“I know how she was,” I say after a moment. “She was—she loved being adored, and I … you know I hated living with that. Being Tess’s little sister. Being the one who wasn’t as nice, who wasn’t as pretty. Being the one who had to watch her get everything she wanted. But she—when she found out that you were pregnant, she changed. It was like she had … like she decided her life was a role or something. She’d go out smiling, but at home she was upset. She was so silent sometimes.”
“Oh, so she was quiet?” Claire says, and although there’s scorn in her voice I hear something else too, something wounded and hesitant, and think of how Claire always manages to come by Tess’s room at the hospital.
I think love is huge, overwhelming. I think it’s terrible and beautiful, and I wish Tess had found a way to live with it. To let it in when she had the chance. I wish she hadn’t broken Claire and then broken herself.
“I never saw her cry,” I say careful y. “But she … she would come home and sit in her room and just stare at nothing for hours, and I thought—wel , my parents told me she was worried about col ege, and you know how her grades were.”
“I remember,” Claire says, but I can tel she is thinking of something else. Of a Tess I never knew at al .
“She was unhappy,” I say. “She was—”
“And I was what, spinning around ful of joy?” Claire says. “Tess broke my heart and then made life impossible for me. She was beyond cruel.”
“Your name is her computer password,” I say in a rush. “She kept pictures you sent her. She even—you’re the reason why she and Beth broke up. She didn’t—”
“What? Love Beth the way she loved me?” Claire says. “I’ve seen Beth visit her, I see how Beth looks at her. I know that look. Tess wouldn’t choose her either. Beth was just smart enough to be the one who left.”
“It’s not—I don’t think she knew how much …” I take a deep breath. “I don’t think she knew how much she loved you until you got pregnant. Until you … I guess maybe she thought you’d come back or—”
“You know the real y pathetic thing?” Claire says. “I would have. I would have gone back. I told her I wanted to actual y kiss her in public, that I wanted people to see how much I loved her, but I would have kept on being the best friend. I would have kept on going on double dates with her and making out in my room, in the dark, when we got home.”
She taps ash off her cigarette. “I would have done anything for her. But she couldn’t get over the fact that I got drunk, had sex, and got pregnant.
She couldn’t understand it. That’s what she said. ‘I don’t understand.’ Sometimes I think that’s what made her the maddest, you know. That I could want somebody else, even if it was for just a little while.”
“Tess wasn’t—she isn’t evil, you know.” I’m surprised to hear myself say it, because there have been times when I’ve pretty much hated Tess.
Times before the accident. After the accident. But she wasn’t—she wasn’t who I thought she was. And now that I’ve learned more about her, the real her, I see what a mess she made of things. How imperfect she was.
How she could and did break her own heart too.
“I know,” Claire says, and then seeing my face, adds, “I do. Now, anyway. The first time she came home from col ege and I saw her, I didn’t feel like I was going to die. I just thought, ‘Oh, there’s Tess. I wonder if Cole’s hungry.’ Having him—” She shrugs. “I couldn’t think about just me anymore. I can’t think about just me anymore.”
“But you miss her.”
“No,” Claire says, shaking her head. “I just—I look at her lying there, and I think,
“She would have …” I say, and then stop, because I don’t know if Tess would have. The Tess I know wouldn’t —she never apologized for anything because she never had to, because she never did anything wrong. But the other Tess, the real Tess, maybe she wouldn’t have either. Maybe she knew some things are too big for “sorry.”
Maybe she knew what she’d done to Claire couldn’t be forgiven.
“Look, sometimes you just have to live with how things are, even if they aren’t how you want them to be,” Claire says.
“I want her to be sorry.”
“I want her to be sorry too,” Claire says, stubbing out her cigarette. “But I’d also like to be able to move out of my parents’ house and meet someone who wants to hold my hand where people can see.”
“You’l meet that someone,” I say, and she looks at me.
“No,” she says. “I probably won’t. I’m twenty, with a two-year-old, and I live with my parents in a town where everyone is pretty much each other’s cousin. I get up, I take a shower, I go to work. I give dying people sponge baths and change bedpans. I come home, I see my son, I go to bed.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.”
“Who says I’m not happy?” Claire says, and then grins at me. “I’m not unhappy, Abby. I just am. I have Cole, I have my parents, I have a job. It’s enough.”
“It’s not,” I say, so strongly I surprise myself.
“Why not?” she says. “Look at you. You’re doing the same thing. Before the accident, you got up, you went to school, you came home. Now you get up, you go to school, you see Tess, you come home. You total y blew off El —”
“I don’t want to talk about Eli,” I mutter. “Especial y not if you’re going to bitch at me again.”
“Fine,” Claire says. “Throw away something that could be great because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Go ahead and—”
