Chapter 104

I don’t know what to say so I bite my lower lip and wait. Through the trees ahead, the house looks foreign to me, the home of a stranger, a woman I didn’t know. I try to picture Evie in her twenties, counting out money into her younger sister’s open palm, her face a mask against whatever turmoil tore her up inside, but I can’t do it. The Evie I knew and loved never had a bad word to say to anyone, never raised her voice in anger…what had it taken for her to banish her sister from her heart forever? I don’t know.

Finally Jessie sighs and, reaching across the gap between the seats, she pats my knee almost as if she’s the one comforting me, when it should be the other way around. “Thank you,” she says.

When I look up at her, she forces a smile for my sake. “For what?” I want to know.

“For talking to me,” she explains. With a laugh, she adds, “For not running screaming from the car when I stopped you outside of Grosso’s. Even though you knew who I was—”