“I went to live with my grandparents when I was eight. I always wanted my parents to come for me at school,” she said. “Just show up one day, pick me up and take me home. Never happened.”
Jack went to the window, stood beside her. “I’m sorry. It should have happened. If you’d been mine, I would have gone into your classroom with balloons, an ice cream cone, and then put you on the back of a pony and thrown a parade to have you back.”
“I can’t give Christopher a parade,” she said, “and I can’t…I can’t even pick him up and take him home. But I can show up. I can do that.”
Jack turned and kissed her gently on the forehead—like she always wanted her father to do—and said softly, “See? I was right. I told you Astrid was still here.”
Astrid. Her.
Lucy went downstairs to face her fears.
* * *
—
Lucy opened the library door and found Angie standing at one of the bookshelves holding a copy of The House on Clock Island in her hands. She closed it and held it against her chest like a shield.
“Hey,” Angie said.
“Hey.”
“Sorry to surprise you. I…Anyway, you look great.” Angie smiled. “I can’t believe how old you are. I barely recognized you. What were you, seventeen, eighteen maybe, the last time I—”
“Angie,” Lucy said. “I’m here only because Jack asked me to talk to you.”
Her sister didn’t seem surprised by that. She looked at the floor, then said, “Sorry. Really.” Angie sounded scared. Or was it ashamed? She finally looked up at Lucy. “But it is good to see you.”
“Is it?”
“It is. Believe it or not.” She crossed her arms over her chest, pressing the book to her heart.
Lucy sat on the sofa’s arm where Hugo always perched when in the library. Angie gave her a wary smile and sat opposite her on the sofa.
“Before you say anything else,” Angie said, “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for showing up here without warning you. I wanted to call you, but Jack asked me not to tell you. Plus, I thought if I tried calling you, you’d hang up on me.”
“I would have.”
“Yeah, which I understand.”
“Do you?” Lucy leaned forward, studying this stranger who was supposedly her closest family. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up feeling unloved and unwanted by your entire family? And not just to feel like it but to know—for a fact—you weren’t wanted? Didn’t you say so yourself? Your exact words: ‘Mom and Dad only had you because they thought I needed a bone marrow transplant. They didn’t want you and neither do I.’ You said that, right? And in front of literally twenty people at your sixteenth birthday party. Your birthday party I was so excited I was allowed to attend? You were like a celebrity to me, Angie. I used my own money to buy a new outfit. Grandma did my hair up perfect. Stupid me thinking maybe I could finally move back home? Oh, but you couldn’t stand that idea. You couldn’t share Mom and Dad for a single second. All I did was ask Mom if I could move home and you decided to tell everyone in the entire house that I was basically an expensive purchase you all couldn’t return.” All the anger and pain Lucy had bottled up for years poured out at once. “Do you remember that? Because I remember it almost every single day.”
She could still hear those words ringing in her ears—They didn’t want you and neither do I…
Lucy had been twelve years old.
“I…” Angie glanced away.
Coward, Lucy thought. Her own sister couldn’t even look her in the eyes.
“I did say that, yes. I did say those awful words.” Finally, Angie looked at her. “I would give anything to take them back. And I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry. Sorry enough I won’t ask you to forgive me or make excuses. I was only sixteen, but you know what? I knew I was being horrible, and I said it anyway. I’d take those words back if I could, but I can’t. All I can do is tell you I’m sorry.”
Lucy couldn’t say anything. Words refused to form. She’d imagined this day a thousand times, when her mother or father or sister or all of them would come crawling to her, begging for forgiveness. Sometimes in her daydreams, she forgave them. In most of her dreams, she didn’t. She told them it was too little too late, that Lucy had moved on, didn’t need them anymore. Then she got up and walked away, never turning back no matter how loudly they called her name.
Finally, Angie broke the silence in the room. “Anyway,” she said, “I’ll go now. You deserve an apology, but you also deserve to be left alone if that’s what you want.”
Angie pushed herself slowly up off the sofa. Lucy noticed a grimace of pain and wondered if her sister had lingering complications from all her childhood illnesses. This wasn’t part of her daydreams.
“You can stay,” Lucy said.
Angie looked at her, suspicious, before slowly easing down onto the sofa again.
“Can I just ask,” Lucy said, “is what you said true? Did Mom and Dad have me because the doctors said you might need bone marrow someday? And when you ended up not needing it, I was just taking up space?”
Angie sat back on the sofa, her eyes staring blankly at the cold and empty fireplace.
“Can I tell you something?” Angie asked. “Will you listen?”
“I’m here,” Lucy said. “Go on.”
“Did you know that the kids who grow up as the ‘favorites’ in families are usually more screwed up than the kids who aren’t the favorites? The first lesson we learn is that our parents’ love is conditional and that failure to perform means that they can take all that love away. We see it with our siblings, so we do everything we can to make sure that never happens to us. Fun, right? I learned that in therapy.”
Lucy couldn’t quite speak yet. She took a moment and then said, “You’re in therapy?”
“I’ve been in therapy since I was seventeen,” she said and gave a cold little laugh. “Mom and Dad’s idea. Well, command.”
“Because you were traumatized by being sick your entire childhood?”
“Because they weren’t happy unless I was sick,” she said. “They liked me when I was sick. They liked sending me to doctors and getting me treatment. Once I got better physically, I had to have other things wrong with me for Mom and Dad to fix. So first they said I had a learning disability, then an eating disorder, then they decided I was depressed and possibly bipolar. You name it, they tried to find a doctor to say I had it. They sent me to every psychiatrist and psychologist and psychotherapist they could find. If they weren’t heroes, trying to do everything they could to save their precious baby, what else would they do with their lives, right?”
Lucy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was like learning her sister was a spy, and now she was double-crossing their parents.
“They’re not healthy people,” Angie went on. “I don’t know if they’re both narcissists or it’s just Mom, and Dad’s so weak he can’t help but follow her lead…Who knows? Not that it matters. Whatever’s wrong with them…” She looked up at the ceiling as if trying not to cry. “Let’s just say, looking back, I envy you for growing up with Grandma and Grandpa instead of at home. I know you’re pissed at me for what I said at my birthday party, but I promise you this—you’re the lucky one, Lucy. I wish you knew…”