Amelia nods. “Thank you for everything, Yvonne.”
I tilt my head farther to the side so I can see Yvonne pause at the door, worrying her lower lip. “Free advice?”
Amelia nods.
“Go deep, wherever you end up. He won’t stop. A little girl cut him off at the knees, and it’s not going to sit well with him or his cohorts. So get out of here. And don’t come back.”
After a moment, my sister says, “Thank you, Yvonne.”
“I would say anytime, but let’s be honest: I hope I never see you again.”
“Me too. But I owe you. If you ever need me . . .”
“I pray I never have to collect. But I will if I have to. Try to stay safe, Amelia.”
“We will.”
“You’re a good sister. Remember that.”
I hear her heels click out the door, and then it shuts. I close my eyes when Amelia starts rustling around, and then I hear the TV flick on. The murmur of voices fills the room, mindless nonsense I can’t fully make out. I let myself drift. Just to give her some time.
Act 3: Home
* * *
—
I wait a long time before I walk out into the suite, where she’s turned on an old movie and is staring at it with the kind of frown that tells me she’s not seeing or hearing any of it. I drop down next to her on the couch, crisscrossing my legs. Our knees brush, and her jeans are ripped and soft, like my sister is underneath. The exhaustion pulses through me like a heartbeat, and I want to lay my head down on her leg and let her stroke my hair off my face like I’ve seen sisters do in the movies. The impulse is something I should fight, shed like skin and strands of hair, because comfort isn’t something I deserve, is it?
“Are we leaving soon?”
“We need to get your new ID on the way out of town. I know someone.”
Of course she does.
“Are we going overseas, like you said?”
Amelia shakes her head. “I’m taking you home with me.”
The word echoes strangely in the room. She’s never mentioned home. I don’t know where she lived before we started the Florida Plan. Amelia has always been careful with the information she’s given me. She had to be, because girls are supposed to choose their mothers, and what if I did, in the end?
Abby would’ve chosen him. The last two years tell me over and over again that she would’ve chosen him. I have to believe that. I have to understand that the second they met, her world tilted toward him, tossing me off. I could’ve crashed, but Amelia helped me fly.
What had she sacrificed to get here? I know some, but not all. I look at her out of the corner of my eye, thinking about how the room had crackled between her and Agent North. You know me, Amelia had said, and I knew what she sounded like when she was telling the truth.
“You slept with the FBI agent, didn’t you?”
And for the first time since this all started, my sister lets out a laugh. “Oh fucking hell,” she says, and then that laugh turns into a mockery of it.
I don’t know what to say. I feel sick. What I know about sex and relationships is purely transactional and violent and violating, but I’ve read enough to know that that’s not right. That it can be different.
Can’t it?
“I’ve got you less than six hours and you’re already picking me apart,” Amelia says, shaking her head. “You are a trip.”
“I’m sorry.”
She reaches over and grabs my hand, squeezing it. “Don’t ever apologize for being smart,” she says. “You and I, we see things differently than most people. We catch the little stuff, the hidden things.”
“Because of Mom.”
She squeezes too tight. I don’t flinch. “No, she just saw it in us. It doesn’t mean it’s because of her. And it doesn’t mean we have to use it the way she does.”
“But . . . you did sleep with the FBI agent,” I say, because I don’t want to talk about her anymore. I can’t. Not yet. Maybe never again. Can I do that? Can I just hide forever?
“It’s complicated,” Amelia says.
My lips feel horribly dry. I lick them. “Does that mean . . . That means you did it for me.”
She starts to say my name but stops, because I asked her before not to. It’s enough answer.
“You conned her,” I say. “She was the one who answered your cell phone when I called you in Washington. And I called late. Which means . . .”
“I—” She leans her elbows on her knees, breathing deeply. She’s not elegant, my sister. But she’s all raw-hewn grace and neatly pulled-back hair, cheekbones for days and big eyes full of regret. “I want you to be a kid,” she says. “I want to take you home and have you go to school and live the kind of life you haven’t had and I never will. And if I tell you—”