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“But he wasn’t savable. He was already too broken when he showed up.”
No one is ever too broken. Anyone can be saved
“He was always going to die young. Nothing pushed him over the edge except his own demons.”
I miss that dog like a limb.”
The smell of her, the essence of Josie, unlike any other scent in the world, enveloped me, and I was lost in my love for her, my adoration, my fury. The hungry, lonely cells of my body drank it in for long minutes. Then I extracted myself.
Josie. So beautiful. So lost. So smart. So doomed.
No one will ever be my sister except Kit,
For a faint, foolish moment, I wonder if she is looking toward me too, across time, across the miles, somehow sensing that I am still alive.
It was, almost certainly, the worst day of my life, but being twelve had nothing to do with it.
I think of getting to my feet when the shaking stopped to find nothing left, the house in ruins. The absolute silence told me what I knew instantly. Still, I cried out my father’s name. Called until I had no voice left. Called until darkness fell.
Josie and Dylan and my mother were beautiful. I was the sturdy, sensible one.
My therapist says I spent so much time drinking and drugging away my trauma that it’s just going to take a long time to work through it all.
And even she knows only the tip of the iceberg. I was on a sad and terrible errand that day, awash in scalding shame mixed with grief, emotions too large for the child I was, though I thought myself so adult. A lot had already been lost by the day of the earthquake, but the way it completed the wreckage of our lives—Kit’s, my mother’s, and mine—marked us all irretrievably. Sometimes I miss them most when I want to touch that reality, that day standing on the bluff, looking down at the collapsed heap of timber and concrete on the beach, all of us clustered together, howling.
I liked only books, Cinder, Kit, and the ocean.
in. I like that he doesn’t feel the need to fill every silence with words.
My sense of worry had calmed a lot since he’d arrived.
Thirty-four years later, in the dusty bookstore with a copy of the same book in my hands, I hold very still to let the cactus spines in my lungs settle. From experience, I know it will get worse before it gets better, that I can’t move, only breathe with the shallowest breaths possible, and it will still be like a hand brushing back and forth against the spines, creating waves of deep pain. Each spine is a memory—Dad, Dylan, Josie, Mom, me, them, surfing, s’mores—and all of them ache at once.
Somewhere out there is my sister. Now that I know it for sure, I feel a renewed sense of urgency. How will I find her?
I sip water. “My parents sort of adopted a runaway who worked in the restaurant. Dylan.” How long has it been since I’ve spoken his name? A faint ache runs along my ribs.
“All of them, really. Maybe even my little-girl self.”
Oh, I do not want to like him so much. Lust, yes. Not like. I don’t know him at all, but in this gesture I feel the heart of a lion, big and inclusive and wise. It tips open the closed doors of my life.
nickname?” As he speaks, his gaze is focused intently on my face, as if whatever words drop from my mouth will be endlessly fascinating. I had a professor once who looked at me this way. She was a nun, and I knew her in my third year of undergrad. I bloomed in her presence. I’m blooming now.
So sweet & beautiful
“Searching for pirate treasure and mermaids.”
“Did you find them?” His voice is lower, his dark eyes very direct. I look at his generous mouth, then back up. “Sometimes. Not very often.”
“There are seasons of darkness, yes? Loss and sadness all around.” He tightens his grip. “But if you are patient, the circle turns, and then there is happiness all around, everything good, everyone happy.” He flings a hand out, palm up, as if scattering glitter. “My friend, he just forgot that happiness is part of living too.”
By then it had been nearly two and a half years since I’d fled France on the passport of a dead girl, and I had since discarded that identity too, to become Mari Sanders from Tofino, British Columbia.
I had not had a single mind-altering substance, not so much as a mouthful of beer, in 812 days. It was the thing that made the rest worth it and the only thing I believed would save me: to be sober, I had to leave the wreck of my old life and make a new one. Never look back.
“My father was a jealous man, but he would never have killed my mother.”
I realize that I was speaking of my actual father, not the father I made up. For a moment, a chill halts me. I’ve never been so careless!
opening the door to that world ever so slightly. I’m cautious, afraid of the flood of things lurking, but a minuscule bit of tension I haven’t been aware of holding gives way.
Dylan reached down and picked her up, and she fell on his shoulder, nestling in close. He loved her more than he loved me, just like my dad did, and it made me mad.
The door to the past slams shut. A lifetime of secrets and lies later, I drive through the dark back to my neighborhood. Tears run down my cheeks, and I wonder who they’re for. My sister, Dylan? Or maybe that little girl dancing wildly for the entertainment of drunken adults?
I don’t remember if Dylan came back and made me go to bed, but I do remember drinking sips of Billy’s beer and the way I giggled over him pouring it into a coffee cup so no one would know I was drinking. It bubbled up my nose and took away my sadness and made me dance all the more, looking up at the stars, dancing with the ocean, with the night sky, with Billy, and with a lady who came over later to twirl me around. I remember tiptoeing around to the empty tables and sneaking sips of cocktails left in the dregs of glasses. I remember thinking I could do anything, be anything. Anything.
Substance abuse so young. Makes sense why she became an addict
tomorrow. After all, she’s been missing for more than fourteen years.
The question of why my sister faked her own death, where she is,
and I marvel that only kissing can fill so much need.
Sooo true
Lying against him in the puddles of sunshine, thoroughly and deeply sated, I realize what I never understood about grown-up men is how much more they would have learned about women’s bodies on their journey.
My stomach burns a little, and I rub it, straightening my back. Amazing how much it still stresses me out.
I know this feeling all too well
“Of course! He belonged to us!”
A ghost of the pain from that day runs below my skin. In those howling minutes, I would have done anything to get her back.
But no matter how sober she is or how good she looks, I still resent her. Raising my children has given me an understanding of just how terrible my own parents were.
A girl without a mother who protects her is a girl at the mercy of the world.
Not even Dylan could save this.
Looking at her made me feel hollow,
Devastating
Jealousy ripped through me like a lightning bolt. Why did she always get the attention?
Released, I drifted back around to my place, feeling lost and achy for no reason until Dylan reached over and squeezed my arm.
A little of the ache eased.
I needed her. Every girl needs a mother who protects her with a savage fury. Mine didn’t even meow in my direction.
It makes me sad for Kit that she’s so alone, and I wonder how much blame I bear for that.
These are the times I want to drink and smoke, when all my demons come crawling out of the closets and drawers to taunt me with my past sins. There are so many of them. So many. The chambers of my heart feel shredded as I sit in the dark, staring at my lost sister’s face. I miss her so damn much. And by the end, I’m sure she hated me for all the ways I let her down. Stole from her, because I was hungry. Stayed away too much even though I knew she was practically dying of loneliness. So was I, but the only thing I knew then was that I had to stomp down the pain.
But even if you’re suffering, you don’t get to do whatever you want,
