Not My Sister Read online

  A chill snaked through me, leaving my hands and feet frozen. I hugged my chest. “I think Carlo believes that artist is Olivia.”

  “Or knows she is,” Rob said, pushing celery and onions into the turkey carcass. “We never once got a full story from Olivia. She might have contacted him.”

  “What’s the note say again?” I swept the card up and read the message out loud. “This time, I keep her from your poison.” I lowered the card. “What the fuck.”

  “Sounds like a threat to me.” Angie leaned her forearms on the counter. “Think we should go to the police?”

  “The Dutch police? They didn’t do anything the last time he threatened us.”

  I thought of the warning he left on Facebook Messenger the day after Olivia had died. He had blamed my “devil of a mother” for causing the death of his “beautiful angel,” and vowed to make her “very, very sorry.”

  His threat had terrified us. As soon as we landed in Amsterdam for the funeral, we went to the Dutch police, hoping something preemptive could be done about Carlo. But they brushed us off. They could intervene only if Carlo re-entered the country and did something unlawful. I had protested, saying if he did do something unlawful, it would be to hurt my mother, and then it would be too late.

  My logic hadn’t convinced them to offer protection. There was nothing they could do, they said. So, my mother and I had spent the entire week of Olivia’s funeral trip fearing for our lives. Mysteriously, and much to my mother’s relief, Carlo never showed.

  I set down my glass, deflated. This was not the homecoming I had imagined. This was not the happy family I had visualized. Perhaps we would never be a happy family again.

  Maybe we never had been.

  I looked up to find Rob studying me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Something has to be done, Jessica.”

  “I don’t know, Rob. This is crazy. All this?” I swept the air with one hand. “It’s too weird to be true.”

  Angie gulped her wine. “You think it’s a trick?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  I really didn’t. I had never been able to make quick judgments, especially important ones. Although the gin and tonics were long gone from my system, my mind still couldn’t function properly. There was too much to process here.

  “What about contacting the State Department?” Angie suggested. “Maybe they could find out something definite.”

  “No.” Rob wiped his hands on a towel and then threw it across one shoulder. “That would take too long. It has to be something quicker.”

  “What do you have in mind?” My voice cracked. I had a sick feeling that I knew what he was going to say.

  “Someone has to go to Amsterdam. Nip this in the bud.”

  I shoved back my stool and hopped off. “No way. No way.”

  “There’s no alternative.”

  “No. This is really bad timing, Rob. No.” Forgetting about my phone and wine, I fled from the kitchen and his dominating presence. I couldn’t let Olivia’s world, imaginary or not, infringe on mine. Not right now.

  I stomped through the dining room to the front parlor where I’d left my suitcase. I had no idea where to go or what to do. All I knew was that I had to get away from Rob, but I couldn’t leave my mother—not in the state she was in. I paused in the center of the room, trying to marshal my thoughts.

  I heard a clatter of flats on hardwood behind me. Angie held up my wine glass.

  “Forgot this,” she ventured. She handed me my phone as well.

  “Thanks, Ange.”

  “I’ll build a fire.” She walked to the cold hearth and knelt on the slate. I trailed after her, shell-shocked, and sank onto the sofa.

  She glanced over her shoulder at me and gave me a small smile of encouragement. “Maybe in the morning, we’ll have a better idea of what to do.”

  “Like go back to California for one,” I muttered.

  “Think that will help?”

  “Prolly not.” I tipped the wine goblet to my lips. “But going to Amsterdam isn’t the answer.” I swallowed a gulp of cabernet. “Tomorrow, I’m going to tell Rob that he can do the dirty work for a change.”

  4

  The Promise

  I rose from the sofa at the Richmond Beach house long after the fire went out. Angie and Rob had retired hours before, but I hadn’t been able to settle. I carried my suitcase up the stairs to the guest room at the end of the hall. Rob had mentioned that I was supposed to stay in the Blue Room. The walls in the end bedroom were painted a dark blue and no one was sleeping in the bed, so I assumed I was in the right place.

  As I flopped my bag on the bed, I heard the door creak open. I turned, hoping to see Angie. Instead, I was shocked to see my mother hanging in the doorway, one bony hand on the woodwork.

  “Jess,” she murmured through parched lips. “You came.”

  She didn’t remember me from earlier. I wasn’t surprised. The tranquilizer had knocked her senseless. I was surprised, however, to see that she was lucid and had managed to climb the stairs. But then again, her dogged determination was the trait I admired most about her.

  “Did you…did you see it?” Her swollen tongue tripped over the words. “Did they show you? The video?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then c’mon,” she whispered. “We have to go. Before Rob knows I’m up.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at the haunted devastation in her face.

  I was tired and tipsy. I wanted to put away my things and fall into bed. I didn’t want to deal with a half-drugged parent.

  “You shouldn’t be up,” I turned back to the suitcase and picked up my purple wool sweater. I might have forgotten an umbrella, but I’d remembered to pack a cozy garment to ward off the Seattle chill. “Go back to bed, mom.”

