Sally was quiet. After a moment she got up and fetched the dishes from one of the cupboards and set the table. “Want to wash up before dinner?” she said.
I took my bag upstairs. I remembered the room, on the third floor, which had a massive four-poster bed （this had also, apparently, come with the house; I could hardly imagine getting it in or out!）， and I dropped my things on it and went into the bathroom. The view from the window stretched down the slope of East Seneca Street, toward the main part of town. I felt something warm against my ankle and looked down to see the cat, Pyewacket, looking up at me. “Pye, Pye, Pye,” I said, remembering how Kim Novak had said something similar in the film, and reaching down to stroke the black cat’s ears. When I left to go back downstairs, Pyewacket was getting comfortable on the four-poster.
Sally had set everything out on the kitchen table: the chicken on an old ironstone platter, the vegetables still in the pan. There was a salad, too, and a jar of pickled green beans from, Sally said, the farmer’s market. I was so hungry I genuinely forgot what I’d wanted to talk about. My sister hadn’t, though.
“Here’s what I want to say,” she told me, cutting into the crisp chicken skin. “I’m not very … emotional, you know. Or maybe you don’t. But I’ve never been the person running toward the big, deep discussions. It’s done me a lot of damage, I’m aware. And that’s totally self-inflicted, but it’s also what comes naturally to me. As far as what you said, before, about our being broken, you’re absolutely right. And you are absolutely entitled to have any conversation with me you want to have. But I have to tell you, I’m going to hate every minute of it.”
“Sorry,” I said, and I meant it. I’d been eating throughout this speech. I couldn’t even slow down, the food was too good.
“And at the same time I’m kind of so proud of you for putting me on the spot like this. You absolutely are a grown-up. To me you’re always that baby, you know?”
“So much younger, you mean.”
“Right.”
“And yet, exactly the same age as the rest of you.”
Sally stopped cutting her food. “Well, well,” she said. “I see somebody’s had that conversation with you. Mom?”
“As if,” I told her. “And it’s a big deal, too. I mean, what if it was you, left behind like that? How would you feel?”
Sally considered. “Existentially defrauded. Since you asked.”
“Well, there you have it. I feel existentially defrauded. I missed everything because of a random decision some doctor probably made while he was eating his lunch. I missed everything good.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. You missed a ton of crap.”
“I missed having siblings. You know, around me.”
“Not such a great experience, actually.”
“I missed Dad.”
Sally held her bottle between her palms and picked at the label. She was wearing a denim shirt, open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up nearly to her bony elbows.
“Yeah,” she said. “That isn’t fair. The dad part.”
We ate in silence for a moment.
“Do you know an artist named Achilles Rizzoli?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “One of Dad’s?”
“It’s up for debate,” I said. “Lewyn’s never heard of him, but a major museum seems to feel we’re hiding most of his life’s work.”
She shrugged. “Not my field. I was more than happy to hand that stuff off to Lewyn.”
“What about someone named S. S. Western?” I asked her.