I’m barely five feet five, but I seemed to tower over her. My light brown curls, elaborately fluffed and sprayed, were an unfortunate styling choice influenced by my mother, who insisted I do something different with myself.
“It’s your engagement party, Grace. You can’t wear your hair like that, all straight and ordinary.” So instead of ordinary, I looked like a show poodle.
Stella and I inherited high cheekbones and straight noses from our grandmother. On my sister, the overall impression was soft, inviting. On me, it was stern, even though I smiled almost as brightly as she did. But there was a tightness around my eyes—eyes the same silvery gray as Gran’s—as I glanced beyond the photographer to where Ben stood with an expression of wonder on his face. His mouth was open, and his gaze screamed of desire. Only he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at my sister.
Immediately after the photographer took the photo, Ben grabbed my hand and led me to the dance floor, making it easy to tell myself I was imagining things.
I shook my head and focused on her list of friends. The number was staggering, over fifteen hundred. Everywhere I looked were pictures of Stella, many with Ben staring at her adoringly. But no one posts candid shots of an unadoring lover. And there’s no time to snap a photo just as someone has his hands around your neck or to catch that special moment when you’re shoved down a flight of stairs.
I knew firsthand he could turn ugly when angry. He had never directed his fury at me, but I’d seen him slam a tennis racket onto the ground and stomp it over and over. I was there when he threw a chair through the glass door after learning his boss had passed him over for a promotion at the law firm.
So, when Mom told me he was knocking Stella around and asked me to talk her into leaving him, I had no doubt he was hurting her. I just didn’t care. Or worse, deep down in my blackened heart, I enjoyed it. If she’d left my future husband alone, she wouldn’t be getting her hair yanked or her face slapped.
It was much later I realized if she hadn’t stolen Ben, I might have been the one lying on the floor, dazed and wondering what I’d done wrong.
I told Mom if my sister wanted help, she could call me. But she never did. And I never called her.
Shiny faces sped by as I scrolled through until I found her: Alisha Beaumont, our former neighbor and Stella’s best friend from high school. Only now she was Alisha Beaumont Simmons. Her profile said she graduated from the University of Georgia a year after Stella dropped out. She lived in Atlanta with a husband and a fluffy white Persian cat.
If anyone knew what was going on with my sister, it would be Alisha. I found her phone number online. Before dialing, I checked the time and was shocked. It felt like days since my conversation with Mom but was only a little after seven. Too early to call someone from the past but not too early to reach out to Lesroy.
He answered on the first ring. “Grace, thank God. I just got off the phone with your mother. I’m grabbing some coffee and heading right over.”
He and I experienced a rough patch after Stella and Ben left town. When I refused to talk to her, she called our cousin. Like most people, he’d never been able to say no to my sister, so when she begged him to intervene with me on her behalf, he did. Devastated by his betrayal, I avoided him. If I hated her, he was supposed to hate her. I didn’t cut him off, but I was cool toward him for months. He wouldn’t accept my cold shoulder, though. He kept showing up at my door with wine and chocolate and old movies until I took him back.
Gran passed her love of the classics to us. She was crazy about dead or aging starlets. She named Aunt Rita after Rita Hayworth, Mom after Marilyn Monroe. My mother inherited her obsession and named me Grace Kelly Burnette. As for my sister, Mom had been more direct. Her very name meant of the stars. But our grandmother insisted she needed a proper name, so she became Stella Vivien Burnette.
The doorbell rang a few minutes past eight, and I heard the deadbolt click.
“Yoo-hoo! Are you decent?” Lesroy called as I stood to greet him. “Doesn’t matter. I’m coming in anyway.”
My cousin was a year older but always seemed younger. He was an elf-like child with bright blue eyes and curly hair that his dad insisted on mowing into a buzz cut so his son wouldn’t be a “sissy.”
Lesroy was so much a part of my life I can’t remember being without him. He never walked into a room; he twirled or tap-danced or spun into it. Together we designed elaborate castles constructed of discarded items we gathered throughout the neighborhood. A dilapidated dresser with a broken mirror became the Evil Queen’s prophetic looking glass. A rickety ladder led to Rapunzel’s tower. We collected smooth stones from the creek behind my house and turned them into an army of trolls who guarded us when we took impromptu naps on blankets piled inside our palace.
Today, at just under five-ten, Lesroy wasn’t a big man, but he was no longer the airy creature from our youth. My cousin discovered gymnastics in his early teens and was good enough to go to the University of Georgia on an athletic scholarship. He considered training for the Olympics but loved to party and spending all that time in the gym didn’t fit his schedule.
“I brought you a vanilla latte with extra whipped cream, plus two so-fresh-they’re-still-warm Krispy Kremes.” He put the bag on
