“Maybe she’ll tell us someday,” Beth said. But they both looked down at the sleeping woman, her sprayed hair stiff on the pillow, and they knew it wouldn’t happen. Whatever had occurred was so deep inside Mariana that maybe she’d made herself forget it was there.
“She isn’t his,” Lily said, talking about Julian and Mariana. “She’s mine.”
No, she’s mine, Beth thought. I’m the real daughter, the one she had after she was married, the good girl. The sweet one. But she already knew she had lost that battle. There was no question about Mariana belonging to Beth. She belonged to the bitter girl, the one who wouldn’t be eaten.
“So what do we do?” she asked Lily—who was her half sister, and not her cousin or a distant family friend, which was how Mariana referred to her whenever she spoke about her to other adults. If any of the other adults suspected the truth, they were too polite to say anything. “Do we just keep pretending we don’t know?”
Lily reached out and traced a finger down the side of Mariana’s face. Beth fought off the instinct to punch her hand away, to prevent Lily from ever touching her mother. “For now,” she said, answering Beth’s question. “It doesn’t matter, really. I’m going to get what I want. Everything I want.”
“What do you want?” Was it to live here? To be a real daughter? Beth didn’t know if that was possible, or if Lily even would. Living here would mean living with Julian.
“I want lots of things,” Lily said. She looked around. “This house, for one.”
Beth had no idea how fourteen-year-old Lily would get this house, but she said, “I hate this house.”
“That’s because you don’t understand it.”
“It’s ugly.”
“It’s an abomination that shouldn’t exist,” Lily said, “and it knows it. That’s why I like it. It’s exactly like me.”
“You can’t own a house,” Beth said, tentative because she didn’t want Lily to get angry. “You’re too young.”
“Not for long.” Lily looked at Beth, really looked at her for the first time in a long time. “What do you want?”
I want you to get away from my mother, she thought. I want you to leave and never come back. But, no, she didn’t mean that. Beth was just afraid. She’d be lonely and desolate if she didn’t have Lily.
She needed Lily. Just like she needed Julian and Mariana. Beth had to get through another day, and another year, and she needed all three of them to get there. But she needed Lily most of all.
So she said the one thing she knew would work, the one thing that Lily was susceptible to. The one thing that would keep Lily on her side. “I want to be like you,” she said.
There was a moment when she wasn’t quite sure Lily believed it. And then her sister smiled.
CHAPTER THIRTY
December 1968
BETH
The Christmas Beth was fourteen, Lily came to the Greer house with a bruise on her temple and faded yellowy green marks under the skin of her cheekbone. Mariana pretended not to notice, but later that night both of the girls could hear her sobbing in her bedroom as Julian told her to stop, please stop. It’s my fault, Mariana said. All my fault.
Lily didn’t want to talk about it, but Beth knew that something had happened at her foster home. Lily wasn’t above faking bruises to get sympathy, but she wasn’t faking this. That year, she was quieter than usual and her eyes were hollow, her mouth set tight.
Surprisingly, Julian stayed home that year, the first Christmas he’d done so since Lily had first visited. Something about seeing Lily bruised and angry must have made him feel more comfortable having her around, as if she’d lost a round in their endless contest. They avoided each other and barely spoke, but Beth saw Lily’s gaze follow Julian whenever she saw him, and she didn’t like the look in Lily’s eyes.