“Best of all, your fellow students aren’t content to walk through life like sheep in a herd. They want to make a difference like you do. They’re not interested in clocking in and out, in binge drinking and watching. They’ll be more supportive in helping you find your way than your sister ever was.”
I chewed my lip. To not be ridiculed constantly, to spend my days with others who understood what I was searching for. I thought back to the parental transference exercise, to being surrounded by people willing to do whatever it took to create a more meaningful life for themselves.
“You also have me.” She moved her legs so our knees grazed. “We can help each other, you know.”
My eyes flitted to her face.
“I think you’re exactly the person Wisewood needs.”
20
GABE EXCUSED HIMSELF from my dressing room, grinning and stuttering his thanks. He hurried down the hall, leaving me alone with Jack.
She swept into the room and wrapped me in a hug, like she hadn’t spent most of her adult life avoiding me. I kept my arms by my sides.
She pulled away. “I’m so proud of you. The crowd loved you up there, Madame Fearless.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Jack.” I hadn’t seen my sister in forever. The clumsy makeup application aged her well beyond twenty-seven. Somewhere along the way she had also acquired a nose ring, which struck me as desperately jejune.
She hesitated. “I go by my real name now.”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised my sister had finally grown some cojones. “I see. And what is Sir calling you these days, Abigail?”
Her face darkened as I knew it would. Standing up to the entire world was one thing. Standing up to your father was another.
“Want to get dinner?” she asked, eager to change the subject. “My treat. Let me run Sir home first.”
At least she had the common sense not to invite him.
Thirty minutes later she joined me at a family-run trattoria. The first glass of red disappeared quickly for both of us, but Jack guzzled hers like there was a drought in Tuscany. She stared at her glass afterward; she was waiting for me to say something, though I could not fathom what.
By the time our meals arrived—a spaghetti Bolognese for her, chicken cacciatore for me—I had been updated on every last detail of Jack’s life. Based on what she had told me, I had even less in common with my sister now than I had as a child. She would soon marry her college boyfriend, produce a few offspring, and continue to run her small marketing firm that serviced clients in western Ohio. Her life was positively midwestern. I couldn’t believe someone with such a checkered childhood could evolve into something so uninteresting.
“Too bad Mom couldn’t come tonight,” Jack said, halfway through her third glass. “She would have loved the show.”
“Would she?” I sat back against the viscid red leather booth. “She’s too busy kowtowing to our father to form an opinion of her own. And based on the verbal review he gave me, he’d rather be burned at the stake than forced to watch another of my performances.”
Jack’s eyebrows jumped. “Geesh. What did he say?”
“The usual. I’m an abject failure; my career is disreputable. This time he compared me to a common street whore, which was a new touch.”
She winced. “I thought he’d behave himself.”
I gazed at my sister. “When on earth has he ever done that?”
She squirmed under my glare.
“Why did you even bring him?”
“I thought it’d be good to get the family together. You invited him, didn’t you?”
I wished I never had.
“I was trying to be nice,” she said.
I crumpled my paper napkin and placed it atop my half-eaten meal. What meager appetite I’d had to begin with had vanished. “Now’s a fine time to start.”
My sister watched me, her lips pressed together. I’d meant for my words to cut her, but saying them felt like shoving a knife into my own gut.
“Is this the point where you tell me it was my fault?” I pushed the napkin harder into the sauce, watching the white paper turn tomato red. “That if I’d only been more like you when we were young, he wouldn’t have been so awful?”
“Not at all.” Jack swallowed. “I didn’t know the stuff from our childhood still bothered you.”
I scowled at the other patrons slurping their noodles, wiping orange sauce off their chapped lips and mottled chins. “It bothers me that you’d come to my show and act like we were the best of friends when you’ve spent most of our lives pretending I don’t exist.”