Ever since I was a kid, my mom’s been the same; she just can’t handle surprises. Me turning up with Lacey the other day probably knocked her for six, and now me coming back here and saying these words to her—her brain’s not equipped to deal with this sort of shock. The small, plain silver cross she’s worn around her neck for as long as I can remember shuttles up and down the chain as she worries her fingers over it. Funny how you can really tell someone’s age from their hands. Difficult to hide that kind of aging. I long ago learned to glance down at a Californian woman’s hands before assuming her facial appearance was a true guide to how many years she had on the clock. Not that my mom’s had any work done, of course. But a lot of Californian women have. Especially ones married to doctors. Their husbands all know the best guy at the best practice, who can give them a discount on a little tuck here or little nip there.
“I said I found Lexi,” I repeat. As I walked into the house, I tried to think of a way to cushion this, to help it make more sense to them, and yet when it comes down to it, these are the only words that matter. For years now, they’re the words my mother and father have been waiting for someone, anyone, to speak. And now they’re coming from me. I would much rather they came from the police. Or in light of the truth behind my sister’s missing status, from my sister herself. But it turns out she’s too cowardly to do that. To say I’m mad with her wouldn’t even come close to covering what I’m feeling right now. Betrayed. Lied to. Lied about—how the hell could she say those terrible things about me to that guy? But mostly I feel abandoned. For so long this terrible guilt has pressed down on me, robbing me of any positive emotion I might accidentally feel during my everyday life before I remembered the loss of Alexis, and how it seemed as though me moving on, or taking the rare moment to laugh over some stupid joke, felt like I was abandoning her to her suffering. That I should be suffering, too. When in reality, my sister was the one who left me. She left me behind, in the darkest of places, and let me wallow in all of that suffering unnecessarily. And why?
Who knows why. I still don’t.
My mother pulls so tight on her cross that the fine chain bites into the back of her neck, blanching the skin white. “You’ve found Alexis?” she asks this as though I’ve just claimed I found the lost city of El Dorado and the place is populated by talking flamingos.
“Yeah, Mom. I found her. Or rather she found me. Turns out this whole time she’s been sick. She couldn’t remember who she was, where she came from. Nothing.”
This is the lie I’ve chosen to tell. The lie that will mean Alexis can maintain her status as the golden child of the Romera household. She doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve me trying to salvage the relationship she shares with my parents. Alexis doesn’t even know I’m constructing the lie, though, and I’m not really doing it for her. I’m doing it for the broken woman sitting on the couch in front of me, who has been paying for out-of-date photos to be printed on the sides of milk cartons for far too long.
My mom starts crying. These are the slow, disbelieving tears of a woman who gave up hope a long time ago. “But…how? Sloane, can you please explain to me what you’re talking about?”
I’m talking about how your selfish, thoughtless, liar of a daughter didn’t come home the very second she found herself free. In the end she chose a boy over her family.
A boy.
And where was the justice for the people who took her? There wasn’t any. From what Julio said, as soon as Rebel ‘bought’ my sister, she then repeatedly returned to the villa of her own free will, on purpose, to see the other girls. As if those men hadn’t kidnapped her, taken her off the side of the street and kept her prisoner. As if they didn’t force themselves on her, or force her to do lord knows what to them. I just…I just can’t get my head around that. Around any of it, really.
“I don’t know everything, Mom. I’m sorry. I can’t give you every single answer you need.” I sigh, fuming inside my head. Yeah, I can’t give you those answers, because Alexis hasn’t even had the decency to give them to me. My mom is still crying. She’s always been a crier; she cries at the drop of a hat. Startle the woman too badly and she’ll be sobbing for an hour. Dad says it’s a nervous reflex—that she can’t control it—but right now I feel annoyed at her for being so weak. I want to reach across the dining table, grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Shake her really freaking hard ’til her teeth rattle in her head. She sniffs, dabbing at her nose with a balled-up tissue.
“When is she coming home? Do you have a contact number for her? I just—I just don’t understand, Sloane. Why? Why isn’t she here?”
Yeah, you and me both. Instead of saying anything that might tip my mother off to my ragingly bad mood, I lay on the sickly sweet, calming voice I’ve learned to use with her. “It’s okay. She’ll be here as soon as she can. She’s just taking her time…remembering is all. She’s been living a totally different life for the past two years, y’know?”
I am the worst person imaginable. I’m not one for lying at the best of times. That’s probably what drew me to Zeth in the first place, when I should definitely have been running—the fact that I could tell he was honest to a fault. But right now the untruths are pouring out of my mouth easier and faster than water.