There she is, waiting below: Veronica. It’s been nearly three months since I saw her at the funeral. She spots me coming down the airport escalator, her shoulders scrunched up in giddiness. Sun-soaked hair, freckled doll face, and that stretched smile that reveals only her top teeth. Anticipating my touchdown, she lets out a puppylike yelp and then launches herself at me. I hug her for what feels like days.
Pulling away, she reaches for my face. “I love the beard.”
“Mom hates it.”
“Of course she does.”
We exit the terminal and cross the street to the parking lot. Two beeps unlock the doors of a black BMW. “Is this your car?” I ask.
“Nope. I don’t have a car.”
We both get in. The leather seats are oven warm.
“Is it Tim’s?” I ask.
“Tim and I broke up months ago,” Veronica says casually. And then, seeing my confusion, “I told you that.”
“When?”
She reaches her arm back and reverses the car. “When I was in L.A. You had bigger things on your mind, obviously.”
“I had no idea. I’m sorry to hear it.”
“It’s fine. Just wasn’t meant to be.”
That overused phrase echoes in my brain as Veronica maneuvers out of the lot and merges onto a main road. With the windows down, her hair whips wildly, but it doesn’t bother her one bit. Meanwhile, over in the passenger seat, I’m so lightheaded with possibilities I feel I might just blow away.
In less than ten minutes we’ve conquered the island, from New Town to Old. Veronica parks along the water. “It’s about to rain,” she says and then wanders into a building to return the keys to the car’s owner. It belongs to someone named Larry, a man who Veronica swears is just a friend.
I walk to the edge of the pier and look across the Atlantic. Somewhere out there is Cuba. Closer than Miami, according to Veronica.
I feel a raindrop on my nose, then another. In mere seconds, it comes down in clumps. I take cover under an awning and drop my luggage on dry ground.
A family rushes into the building behind me. I’m standing in front of an aquarium. My parents took me to zoos and aquariums as a kid. This was before Veronica was born. I always forget these neutral memories. I tend to remember only the great highs and deep lows.
I press my face to the window and watch the family at the ticket counter. It’s a man and woman with two boys. The smaller boy reaches for his brother’s hand, but the brother wriggles away. The smaller boy then grabs for his mother’s hand and she takes it blindly.
My breath is fogging up the window. The storm has already passed. The sun is shining. Veronica returns. “You’re soaked,” she says, laughing. “I tried to warn you.”
“It happened so fast.”
“Yeah. It’s the season.”
We walk down Whitehead Street, a semi-busy thoroughfare with pedicabs, tourists, and street stands. Quaint homes slumber behind short white walls and tropical cover. Birds sing out from tree limbs as if paid by the town to set the mood. I wonder what it means that my sister has chosen to live in a place that feels like a permanent vacation. Then again, some people say the same thing about Los Angeles.
“What would you like to do?” Veronica says, playing with the charm at the end of her long necklace. “You hungry? You feel like going to the beach? Whatever you want.”
“Whatever you want.”
“Let’s drop your stuff off. I’ll show you my place and we’ll take it from there.”
Suddenly she’s on my back. With my heavy bag in hand, I almost topple over. “I’m so happy you’re here,” she says, her legs dangling off me.
“Me too,” I say, trying to stay on my feet.
I’m hunched over, but I’ve got her good enough. We don’t have much farther to go.
Veronica shows me around her small apartment. The furniture seems like it came with the place, wicker chairs and matching glass end tables. She’s always been a no-frills girl, a bit tomboyish, more about practicality than appearance.
But she’s added a few personal touches. A potted snake plant by the window. A sign on the wall that reads IT’S ONLY YOUR LIFE. Photos of people I know and don’t know. In one photo, my father is holding Veronica in the crook of his arm, barely feeling the weight of her.
“The couch folds out,” Veronica says. “I don’t mind sleeping there if you’d rather have the bed.”
“No, this is perfect.”
I can’t look away from my father, Alex Deifendorf, with the newborn baby pressed against him. He was about the same age I am now.
“Let me show you upstairs,” Veronica says, guiding me up a tight spiral staircase to a loft. I immediately recognize the print on her bedroom wall.
“Thanks for sending that, by the way,” she says. “I love her.”
It’s Mara’s surfer girl. When I bought the print from Mara at the fair and sent it here to my sister, I didn’t realize that it was going from one mother candidate to another. Sydney would recognize the magic in that. I think, for once, I have to do the same.