  “Jessica, I’m serious.” My mother’s voice quavered. “We have to go.”

  I sighed and glanced at her over one shoulder. “Where, mom?”

  “Amsterdam.” She trudged to the bed and tugged at my elbow with trembling hands. “Come on.”

  “No. Not until tomorrow.” Gently, I pulled out of her grip. She gaped at me with bleary eyes.

  “Tomorrow?” She sank to the mattress, as if trying to make sense of the term. Her shoulder length hair stuck out in the back in a fuzzy mess.

  She was aging before my eyes. Worry for her health and state of mind cut through me. I had never seen her break, not even after the death of Olivia. But she was breaking now. Maybe she had packed all the drama of her life into a box that she could no longer hold closed.

  “Did you see that artist, Jess? Did you see her? We have to go.”

  “You’re in no state to go anywhere,” I chided. “And to be honest, neither am I.”

  “We have to,” she mumbled. “We have to go to her.”

  “You don’t know that it’s her. It can’t be her.”

  “But what if it is?” She grabbed my wrist with her cold claw of a hand. “What if it is?”

  “Mom, Olivia’s gone. We cremated her. Remember?”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. “I let Rob talk me out of going right away the last time. I can’t let that happen again.”

  I squeezed the sweater. Thinking of those days made my heart ache. “Want to know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “Carlo is just being cruel to you.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Because it’s her birthday? Because he’s sick?”

  She sighed and scrutinized my face, as if evaluating my less-hysterical take on the situation. Her hand slipped away from my arm, and she sank into herself, looking frailer than ever. Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “They drugged me. Do you know they drugged me?”

  “Yeah.”

  She dragged the bracelet up and down her knobby forearm, as she spoke. “Rob called our neighbor. He put something in me. My brain’s like mush.”

  “It sounds like you might have nee
ded it.”

  “Rob knows how I feel about drugs. Why would he do that to me?”

  “Because he’s worried?”

  She shook her head. Her dry gray-blond hair floated in wisps at her temples. “He thinks a pill can cure everything. He thinks I’m losing it.”

  “You can’t blame him. Look at you. You’re not taking care of yourself, are you? You can’t be much of a partner in your current state.”

  “I’m trying my best. But he doesn’t understand. He didn’t lose a child.” She glanced up at me with bloodshot eyes. “You know what he says to me?”

  “What?”

  “Cheer up.” The words slurred together. She glared at the wall and kept rubbing her arm. “Cheer up. Like it’s that simple.”

  “Eventually it’s a choice you do have to make.”

  “Well, I’m not there yet. And he’s not going to bully me.” She straightened her spine. “And I’m not crazy.”

  “Then next time, don’t take off for Europe in your slippers.” I shoved the sweater in an empty dresser drawer.

  “Why are you being so sarcastic?”

  “I’m not being sarcastic. I’m being realistic. You need help, Mom. You need to see a therapist. This isn’t about Rob. It’s about you. Not moving on.”

  Her face turned to stone. She sat on the bed and stared at the door, silent. I didn’t have the energy or desire for a discussion like this, but I could see no way out of it. Reluctantly, I returned to the bed and sat down beside her.

  “It’s not that I want you to forget her.” I curved an arm around her bony frame. “I just want you to think about releasing her.”

  “I don’t want to,” she whispered to her folded hands. “I don’t want to forget her. Ever.”

  “You won’t. You never will.”

  “This pain I feel, I don’t want to let it go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s all I have now.” She pressed a fist to her breastbone. “If I ever quit feeling this ache, it means I have forgotten her—that I’ve started to put her aside.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “She was always so worried about being put aside.”

  “That was none of your doing, Mom. That was our father’s fault.”

  “I should have visited her more. I should have sent care packages.” She covered her face with her hands. “I should have been a better mother.”

  “You were fine.” I rubbed her back. I could feel her spine poking through her skin. “We knew you loved us.”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t love her the way she needed to be loved. Children that are loved don’t commit suicide.”

  I retracted my arm. “You don’t really believe that.” I stood up. “Especially about Olivia.”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “That she killed herself? C’mon, Mom. We’ve gone over this so many times.”

  “I know. I know.” She got to her feet and gazed down at the suitcase.

  Was she thinking of helping me unpack? Did that mean the therapy session was concluded? I knew it was selfish of me, but I hoped so. To rehash Olivia’s death was to undo months of work on my own wobbly state of mind.

  My mother picked up another sweater. I held out my hand for it, but she hugged it to her chest, so deep in her own world that she didn’t register my outstretched fingers.

  “Did I tell you I saw a psychic?” she said.

  “Another one?” I dropped my arm.

  “Yes. But this one told me that Olivia was okay. That she was in a good place. Maybe she is in Amsterdam.”

  “I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “And if I saw a blue butterfly, that it meant Olivia was reaching out to me. That I should open up, be aware.”

  “Have you seen one yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe you should consider moving back to California, then. You’ve got a better chance of seeing butterflies there, a whole lot more than in this god-awful rainforest.”

