Chapter Sixty-One
Lexi picks up the phone to make the call she’s been dreading. Stephanie had been so excited about her coming home; Chloe was thrilled that she was going to see her dance, and not just later on video, but actually there, in real time, in real life. And Peter had already planned a Big Library Day Out for them so that Lexi could help him pick out his books for the next few weeks, months, maybe his whole lifetime. Her heart breaks a little that she won’t be able to do that for him because instead she’s choosing to stay in DC and do it for other people. She resolves to write him letters, to send him books, to be a better auntie to him and Chloe all round.
‘Hi,’ Stephanie says, out of breath. There’s a streak of mud on her cheek; she’s been outside, finishing off the gardening, forgotten the time.
‘Hey. Do you need a moment to catch your breath?’
‘No, no, it’s all good. Fitting this in before ballet. There’s no time for things like breathing.’
Lexi swallows hard. If she was there, she could offer to drive Chloe to ballet. She could make life easier for her sister on so many levels.
‘This can wait,’ she tells her, to be helpful, and also, maybe, because she’s chickening out. ‘If it’s a crazy day.’
‘I don’t think it can,’ she says, looking directly into Lexi’s soul the way that only big sisters can. ‘You said you needed to talk. You don’t say that unless it’s for real.’
Stephanie watches Lexi pause to think how to start, and she decides to help out.
‘Has something happened with Sam?’
‘A few things.’ Lexi decides to spare her some of the details. ‘But the main thing is that his dad is buying the building, and not putting the rent up.’
‘So the bookshop is safe?’
‘The bookshop is safe.’ Lexi fills Stephanie in on Tipsy Browsing, the GoFundMe, the support from the community.
‘That’s great,’ Stephanie says, but Lexi can tell her enthusiasm is somehow forced.
She waits. Maybe Stephanie will save her from having to spell it out.
‘So you’re not coming home, are you?’
Inexplicably, Lexi starts to cry. Maybe it’s the mention of the wordhome.
Maybe it’s the relief of Stephanie having guessed. Maybe it’s the exhaustion from the last few months, everything that’s happened and not happened and almost not happened and then happened after all. Maybe it’s the bittersweetness of having two places she calls home, knowing she’ll always feel tugged between two cities, two cultures, two different kinds of paperback smells. That wherever she is, she’ll always be missing someone.
‘I’m sorry,’ she gets out, finally, between sobs.
‘It’s okay,’ Stephanie says. ‘I want you to be happy, and if DC is where you’re happy, then that’s where I want you to be. It just doesn’t seem like you’ve been all that happy there lately. That’s why I wanted you to come home. Well, and I suppose it would have been nice to have you around.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. You’ve got to do what’s right for you.’ Lexi thinks of Stephanie pulling her back from the road, back when she was three. Pulling her out of harm’s way. She’s doing it again now, graciously giving Lexi a way out. ‘We miss you, but we’ll be okay. Just promise me that if he breaks your heart again, you’ll be on the next plane out.’
‘I promise.’ It’s an easy promise, because Lexi trusts Sam not to hurt her.
And also, because if he does, it’ll be the final straw, the thing that breaks her. This year has left her fragile. She needs a trip home, some time in Stephanie’s kitchen, some time being reluctantly dragged to the garden with her, the therapy of digging her hands into the earth, chatting while kneeling on sore knees, with the rumble of Heathrow-bound planes above and the distant thrum of the North Circular, the white noise that passes for silence in London.
‘Can I come and visit soon?’
‘Of course you can,’ Stephanie says. ‘Come often. Come for ages. Be in our lives more, if you’d like. There’s a way to do that and still live in DC. And you’ll have to bring Sam over, too.’
The thought makes Lexi smile. She can’t wait to show off this handsome man she’s somehow bagged.
‘All in good time,’ she tells her sister. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ Stephanie says, a rare moment of effusiveness. Lexi says it more easily these days, because it comes easily to Americans, between friends and sisters. Brits, though, have to struggle a little to force it out, and it’s all the more meaningful when they do. ‘Don’t be a stranger, okay? I’ve got to run.’
And with that, the screen goes blank.
