My Sister's Cure Was Always My Man novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Lodge Invitation
Reborn at Sunday dinner, Josie announces a Labor Day weekend at Caleb's Aspen lodge, and upstairs the bathroom doorknob starts to turn.
At Sunday dinner I stood up and told my whole family we were all going to the mountains for the long weekend.
"My boyfriend's family has a lodge there," I said. "Lots of bedrooms. Hot springs out back."
Nobody answered, because I never ask my family for anything.
Then I looked at the dinner table, and I knew where I was.
Mom's good tablecloth. Dad's reading glasses on his collar. My aunt's bracelets clicking on her wine glass.
Last week my sister Bianca had her first "episode" with her college roommate's boyfriend.
Yesterday she showed us a printed diagnosis for touch-starvation disorder.
Tonight she was going to turn it on my boyfriend.
A moment ago, I had been bleeding out on this same floor.
In my last life, Bianca threw herself on every man I brought home.
She crawled into bed beside them while I was in the bathroom. She walked in on them in the shower.
Afterward she cried that she could not help it, and my parents told me to be generous.
The last time, she broke a bowl at my engagement dinner and cut my throat with the edge.
I lay on the dining room floor and begged for the hospital.
My mother said, "Your sister is having an episode. We'll go once she calms down."
I felt the floor go warm under my head.
Now my throat was whole, and Caleb's hand was warm in mine under the table.
Mom put down her fork. "Josie, a weekend away is a lot for Bianca right now. Her condition."
"Then the hot springs might help her," I said. "Maybe a lot."
Aunt Gwen perked up. "Springs are healing. Carol, I read that."
Dad shrugged. "Dennis Garrity doesn't turn down free," he said, and laughed at himself.
Bianca smiled across the table and passed Caleb the rolls.
"You must be starving after the drive," she said warmly. "Josie never feeds anyone."
Everyone laughed, and Caleb thanked her without lifting his eyes.
She watched him tear a roll in half.
She kept watching.
I kept smiling and my stomach turned over.
After dessert I took Caleb's hand and said we were going up to bed.
His headphones were already around his neck. He wears them around my family because my father chews loudly and my mother clinks her silverware.
On the stairs he leaned in and whispered, "Why is your sister staring at me like that? It's creepy."
I had heard him say it before, word for word, in another life.
Back then I had laughed and told him he was full of himself.
That night she walked in on him in the shower, naked, in tears, "out of control."
Caleb curled up on the bathroom floor with his hands over his ears.
His family had him in a treatment center in Switzerland by the end of the week.
I never saw him again.
I stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down.
Bianca stood in the hall below. She did not look sick at all.
She saw me looking, and for a second her face went still.
Then she smiled, the sweet one she uses on teachers.
"It's late," she said. "You two should go to bed."
Mom had come up behind her and put a hand on her back.
"Don't tire him out, Josie," Mom said. "Bianca needs her rest, too."
I did not answer.
I took Caleb to my old bedroom and shut the door.
The door has no lock. It never did.
Caleb put his headphones on the dresser and took a clean shirt out of his bag.
"I'm going to shower," he said.
He took out his phone and propped it against the lamp, screen toward the bedroom door.
"Is that for music?" I asked.
"It's for the door," he said. "I always do it in a new place."
I thought it was one of his habits, like lining up his shoes.
I let it go.
He looked at me for a moment longer than he needed to.
"You're not leaving me alone in a strange house, right?"
"I'll be right here," I said.
He touched my cheek with two fingers, very lightly, and I leaned into it before I could stop myself.
He kissed me, slow and careful, once.
Then he took my hand off his jaw and held it against his chest, where his heart was going fast.
"Stay close," he said.
He started for the hall bathroom, and I caught his sleeve.
"Not yet. Come sit with me first."
I ran warm water into the old tub and we sat on the edge with our feet in it.
I said it to myself plainly.
This time she does not get him.
This time she does not get anything.
The house was quiet.
Then a floorboard creaked right outside the bathroom.
The lock in this house has been broken since I was twelve.
Caleb looked at me, and I put a finger to my lips.
The bathroom doorknob began to turn.
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