  “But I felt compelled to come back here.”

  “To Seattle? To all this gloom?” I held my hand out for the sweater again.

  “It seemed suitable somehow.” She relinquished the garment but didn’t meet my gaze.

  “Mom, it’s been two years. You are allowed to live again. To be in the light again.” I touched her shoulder. “We both are.”

  “It doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Would she want to see you like this?”

  “What do you mean, like this?” She pulled out from under my hand. “I’m fine. It’s just that video that has me upset. I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not fine, Mom. You look exhausted.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’ve just been busy.”

  “Doing what? Anything creative? Anything you love? Painting? Writing? Singing?”

  She grabbed a pair of jeans from the suitcase. “I haven’t had time. With this move.”

  “Right.” I stared at her, knowing my silence would force her to continue.

  “I’m functioning. I do what I have to do.”

  She glared at me.

  “Mom, you’re suffering from depression,” I went on. “It’s obvious. You need some help. Talk to someone.”

  “I have talked to someone,” she replied, suddenly inpatient with our discussion. She walked to the door. “Nothing helps. Nothing seems to work.”

  “You have to want it to work,” I shot back.

  “It’s not like I’m not trying.”

  She turned and met my stare, her eyes as hot as mine. For a moment, I recognized my old mother in her expression—the one who would meet challenges head-on and laugh, accomplishing more in a year than most people would in five. A woman with an insatiable curiosity for the world around her.

  A vision of her running down a beach and into the surf raced through my mind. I saw her putting the star on top of the Christmas tree and laughing hysterically at something Olivia’s current boyfriend had said. I recalled how when someone would make a comment, she’d come up with a song fragment to match—and then sing the song to torture us.

  Now, here she was, dried up and worn out. I hadn’t seen her for almost a year. I hadn’t witnessed the increments of her downward spiral. All I saw was the result: a crone, scrabbling at the bottom of a cave. And it terrified me.

  She must have picked up on my concern because she blinked and tried to smile.

  “C’mon, let’s not fight,” she said. “It’s Thanksgiving morning.”

  “Okay. But I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be. I’ll get through this. Like you said, it’s probably a terrible joke.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had said everything I could. Multiple times. I turned back to the suitcase.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Jess,” she said from the doorway. “Don’t let them drug me again. Promise?”

  “Promise.” I picked up a stack of panties. The floorboards creaked as my mother headed for the stairs. I squeezed the underwear in my fist and shoved it next to the sweater in the drawer.

  My thoughts churned. All I could see was that video, playing over and over again and those words scratched into the card. I had placated my mom with the joke explanation. But in my own head, unanswered questions swirled in a maelstrom that no amount of wine had been able to quell.

  And seeing my mother. Wow. I was more worried about her now than the day of my sister’s funeral, when she had stood all in black, stoic and silent, all vibrancy stripped from her by grief.

  Not until I had stowed my empty suitcase in the closet did I realize my mother had never once asked how I was. Her self-involvement stung, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt, as always. She had a lot on her mind. Besides, I prided myself on being her “easy” child. The one that never caused her any trouble. The good girl. Always striving for the gold star that never came.

  But someday it would. It would.

  * * *

  The next morning, I followed the fr
agrance of slow-roasting turkey to the kitchen downstairs, hoping to score a coffee before the pot got emptied. Rob had already showered and dressed and was chopping onions on the cutting board beside the sink.

  “Morning, princess,” he greeted without turning around. “Sleep okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  Score. They’d finally bought a large coffee maker, enough for more than just the two of them. I carried my steaming mug of black coffee to the breakfast bar behind him and pulled out a stool.

  He stopped chopping and pivoted to face me. Then he wiped the knife on a towel and carefully put it on the cutting board.

  “Listen, Jess, about yesterday—”

  I held up a hand. “If it’s about drugging my mom, you don’t have to say anything. I completely understand.”

  “It’s not that.” He cocked his head toward the long hall leading to the master bedroom. He listened for a second. Then he sighed and planted both palms on the bar to lean closer to me.

  “You’ve seen your mother. Something has to be done.”

  “Okay…” I took a nervous sip. I could feel myself slipping backward, into the old days when Olivia’s behavior would make us say the exact same thing: something must be done. I braced myself for trouble. No way would I retreat into the secrets and drama of my sister’s life. No way.

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked.

  “Going to Amsterdam. Finding that artist. And making sure she is who she says she is.”

  “That seems pretty drastic,” I countered. “Do you intend to traipse after every woman who looks like Olivia? Play into stupid Carlo’s hands?”

  “You know your mother won’t back down from this. Not when that person looks so much like your sister.”

  I put down my mug. “Lots of people look like Olivia.”

  “This one’s a dead ringer.”

  “Great choice of words, Rob.” I gulped the strong coffee, fighting the sudden air turbulence that buffeted my carefully piloted path. Just when I had begun to live my own life, my own way, I had encountered the sheer wall of Olivia’s ghost. No time to pull up. No time to reroute. I could picture the crash: splinters of metal, the fireball, the smoke.