“I know.” Elizabeth looked at the ceiling. Charlotte had DIYed the painting of the ceiling. She had even stuck a small paper star… no, forgotten it during painting, up there years ago, right above the bed, crooked by approximately fifteen degrees, and had never straightened it or bothered to remove it because she said imperfection was character. Elizabeth had forgotten about it until tonight. “Mia joked at dinner. And it was genuine. And then she went quiet and I had absolutely no idea what to do.”
“So, you just kept quiet?”
“Nope. Darcy passed her bread and I asked her if she wanted more pasta.”
Jane giggled softly.
“She ate two more portions, so I am choosing to call it a success.” Elizabeth exhaled. “She is so much like Charlotte, Jane. The way she looks at you. Like she understands you without you having to say a word.”
“Charlotte was like that at fifteen too,” Jane said. “You just don’t remember because you were fifteen too and you thought you were the perceptive one.”
“I was the perceptive one.”
“You absolutely were not, but we’d argue about that some other time.” Jane’s voice was warm. “How are you, Lizzie? Not Mia. Not the apartment. You.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth, then closed it.
It was the simplest question and somehow the one she had been least prepared for. Everyone had been asking about Mia. About the logistics. About the apartment and the arrangements and how things were going to work. Nobody had asked about her, specifically, in the quiet, direct way that Jane asked it, and Elizabeth felt the question arrive somewhere unguarded and stay there.
“I don’t know,” she said. Honestly.
Jane waited.
“I keep thinking of her,” Elizabeth continued.
“I know,” Jane said softly.
“I found one of her voice notes this morning. From two months ago. She was rambling about a recipe she was going to try, going off on some tangent about whether parchment paper was actually necessary or just something people said to seem serious about cooking.” Elizabeth laughed, brief and sharp, with an edge to it. “I listened to it four times. I couldn’t stop. It was three minutes and forty seconds of her talking about parchment paper, and I sat on the kitchen floor and listened to it four times.”
Jane did not say anything for a moment. It was the kind of silence that was not empty.
“She is everywhere in this apartment,” Elizabeth continued. “The hand soap in the kitchen. The books on the shelves, all sideways, every single one. There is a paper star on the ceiling in here, Jane. Right above the bed. Fifteen degrees off centre because she thought imperfection was character. I am lying herelooking at it and I cannot decide whether it is comforting or unbearable.”
“Maybe both,” Jane said quietly. “Maybe it is allowed to be both.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. “I miss her,” she said. Simply. Just that. “I miss her so much it feels structural. Like she was holding something up that I didn’t know needed holding.”
“I know,” Jane said. “I know, Lizzie.”
They were quiet together for a moment. Two sisters on the phone in the dark, not needing to fill it.
Then Jane said, “And how are you coping living with Darcy?”
Elizabeth knew immediately what Jane meant. She had known it was coming from the moment Jane answered. Jane had the particular gift of hoping everyone would find romance just as she had.
“For Mia’s sake… we can coexist.”
“Lizzie.”
“What do you want me to say? I am living with my ex and we have to co-parent for the next three years. We’ll act like adults and do what’s best for the child.”
“Are you even talking?”
“We try our best. At least at dinner, we discussed the school schedule and the radiator. That’s talking.”
“You discussed a radiator.”
“It is a very loud radiator, Jane.”
