Skin

anticipation. No nothing.

Lilith swept a stiff Hannah into her arms. “I found you. Finally, I found you.”

Hannah pushed her away. “I’m sure you tried real hard. It’s been how long?”

“Years. And I spent them all looking for you.”

Hannah didn’t say anything. She just stared as if she were wondering what to believe.

“Can we get out of here? Go someplace to talk?”

For a breath-holding second, Lilith thought Hannah would refuse. Then her sister shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure. We can go to my place. Car’s over there.”

Over there being a row of diagonal parking spots against the back of the building. Hannah unlocked the door to not just a car but a Jaguar convertible that must have cost enough to pay for a good part of law school.

Tension wired between them as Hannah drove fast and a little too carelessly. Lilith hung onto the handle in the door and prayed they would get to her sister’s place in one piece. When Hannah turned down a dead-end street and pulled up to what looked like an old manufacturing building set along the Chicago River, Lilith asked, “Where are we?” and Hannah said, “Home.”

Home was a conversion. One of only several units in the building. A soft loft of tremendous proportions and with an incredible view of the river. The windows on that side ran floor to ceiling. Lilith looked around her and willed her jaw not to drop. Her own walk-up flat could fit into one corner of the massive double-storied main room. The furnishings were sparse but expensive. Leather upholstery, mahogany furniture, real Oriental rugs.

“We have a dock on the river, too. I’m thinking of getting myself a boat next year,” Hannah said airily. “If I’m still here.”

“The rent on this place must be out of this world.”

“What makes you think I rent it? Because of what I do? I make good money, Lilith. Great money.” She waited a beat. “Yeah, okay, I rent it, but only because I get bored easily and might decide I don’t like things and that I want to move on.”

Undoubtedly the reason she’d been impossible to find.

“What do you like, Hannah?”

“I like living here in luxury. I like driving a fast car, wearing nice clothes, going to the best restaurants.”

“What about what you do to get all that?”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Your sister, who is concerned about you.”

“My sister abandoned me.”

Even as her stomach tightened, Lilith shook her head in denial. “It wasn’t like that, Hannah. I just went away to school so I could get a good job and take care of us.”

“I know it’s been twelve years, but if I remember correctly, when you were getting ready to leave, I asked you to take me with you, and you said no.”

“I was seventeen!”

“And I was twelve. You left me there, knowing.”

“I didn’t think he would hit you, Hannah. You weren’t like me. I was the one with the big mouth. I was the one who stepped between him and Mama.” She could see Mama now, bruised arms, blackened eye. Horrified that had happened to Hannah, as well — her mother never admitted to the abuse going on in their home — she said, “You were the quiet one, the mouse.”

“When you left, someone had to protect Delores.”

Why was Hannah calling their mother by her first name? Had Hannah cut them both out of her heart?

Lilith shook her head. Someone always had to protect Mama. Someone always had to take care of her. That’s why she’d married Marlon Aldrich when Lilith had been fourteen, Hannah nine. That’s how they’d gotten to this place. Lilith fought buried feelings of resentment and betrayal for her mother from surfacing.

“Have you seen Mama lately?” Lilith asked, wondering if she had known where Hannah was but hadn’t told her.

“Go back to that house? What are you on?”

“She just won’t leave. I keep trying to convince her–”

”Why bother any more?”

“Because she is our mother.”

“Mothers take care of their children,” Hannah said. “They make sure they’re safe. Not the other way around.”

Lilith didn’t say anything. As long as she’d had to deal with it, she still didn’t know why. Why had Mama stayed with a man who used his fists on her? Who used his fists on her daughters? Their real father hadn’t been like that. He’d been gentle and kind, a dreamer as Mama had always told them.

“You were like my mother once,” Hannah admitted. “But you turned out to be no better than she was.”

The back of Lilith’s throat thickened. “So you hate us both?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“I didn’t make you do this.”

“Oh, this. You mean strip. That’s the difference between us, Lilith. I like what I do.”

“I’m not judging you. I realize you had to take care of yourself.”

“I do more than take care of myself. I make terrific money. Look around you to see what it buys.”

Lilith’s gaze skimmed over the expensive furnishings. “These are nice things,” she agreed.

“Things that have value.”

“People have value.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Lilith regretted them. She couldn’t stand the hurt on her sister’s face.

Then Hannah laughed. “Oh, yeah. Let me count how many worthwhile people I know.” She looked directly at Lilith when she said, “I guess maybe that’s zero, because they all disappoint you in the end.”

Meaning she had disappointed Hannah, Lilith knew. “I wanted to make a better life for us.”

“You wanted out.”

“For all three of us!” Lilith insisted. “I was seventeen and had only a high school degree. What could I do with that? I couldn’t have gotten a job to support us. That’s why I went away to school, to get an education so that I could.”

Not listening to reason, Hannah said, “You were tired of the arguments and the beatings and you took the first opportunity to leave all that — to leave me — behind.”

“I would have come back for you.” The weekly phone calls with Hannah begging to be with her had gotten to Lilith. “I was coming back for the summer after the semester was over.”

“After Marlon broke me the way he did Delores? The first time he beat me, I had a concussion. The second time a broken arm. And Delores lied to the police for him.”

Hot tears seared the back of Lilith’s eyelids. “Mama told me about what Marlon did after you’d left.” She hadn’t said she’d lied to the authorities, of course. That hadn’t been necessary. It had been her pattern of denial.

“I wasn’t waiting for a third time. I wasn’t waiting for him to break me. Or kill me. You can’t hide from abuse when it’s in your own house, Lilith. You know that. And I guess I was trying to be like you.” On the heels of that announcement, Hannah said, “You know, I think you’d better leave.”

Like her? Hannah had been nothing like her, Lilith thought, swallowing a lump too large for her throat. “But we have so much to talk about.”

“We have nothing in common, Lilith. You’re still you and I’m, well, I’m Anna Youngheart now.”

“You don’t have to be. I can help you. We can figure something out together.”

“You think you’re going to walk back into my life after all these years and I’m simply going to give up everything because you disapprove?” Hannah opened the door and indicated she should leave. “Get real.”

Lilith knew she’d handled this all wrong. Having her sister back in her life was more important than what she