Not My Sister Read online

  Once on the porch, I squared my shoulders and channeled Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra.

  Impervious. Regal. Mistress of one of the oldest civilizations on Earth.

  And, to lighten the pall that had descended: Perfect posture. Elegant wardrobe. And some really fierce eyeliner.

  …Eyeliner that was probably streaked halfway down my cheeks by now…

  I pressed the round black buzzer.

  After a moment, the deadbolt slid open, and the door swung inward.

  “Jessica!”

  I knew the voice, but I didn’t recognize the twenty-something waif with spiked pink hair and tattooed wrists. I did a double take.

  “Angie?” I held out my arms, forgetting all about queens of the Nile. I hugged her, and part of me basked in the essence of Olivia that still bound us together. The feeling nurtured me but gutted me at the same time. I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing out the heartache as I had programmed myself to do, and released her. “Wow, you look amazing!”

  “Lost twenty pounds. Dancing my ass off these days. Literally.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Come in.” She pulled the door open farther but tapped a finger to her lips as I passed over the threshold. She avoided eye contact, which was odd.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered, looking around her at the too-dark living room. Not a single light had been turned on for my arrival. Strange. All I could make out was the silhouette of a couch facing an empty fireplace and the wing of my mother’s cherished grand piano.

  A suitcase had been left at the bottom of a staircase across the room. I assumed the bag belonged to Angie.

  “It’s your mom.” Angie held the door for me until I rolled my suitcase all the way into the foyer. Then she closed the front door, making as little noise as possible.

  “Is she sick?” By sick, I meant drunk. My mother hadn’t been sober a single night since Olivia’s funeral two years ago. “Where is she? Why was a doctor here?”

  “She kind of had a thing.” Angie said.

  “What, a stroke?” I grabbed her elbow to keep her from leaving, desperate for information now. “A heart attack. What?”

  “A panic attack or something. They had to give her a tranquilizer. That’s all I know. I just got here myself.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah. She’s in her bedroom now.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I think it’s this way.” Angie led me down a hall at the right, careful to walk on the balls of her feet so the century-old floorboards wouldn’t complain. My actress spirit unconsciously mimicked her quiet tread while my numb brain struggled to make sense of the oppressive, clock-ticking silence.

  We walked past a bathroom. I reached in and grabbed the hand towel, confident that it would be clean. My neatnik mother changed towels every day. I dabbed the rain from my face and hair as we walked.

  When we got to the end of the hallway, Angie rapped softly on the bedroom door. My stepfather opened it a crack. Then he caught sight of me and waved me in, staring at me with such intensity that I knew something more than a panic attack was involved.

  The three gin and tonics I’d had on the plane roiled inside me as I struggled to put them behind me. I should have eaten more today. I should have paced myself. But I hadn’t, and I had only myself to blame.

  I pushed back the fog in my head. If something dire had happened to my mother, I had to handle it. I was her only child. She needed me. And I needed all my wits about me. I needed to think straight—especially in front of Rob. I could feel his critical inspection and prayed he couldn’t smell the booze on me. I didn’t want him to add “sloppy drunk” to the list of my inadequacies.

  “Look at the state of you,” he said. His Scottish burr lent a sharp edge to his cutting appraisal.

  “I got caught in the rain.”

  Rob swept past me into the hall. “Come to the kitchen as soon as you can.”

  “Okay.” I glanced at the dark shape lying on the bed.

  “And don’t rile her. She needs to rest.”

  “What happened, Rob?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” Before I could ask him anything more, he turned and strode down the hall.

  Angie waited in the doorway. “Want me to take your coat, Jessica?”

  “Thanks.” I slipped out of my dripping jacket and gave it to her.

  “I’ll see if I can help Rob with the cooking.” She shot me a worried smile, and then left me alone with my mother.

  I pressed the thick terry cloth to my hair as I walked toward the figure in the bed.

