“Hey,” said Emma’s baby sister. Sylvie looked washed out and tired, her face inches from Emma’s, smelling of mint toothpaste and cherry-almond Jergens Cloud Crème. (Emma also still wore the same lotion as Donna.)
“Where am I?” said Emma.
“The Gatekeeper’s Cottage,” said Sylvie.
“I need to call Rich.”
“I told him you were staying the night. It’s fine,” said Sylvie. She snuggled next to her sister. “Cleo made Alexander crash his car,” said Sylvie quietly. “She was…I don’t know…they were…Cleo was on the phone with him. And then he died.”
“I know,” said Emma. “It was a long time ago.”
“You know?” said Sylvie, sitting up.
“You loved him so much,” said Emma. “You wanted him to besomeone he wasn’t. Cleo told me everything at his funeral. We didn’t want to tell you he’d relapsed, Syl. Alexander was an amazing guy, but he…you seemed to want to remember him a certain way.”
Emma remembered Cleo telling her what had happened in Sylvie’s cramped kitchen on Hibiscus Street. They were drinking shitty Chablis that some friends of Sylvie’s had brought in gallon jugs. Cleo was haunted, her eyes sunk into their sockets. She was shaking when she told Emma about Alexander’s screaming. Rich had been there, too. He had gathered Cleo and Emma in his arms, held them tight. Sylvie lifted her head from across the room and made her way to the scrum, like a magnet. A split second before she joined the fold, Emma said, “Don’t tell her today. It’s too much.”
So they’d never told her.
“I hate both of you,” said Sylvie.
“Not more than we already hate ourselves,” said Emma.
7
Sylvie
Emma snored. Just a little, like a small cat. Sylvie couldn’t sleep. She remembered a time that Donna had fought with Emma—Emma always seemed to be the focus of Donna’s attention, especially after Cleo had gone away to school—and when Emma collapsed into her bed, tearful, Sylvie came to lie beside her, scratching her back until she quieted.
Sylvie missed Cleo. Her anger was short-lived: Lying next to Emma, she just felt cozy and weary. Her sisters had only been trying to protect her, as they’d always done. It was Alexander who’d been at fault, not Cleo and Emma.
Sylvie thought Alexander was an example of a man with a hard-won sober life: He was steadfast, beloved by his elementary school choir, honest. He had sponsees at AA. After he was bodily gone, she’d made her fantasy Alexander into what her fragile heart most desired, in a sick way—an ideal companion she could allow in her life without fear. Only ghost Alexander was safe because he could never surprise her, disappoint her, or abandon her.
The airbrushed version of Alexander—a presence she’d imagined in her kitchen while she read, in her bed while she slept,keeping Willie company when Sylvie was at work—was not real.
Alexander had been flawed, more complicated than Sylvie had known (or maybe she had known, maybe she had). The perfect marriage Sylvie had believed in seemed tangled now, a mysterious entity that had held secrets and disappointments and fears her husband had never shared with her. Drunk and disorderly? Arrested for arguing with a police officer? Not sober, as he’d vowed, proud like a child with a good report card, carrying around his Big Book and doing his daily readings. She felt such sadness, wishing she had been able to understand all the sides of him, even the ones that would disappoint her.
When she listened for him now, for his spectral companionship, there was nothing. She had made him up, had imagined a simple, soothing version of a complex, fucked-up, beautiful man. Now she saw that her ghost husband had only been her imagination all along.
But Sylvie was not alone. She had no Alexander, but she had her sisters.
From the day she was born, she had been loved by her sisters.
8
Cleo
Cleo shivered, hunched up on the steps of Sylvie’s cottage without a coat. She could call Isaac, but what would she say? She knew he would answer, and he would listen, but she did love him, and she wanted him to be happy. If he had finally struck gold on Jdate and was curled around a Whitney curator in her sleek apartment, Cleo didn’t want to ruin that sweetness for him.
Cleo sighed. At least she was free of her secret, and free of trying to love Danny, a man sheshouldwant but just did not want.
There were two bicycles leaning against the Gatekeeper’s Cottage. Should Cleo ride into town and try to find a warm place to sit, more cigarettes? She could not remember the last time she’d been on a bike. It had probably been in Montana, when she and her sisters had wheeled around town in a pack. How had she forgotten the pleasure of going fast down a hill on a bike?
Cleo startled when a light went on in the kitchen of Sylvie’s cottage. She narrowed her eyes and saw Sylvie in the doorway.
Cleo stood. The night was bright with stars. Sylvie saw her, smiled sadly, and waved. Cleo lifted her hand.
9
