Chapter 11: Sisters

Nobody moved.

My father stayed at the table with his hands flat on the wood.

Lydia stood in the doorway in the stained yellow sweater, one hand on the frame.

"How long?" I said.

"How long what?"

"How long did you know? Say it out loud. I want to hear you say it."

She swallowed.

"Since I was fifteen."

The kitchen clock ticked.

"Ten years," I said. "You came to my house. You ate at this table. I taught you to drive."

"I know."

"I held your hair. I drove you to your first dentist appointment because you were scared."

"I told you things I never told anyone. And every time you called me your best friend, you were my sister."

"I know, Clara."

"Why?"

She came forward one step and her face crumpled.

"Because you had everything."

I stared at her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know how that sounds."

"But I came to this street and I saw you. You had a father who stayed."

"You had a house with a garden wall, and a boy on the other side of it who never took his eyes off you."

"I didn't have a mother."

"I did," Lydia said. "And I'd have swapped. I would have swapped in a second."

Her voice cracked.

"She kept me, and she was always sorry about it."

"Do you know what it is to be the one that was kept, and to know every day what she gave up to do it?"

"I grew up in a flat that smelled of cough medicine, being somebody's guilt."

I did not answer.

I could not.

"I only wanted to stand near you," she said. "That was all."

"Then I did, and you were so kind to me, and every year it got harder to say it."

"If I told you, you'd know I'd lied. So I lied more."

"And Miles?"

"I never meant it to be about Miles."

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