  I hadn’t seen my sixty-year-old mother since Christmas last year. Now, standing a few feet from her side, I couldn’t believe the change in her. In one year, she had wasted away and dried up—which was ironic given how much wine she drank and the rainforest she lived in.

  She didn’t even look like my mother. She looked like a baby bird, with too large a head and too skinny a neck. She wasn’t wearing make-up and had let her hair go gray. The chardonnay and champagne-colored strands might have suited her pale coloring, but her hair had been clipped up in a careless twist that splayed like feathers to one side of her skull. The black tunic she wore turned her wan skin to an unhealthy pallor, and the large bracelet that clung to one wrist made her arm bone look skeletal. But most worrying of all was her expression.

  She lay on the coverlet, staring up at the ceiling, her eyes glassy and her face completely blank. She looked as if she were dead.

  “Mom?” I whispered into the stillness.

  She didn’t look at me. She didn’t even blink. I tossed aside the towel and stepped closer.

  “Mom?” My voice quavered.

  Only one lamp illuminated the room, leaving her swallowed by shadows and pillow shams, but I could still see the stark emptiness in her eyes. I knew the world she was in. I had visited that dark place many times myself.

  I sat on the edge of the mattress and reached out to touch her shoulder. I was shocked to feel how thin she had become. Her shoulders were shrunken under the tunic. In the months since I’d seen her, her hair had thinned on the top.

  “Mom. It’s me. Jessica.”

  She didn’t make a single sign of recognition.

  “What happened?”

  No response. Her blank, unmoving eyes terrified me. She was the only person I had left in the world, and to see her like this frightened me to the core.

  “Mom.” I forced myself to reach out again. Gently, I shook her shoulder, knowing I overstepped. She kept such tight boundaries around herself that I always thought twice about touching her. But her appearance worried me so much, I had to take the risk of offending her.

  Her shoulder moved when I shook her, but her head remained in place, as if it hovered above to keep her mind separate from her frail body and her thoughts out of reach. I knew there was nothing I could do. There was no way to communicate with her in this state.

  “Okay, mom.” I tried to think of something positive to say. “Take it easy. I’m here now. Don’t worry.”

  I thought of patting her hand. I thought I should try to get her under the covers. Maybe take off her slippers. But my mother wasn’t the type to solicit advice, let alone physical assistance. I knew she would prefer to stay where she was, unmolested. I stepped back and looked around for a throw.

  She always bought throws when she decorated a bedroom. Sure enough, I spotted a fluffy white afghan hanging over the arm of a chair in the corner. I grabbed it and carefully tucked it around her. Then I gently released the clip in her hair and set it on the nightstand. She would be more comfortable without the plastic poking into her scalp.

  Not sure what else I could do, I stood there staring down at her, worried and powerless.

  What had happened that had induced Rob to call a doctor? And why had they forced a tranquilizer on her? She must have hated that. She avoided pharmaceuticals of any kind and wouldn’t even take an ibuprofen tablet. Whatever had happened, it must have bee
n bad.

  I left my catatonic mother and headed to the kitchen, wherever that was. I needed answers. And I needed them now.

  3

  The Card

  I passed through the shadowy rooms until I found the kitchen at the back of the house. It was a huge space, a cavern of cherry cabinets, soapstone counters and heavy beams. Angie sat in a puddle of light at the island, peeling potatoes, while Rob unloaded groceries opposite her. On the island in front of him were half-empty bags, mounds of produce and cans of cranberry sauce. A turkey carcass sat in the sink.

  At the sound of my step, Rob glanced over his shoulder at me. He was a tall man with thick brown hair, ruddy skin and a barrel for a torso—with a dominating personality to match his huge chest.

  “This has got to stop.” He slapped a block of butter onto the counter and braced both hands on the countertop. “No more. I’ve had it.”

  “What happened?” I headed for a stool near Angie.

  “Nothing has been the same since your sister. And now this. I’ve had it.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, frustrated. “Somebody tell me what happened.”

