Lauren is actually able to wait quietly until Jen returns and opens the trunk of her car. It makes sense now, why both of them were so determined to take my car. It makes sense why Lauren didn’t seem to understand her own trepidation. She must have retained only spotty memories of stuffing my sister’s dead body in the trunk of Jen’s car, if any at all. What would Jen have done with Brett if Stephanie hadn’t done what she did, if not for that gruesome stroke of luck? She must have had a rough idea. She must have been the one to send a text to me from Brett’s phone—Called a car to take me back to the city. Over this shit. The police pinned that on Vince too.
Okay. Lift her up. That’s it. Let go. You can let go now, Lauren.
The hatch beeps once. I hear it latch shut. Jen waited to be sure it closed.
Help me, Jen says again, when they are back in the kitchen.
What is this?
Just help me clean it up.
But what is it?
It’s tomato soup.
Soup?! Lauren cries.
Shhh!
Why is there soup on the floor?
You spilled it.
I’m sorry, Jen.
It’s fine. Just help me clean it up. No! Don’t eat it. Gross. Lauren. No! Jen retches, or maybe that is me.
I’m hungry.
I’ll make you pizza after this.
Do I look like the Long Island Medium?
You’re fine. Just keep doing what you’re doing.
The two work without speaking for the next half an hour, cleaning up my sister’s blood.
Okay, Lauren? No, Lauren. Not on the white couch. Let me just get those off you first.
Don’t touch me, Lauren slurs.
Just let me get—
Don’t touch—
Your jeans off—
Wanna have sex with me?
Before you get on the couch, you fucking alcoholic fucking bitch! Jen comes undone, weeping from someplace deep and irrevocably broken.
I can imagine Lauren, regarding her friend contritely, before asking, Did I pee?
Jen sobs Yes! with relief, realizing this is the only way to convince Lauren to cooperate.
Don’t cry, Jen. I’ll take them off.
I hear the button of Lauren’s jeans cling to the zipper, the sound of denim, sanding skin.
Here, Lauren says, with so much sweetness that Jen sobs again. Her footsteps plod away, those of a woman heavier than she was an hour ago. Lauren starts to snore not long after that. From what I can gather, she never made it to the couch. It’s possible that she slept in the very same spot where my sister died.
There is always a choice. There is not always a good choice. I can go to the police. I can go to Jesse. I can do nothing. I can go to Jen. Jen, my friend. But I knew what I would do the first time I heard my sister moan, sounding nothing like I want to remember her. Why listen to the recording again and again? The same reason I made two appointments to terminate my pregnancy. I knew the day I missed my period that I would keep the baby. But I let my father and Brett drive me to the clinic twice anyway, to watch the angry men with their angry signs, to know with conviction that walking through the doors marked “Reproductive Services” felt like the wrong choice for me.
I hide the MP3 player in the leg of a skinny jean and shove it in a storage bin beneath the bed for now. Luckily, Layla rarely steals my clothes. “Too tight.” It is almost time to pick her up from school. I don’t need to look at a clock or my phone to know this, I hear Ellen greeting her audience through the thin wall I share with my neighbor. I am so sick of sharing. I share the bed with Layla and my drawers with Brett’s clothes. Arch folded them very neatly into garbage bags and left them with our doorman a few weeks ago, and this apartment has but one shallow closet by the front door, already stuffed to the gills. I used to hear the words doorman and luxury high-rise—which is how StreetEasy classifies my building—and picture Charlotte York’s apartment, but the reality is much less glamorous. This was Brett’s old apartment, the lease I took over when she moved in with Arch. It made for a suitable bachelorette pad, but it is not practical for a mother and a teenage daughter long term. I looked at a two-bedroom out of my budget last weekend. Fifty-five hundred a month in a failing school zone. No windows in the bedroom. No stove in the kitchen. That was not the first time I heard Stephanie’s voice in my head: Forty-one dollars and sixty-six cents a day.
I did some research after that. Not on the rental market in Manhattan.
I want to stay in this neighborhood. I want Layla to continue at the school where she is enrolled, the one with the “splendid” views of the Hudson, the one that scored an A+ on teachers and an A-on diversity from Niche. I want to retain my title at the company that is my joy and passion and finally, slowly, starting to turn a small profit. I want to receive letters from Imazighen women telling me they are the first women in their villages to go to college thanks to SPOKE. I want everyone to remember my sister fondly and I want to be properly compensated for appearing on a TV show that has increased viewership at Saluté by 39 percent. I do not want to be paid per season, or even per episode. I want residuals.
I find my phone. I have just enough time to call her before I have to meet Layla. The conversation doesn’t need to be long, and better to do it now while I’m fired up about it. I don’t want to ever listen to that recording again.
Jesse contacts me often, and I am expected to be available, whenever, wherever. But my call goes straight to her voicemail. I take a deep breath while I listen for the beep. “Hey, it’s Kelly. I need to talk to you about something.” My heart beats slowly and loudly. “It’s important, and I’d like to set a meeting to discuss it. Mornings after eight are best for me. Please call me when you can. Thanks. Bye.” I lose my grip on the phone before I can hang up, tacking on a muttered curse to the end of the message. Through the wall, Ellen’s audience cheers as she introduces her second guest. Time to go.
Outside, I am annoyed to find that it is sunny. It was overcast when I walked Layla to school earlier this morning, and I didn’t bother to grab my sunglasses before I left, thinking the day was still gray. Our apartment doesn’t receive a lot of natural light.
I decide to just squint and bear it, figuring that it will add another five or ten minutes to go back inside and grab my sunglasses. The elevators are in high demand at this hour, and I always try to beat the dismissal bell. Watching Layla exit the doors of her school tells me more about her day and her life than she will ever offer up to me.
I make the ten-minute walk in eight, lingering on the northeast corner of the block, knowing Layla exits the south-facing door, and that I will not be in her line of sight when she does.
I don’t recognize the two girls flanking Layla as she bounds down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. Then again, I don’t recognize Layla. I used to arrive early to her school in New Jersey too. She walked out alone most days, or with her friend, Liz, though less and less once Liz made the junior soccer team. Brett insisted that Layla was beloved everywhere she went, but she never saw her at pickup, at a school where so few students looked like her. She never saw what I saw, which was that no one had a problem with Layla, but no one went out of their way to befriend her, either.
The city has been good for Layla; her confidence has blossomed. She picks at her face less; she is rarely with the same group of girls, a sign of not just her popularity but of her generous spirit. She is invited to so many sleepovers and birthday parties that I have to say no to some of them, which of course only makes everyone want both of us more. If anyone were to ever find out the truth about my sister, we would be loathed with the same intensity we are loved now. We would not survive it. Going to the police was an option, but it was never one I was going to take.
Layla says something that gets a big laugh. She looks almost unbelievably happy, like a kid in an old Sunny Delight commercial. No teen is that excited to discover orange juice in the refrigerator. And yet, this likeness is real. Seeing my daughter’s earnest smile, her surefootedness with her new friends, I can say with conviction that I didn’t make the right choice.
I made the best one available.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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