“I—I can’t do this right now,” she says. “I have to go home.”
“You mean, I’ve figured out what real y happened and you don’t want to talk about it,” I say, my voice harsh. “You don’t want to think about how you broke Tess’s heart, right?”
“Abby, come on. I have to see Cole and I can’t—I don’t want him to see me upset.”
“She told you, right? She told you how she felt and you—you got mad at her or something and—”
Claire laughs, harsh and angry. “That’s your story, Abby? She told me she loved me, and I ran out and got pregnant so she’d stay away from me.
Is that how it went?”
“I didn’t say—”
“Yeah, because I stopped you,” Claire says. “We both know you were thinking it. And you know what, Abby? Even Tess wouldn’t think something like that. Even Tess knew—” She blows out a breath. “Even Tess knew me better than that. I thought you weren’t like her, that you didn’t have some fucked-up version of the world and your place in it in your head, but you know what? You do.”
“I blamed Tess!” I yel . “You hurt her, and I thought Tess was stupid and mean and I—I felt sorry for you!”
“It’s not like you—” Claire says, and then breaks off as someone driving by slows down long enough to wave at us and then make a gesture asking if we’re okay.
“I can’t do this,” she says again. “I have to get home to Cole.”
“Fine,” I say, and open the car door and grab my bike. “But at least tel me why, okay? Why did you hurt her when she just—she just loved you.”
Claire stares at me for a moment, like she’s lost, and then she says, “Why are you so sure I hurt her?”
“So you getting pregnant and making Tess miserable had nothing to do with Tess?”
Claire looks at the steering wheel for a long time before she speaks, and when she does, her voice is so quiet I can barely hear her. “It had everything to do with her. I … she only ever said she loved me, Abby.”
I slam the door shut and walk off.
Tess told Claire she loved her. That was it, and when she said it, Claire freaked out, and al those times I felt bad for her, Tess was the one who was hurting, Tess was the one who’d put her heart out there and gotten it stomped on.
If I’d known, I’d—
If I’d known, Tess and I—we could have talked. I thought nothing reached her, that nobody had ever held her heart, that she’d judged Claire for not acting like she would have, but al this time—
Al this time, I could have had my sister.
I went by, I won’t ever look at it the same now—and stand in the kitchen in a daze, thinking about al the times Tess railed against Claire during her last year of high school, and final y see her anger for what it was.
Pain.
I walk up to Tess’s room, glad I am alone now, glad my parents are with Tess, that she has someone with her who loves her without al the complications I’ve been carrying around.
I wish I’d never thought anything bad about her.
I look around her room, at the boxes on the floor. I think about what’s inside them. Her life with Beth and now it’s here, wrapped up and in the middle of the floor, just sitting here waiting.
I wonder if Beth knew about Claire.
Poor Tess. She’s lost two people she loved. I’ve always thought she got everything—everyone—she wanted.
I was so wrong.
I sit down at her desk, run my fingers across her laptop. Now I understand why Tess never looked at Claire, not even whenever she’d come home from col ege. Not even after she’d met Beth. I thought she was stil angry. I thought she was being petty.
Tess was angry, but I can see why now, and I’l bet she was sad too. And hurt, hurt enough to avoid Claire for years. To stil think about what had happened. What Claire did, how Tess loved her and Claire … didn’t. Not like Tess loved her.
My fingers slide across the laptop’s power button, and when the screen lights up, asking me for the password, I don’t think at al . I type
I stare at it. Al this time, and the password was right in front of me. Al this time and Tess—her real story, who she real y was—was right in front of me.
And I never saw it.
I take a look around her computer, checking out her files. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. I want to know the real Tess, the sister I never met, but there isn’t much to see. I find some papers Tess wrote, some music she downloaded, and a folder labeled “photos” that has pictures of her and Beth. No guys in them, no pretense.
I can see they are a couple in these photos, see them with their arms around each other, Tess smiling broader and with more joy than I’ve ever seen. I think about the photos she brought home for us to see, and how she laughed whenever I asked about the guys in them.
These photos, the ones with Beth, hold the real Tess, and I decide I’l copy and transfer them to my computer. Then I’l print one out and take it with me when I see Tess again tomorrow. I want to—I want to let Tess know I see her for who she real y is, and not who I made her out to be.