  “This came.” Rob slid an innocuous padded envelope toward me, face down.

  I flipped it over. A typed shipping label gave no clue as to the sender, but the package had been mailed to my mother. A row of orange and blue stamps from Nederland were pasted in one corner.

  Worry unfurled in my gut. We had put communications from the Netherlands far behind us, or so I thought.

  I met Rob’s simmering stare.

  “Open it,” he said, breathing heavily as he watched me.

  I pulled out an orange envelope, the kind that contained a greeting card. Someone had scratched a heart on the front in a heavy, crude line.

  Angie put down the potato peeler and eased off the stool to peer over my shoulder.

  I slipped out the card while I struggled to tamp down my escalating concern. A cornucopia bursting with autumn fruit decorated the front. Nothing alarming there. I opened the card. Above the generic “Happy Birthday” print, was a message scrawled in slanted, angry strokes.

  “You have been fooled. But no one deserves it more, you fucking cold-hearted bitch. This time, I keep her safe from your poison.”

  The vitriol of the words and the way they’d been etched into the cardstock shocked me. I searched for a signature. There was none. But I had a pretty good idea who had sent this lovely note.

  “Carlo?” I ventured, glancing from Rob to Angie. The mere sound of that name coming out of my mouth made me want to puke.

  Rob nodded at the card. “Look at the bottom.”

  In smaller writing at the base of the card was the web address of a YouTube video.

  “He made a video, too?” I asked, appalled. “Isn’t this card enough? And what does he mean, ‘you have been fooled’?”

  “Jess, can I see that?” Angie grabbed the card to study it, her pink spikes at full attention.

  I grabbed my phone to launch YouTube. I typed in the web address of the video. Angie and I huddled over the bar to watch it together.

  Rob turned to grab a bottle from the wine fridge behind him. I could feel his steady gaze on me as he watched us queue up the video.

  I tapped the full screen icon and then hit play, dreading the sight of the face I expected to see. The last person I wanted to look at now—or ever—was Carlo Vinetti, my sister’s violent ex-boyfriend.

  To my surprise and relief, the video did not feature the short Italian man. Instead, a news item began to play about a stamp being commissioned for the Queen’s birthday.

  I glanced up from the phone. “I don’t think this is the right one.”

  “Keep watching.” Rob pulled the cork from the wine bottle with a loud pop. “It’s that one, all right.”

  I looked back at the video but couldn’t make sense of it. The reporter spoke in a foreign language I didn’t understand. Was it Dutch? I knew a lot of languages, but Dutch wasn’t one of them.

  I didn’t understand the audio, but I did recognize the Royal Palace in downtown Amsterdam. Still not making a connection, I scanned the subtitles. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands was celebrating an important birthday by issuing a special postage stamp. And this year, the stamp design had been part of a contest.

  I glanced at Rob. “Why are we watching this?”

  He fluttered his fingers at me and scowled. I took that as a sign to keep paying attention.

  The winner of the contest was a mysterious up and coming artist named Rosa Van Rijn, who wore a mask and never spoke in public. But her exciting abstract style was causing a real stir in the international art community. The reporter turned to hold his microphone out.

  And there she was: Rosa Van Rijn, a young woman in a white mask. She was tiny, blond, with big lavender eyes, slender waist and shapely hips.

  She looked just like Olivia. It was like seeing my dead sister come to life— a dream come true and a sickening nightmare, all at the same time. The scar tissue that had creeped over the gash of my grief ripped open. I gasped.

  “You’ll need this,” Rob said, sliding a goblet of wine my way. He slid a second glass to Angie.

  I stared at the screen. I watched the reporter ask the artist questions. In turn, she would whisper to a tall man standing beside her, and then the tall man would speak on her behalf.

  Hot amazement poured over me, followed by chilling disbelief. This couldn’t be Olivia. Could it?

