I scanned my Wikipedia page, but the internet hadn’t unearthed the story about Sabrina. Yet. They didn’t know of my lost sister, of the tragedy shroud I’d grown up beneath. Not for the first time, I wondered what it might have been like if my older sister hadn’t made the choices she did.
The worst thing I could not unlearn: my seat-belt-less sister had survived the initial car crash, becoming a human projectile through her friend’s windshield. She likely had no idea she had lost both of her arms, because when first responders came to the scene, Sabrina had emerged from the woods next to the burning car and asked them if they had any Advil before she collapsed on the road. She never regained consciousness.
That was the detail that lived between my parents and me. And as a natural-born researcher, I learned newspapers on Cape Cod were as brutal as the rumor mill at my high school. I read everything I could about Sabrina’s death during an eighth-grade research class. Its intention was to teach us to trust dot org websites, but it wound up being much more than that.
Almost worse, the dead girls in that car had become a ghost story in town. Sophomore year, my friends teased me when I skipped the “rite of passage” of driving down the street with the car lights off to try to “rouse the K-girl ghosts.” Instead, Caleb and I had stayed in to watch Alfred Hitchcock movies and eat Doritos in his parents’ basement.
It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my sister. I just didn’t know what dredging up her memory in public would do tomy parents. What if some enterprising reporter called the house? Poked them with needling questions, my parents who grieved day in and day out? I crumpled the now-empty bottle, stowing it in the recycling bin. Furious with Wells. Furious with myself.
Sixteen
My old apartment smelled of garlic and onions in a lived-in, homey kind of way. An omelet, I was certain, because the only thing Wells cooked for himself regularly was a pepper and onion omelet that he’d cram with green garlic. It was oozy, delicious, with way more cheese than I’d ever add myself. My mouth watered, craving one with a tall, ice-cold glass of orange juice. It was hard to believe that I would never eat one again.
My former home felt both familiar and not. I checked my watch, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the framed cereal box top beside the door. “Let’s get to it. The moving company will be here at two, and I’m going out with my old neighbor Caleb tonight. Have I mentioned how much I love you for this?”
Natalie flashed an impish smile and opened the fridge, its door whooshing with a near-silentclick. She handed me a flavored seltzer as my phone chimed. “Drink’s on me.”
“Ha.” I twisted my hair into a knot as I read, unease brittle in my chest. “Great. Exactly what I needed to read right now.”
Natalie sipped and raised her eyebrows, waiting.
“From Yes to I Do’s showrunner Yvonne emailed to say she’s back in the office this week. She wrote—” I consulted the screen. “?‘In the meantime, we’ll need you and Wells to submit some personal footage to mitigate some of these fake news articles. Also, feel free to post on your own socials!’?”
Natalie made a face at me. “If you post the screenshot from Cambrey’s sext, you’ll be banned from Instagram.”
I exhaled. “Can’t wait to metaphorically guillotine my career just as it’s beginning.”
“A beautiful thing about being a person is that you can also choose to build whatever you want next,” Natalie said. She laid a hand on her clavicle, a practiced, former-theater-kid motion. “Though I was really looking forward to my television debut. But at least now I can rewear that dress to my cousin’s wedding.”
We got to work. As I mentally rehearsed how I’d bow out ofFrom Yes to I Do, I tagged the handful of items I’d brought with me into the brownstone with hot pink Post-it notes. My grandmother’s chipped marble side table Wells hated; a sleek console table I’d thrifted that he loved. A coatrack I’d lugged home, carried upstairs when the elevator was down for maintenance, and Wells had never once mentioned. Not once. Even though he was the one who used it almost daily ever since, draping hats and coats and empty Target bags on it like it was an art installation. I plucked my research notebooks from the bookshelf, their paper weight the most reassuring thing I’d felt in weeks. Facts, truth, information: my building blocks of comfort lived in the storywork here. This was supposed to be the thing that chugged me along. Not all these emotions that clung to the objects, the physical sum of my former life.
I walked toward my former bedroom, paging through my notes on addiction in families. I was struggling to add to the conversation, to aid in recovery instead of just reiterating its existence. There were so many people better suited to tell that story than me. I tossed the notebook on the bed and froze.
An envelope with OLIVIA in Wells’s block lettering sat atop the pillow on my side of the bed, the one I’d skated backward on the day that changed everything. Tears threatened to break, but I blinked them away. A whimper-moan escaped my throat.
I marched into the black-and-white tiled bathroom, the floor as hot as ever. Shoved every remaining lotion and makeupbrush I owned into a bag. Ignored the envelope.Ignore it, ignore it, ignore—
I dropped the bag of toiletries.
In the bedroom, I tore it open, sat on the soft linen duvet, and read the handwritten note on his dumb letterhead.
Dear Olivia,
I got your voicemail. Since I’ve vowed to be honest with you, here’s the truth: Until that article came out about our engagement, I didn’t tell my parents about what happened. Ihave no excuse except extreme embarrassment, and probably the fact that I wish our breakup wasn’t real.
I’ve been putting this off as much as I could because the contract is clear: We’ve lost our deposit no matter what already. The date is still ours unless we cancel or don’t make the next payment (Oct 31).
I still love you. I probably always will. If you’d take me back, I’d return to you in a heartbeat. I haven’t given up hope yet, but I respect the hell out of you, Olivia, and I’d give you all the time in the world you might need. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, that is. I couldn’t have predicted where we’d be right now, but I did picture you by my side.
I really need to talk to you in person about something. Can we meet up?
—W
P.S. I’m so proud of you.
To my surprise, my eyes stung. I sniffed. I hated the part of myself that missed Wells, missed our life together. It had been so much easier than this one.
I reached for my phone and unblocked him, but then I put it away. I had less than zero desire to see him, and even less to talk to him.
