly into the speaker.
“We’ll take two number sevens, one with a chocolate shake, one with strawberry, extra pickles on both. And also…?” She shifts her gaze to Gen, who orders so swiftly I know she’s trying to make sense of what she’s hearing. Sloane just smiles at her, like she didn’t say anything out of the norm.
There’s something about being a twin, about the propensity for one of us to always be fine. I sit there in stunned silence and Sloane juts her chin out, as if to say keep moving. I move up to the window, snapping out of my shock. I grab our orders and we slide into a parking spot at the front of the building in silence. Sloane begins plowing through her burger, completely unfazed.
“Who’s Evie?” Gen’s voice cuts into my thought spiral, bringing me back to reality.
I start to say, “Our mom,” just as Sloane rolls her eyes and says, “Our adoptive mother,” and Gen’s mouth loses its capacity to stay shut. The rumble of my laugh shocks even me and the mood shifts back to something less pensive.
“We’re adopted,” I clarify. “When we were like ten.”
“Wow,” she says, genuinely taken aback. “How did I not know that?”
“Grantlovesto make people think he’s a Fielder,” Sloane drawls out, dipping a fry into her chocolate shake before dramatically popping it in her mouth. I sigh.
“Not trying to make people think anything. I just am, legally, a Fielder.”