  Yes, she was proud to represent the Netherlands and to be selected for this prestigious honor. Yes, she had been painting all her life. Yes, she looked forward to meeting the queen in a few minutes. The tall man’s voice droned in the background as I stared at the small artist and inspected every detail of her hair, face and shoulders.

  Was it her? It couldn’t be her. But it looked like her.

  Then again, I had spent the last two years praying I would see my sister somewhere, somehow.

  For months after she died, I had fantasized that the State Department would call to tell us they had made a dreadful mistake. Sometimes I even thought I saw Olivia on the street, buying a coffee or walking a dog, and my heart would leap with hope. Then logic would pull me back to reality. And I would suffer her loss all over again.

  Olivia was gone. I had carried her remains through airports and train stations on her final trip to California. I had scattered her ashes in Hawaii, Mexico, Croatia and Italy—all the places she had loved. She was not in Amsterdam. She was gone. My only sister—my only confidante in the world—was gone.

  “Well, what do you think?” Rob’s voice cut into my angst. “Think it’s her?”

  “It can’t be.” I swallowed hard and dragged the wine toward me. I took a gulp, hoping the wine would settle my nerves. Then I watched the video again while Rob stuffed groceries in the refrigerator. I rewound and watched the video again and again until I had memorized every detail of the Masked Artist.

  “How could it be her?” Angie inquired. “Do you think it’s her?”

  “It looks like her.” I took another big sip of wine to stop my mind from racing. I had to be the sensible one. I couldn’t jump to hopeful conclusions that would only cause heartache when they were proved wrong. “I’ll admit it does look like her. But with that mask, she could be anyone.”

  “That’s what I say,” Rob said. “But your mother took one look at that video and lost it. And I mean lost it.”

  “They had to drag her back to the house,” Angie put in. “I saw it happen. When I was arriving.”

  “Where was she going?”

  “To the airport,” Angie pressed play again.

  “No bag,” Rob added. “No purse. In her slippers.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. My ultra-controlled mother had run off for the airport without taking her purse? Not in a million years. Not unless she had lost her mind.

  Rob planted his palms on the counter again. “This shit with Olivia must stop. How long has it been? Two years? When do
I get my life back?”

  I gaped at his florid face, struck dumb by his self-centered view of my mother’s grief. Grief didn’t have a sell-by date. Grief couldn’t be turned off like a water tap. I knew there was a point where a person had to say ‘enough,’ but neither my mother nor I were there yet. How could he demand such a thing of her?

  “I’ve been living with a zombie for two years and now this shit.” He stabbed a blocky hand at the card.

  “And you felt the need to tranquilize her?” I said. “Jesus, Rob.”

  “She was inconsolable,” Angie said. “You should have seen her. She was absolutely beside herself. She had snot running down her face. Your mother. She couldn’t catch her breath.”

  I couldn’t visualize my mother losing her cool. She was the most self-contained person I knew. When faced with conflict, she didn’t fall apart or lash out. She went silent. Deadly silent. If something bothered her, she would immerse herself in work until she processed her emotions and made peace with them. How she achieved such a feat, I never knew. And why she wanted to live her life without expressing her emotions, I never knew either.

  Rob plopped the turkey into a roasting pan. “She was determined to get on a plane and track down that artist. I had to do something.”

  “And this.” I dragged the card in front of me again to inspect the sharp handwriting more closely. “Do you think Carlo is threatening Mom with this?”

  “Like he won’t let Olivia see your mom?” Angie put in.

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought he was living in Italy.” Angie started the video again. “Didn’t he get kicked out of Amsterdam?”

  “Yeah but check out the postage stamps.” I tapped the envelope. “He mailed the card from the Netherlands.”

  Angie frowned. “I didn’t notice that.”

  “Maybe he just saw that video, too. On YouTube or something. And went back to Amsterdam. See when that video was uploaded, Ange.”

  Angie tapped the phone and looked up. “Last week.”

  She met my stare, and her brown eyes went dark with concern.