chapter fifty-five

Not a creature was stirring, not even a fake FBI agent. But old habits die et cetera, so I made sure the conference room door was closed. Then I sat, brought up the file on my phone, clicked Play, and hunched forward. The saying is “I’m all ears!,” when it’s something you want to hear. I was no ears.

Then I saw myself on the screen, my hair scraped back into a high ponytail. No makeup except some cherry ChapStick … Shiro loved the flavor of artificial cherries, which was one of the many things about her I would never understand. They weren’t cherries, for one thing, more like the cherries that popped up when you played the slots. Metallic cherries with no juice. Who tolerates it, much less smears it on their mouth, where, pardon the obvious, the wearer can’t help but taste it?

(Get on with it. Quit stalling.)

All right, good advice, but I stand by everything I just said.

My eyes in Shiro’s face were calm and patient, our mouth a line. Our gaze was steady; our breathing was steady. Shiro could bluff the finest poker player on the planet. She’d done it to me plenty of times, and I lived inside her head. You can’t get any closer than living inside someone’s head. So what does it say about her (and me) that I had no idea what she was going to say now, in the six minutes she had stolen in the middle of a very busy day? What had been so important?

“We must break up with Patrick immediately. We must move out of his house immediately. Note I did not say ‘our.’ It was never ‘our.’ He found it; he bought it; he would not hear of us contributing, which was gentlemanly in a chauvinistic way.

“I know this is difficult for you. But it will be so much worse for him; you must understand that. I think you do understand that. Because I know you, and though you are a hider, you are not a liar—even to yourself. No more than I, at any rate. Do you truly think Patrick will not eventually notice you are going through the motions?

“Quite unconsciously, and understandably, you have made a suit of shining armor, you have created a picture of the Perfect Man for You/Us and, whether it fits him or not, you’ve stuffed poor Patrick into that armor. At best it’s unfair. At worst, it could result in considerable damage, the kind of damage that will keep you (and others) awake at 2:00 A.M. in Patrick’s bed while he sleeps beside us in piss-ignorance. Not to overstate my case, but this will be the thing you regret on your deathbed. That, and not investing in Twitter.”

“I was still a teenager!”

Shiro took a breath, held it for a beat, then whooshed it out. “My old friend. This is harder. I must tell you my motivation for this conversation—”

I was pretty sure conversations were two-sided.

“—shush, I knew you were going to say that. But I am not only trying to act in Patrick’s best interest; my motives are not as altruistic as that, and I cannot pretend otherwise. I am acting in my interests as well. I am in love with Dr. Gallo.”

Well, poop on a cracker. I was, too. Also: “Dr.” Gallo? Was it possible she didn’t know his first name? Formal was one thing, but …

“I don’t want to live with another man and perhaps raise a family with him when I love someone else. I know you are a hider, Cadence, and I know it is my fault.”

What?

“I let you hide because I am selfish and I want to live. My existence is one hundred percent contingent on letting you hide. You made me by necessity—in many ways you are my mother, not my sister. And I was grateful to live. But now I see I am … I guess I would say I have become your personal escape hatch. That is not my function; it is not my design. I cannot let you hide from this.”

What are you saying? I was starting to feel the familiar throat-clogging panic at the thought of being abandoned. By anyone: Patrick, BOFFO, Shiro …

“Don’t fret, Cadence.” Her smile on my face was bitter, bitter. “This is not a suicide note.

“We love Cathie—ah, you do, I mean, and I do not dislike her. But for years, she was all the family you had. Small wonder you decided to fall for her brother. You’re repeating childhood patterns, Cadence, and given our childhood, that is the polar opposite of healthy. You saw that moving in with Patrick, making a life with him, would open doors. What you could not face—what I would not face—was that that very same decision makes other doors swing shut. Doors we may never get to open again.”

“I know.” I could feel tears sting my eyes. “I know this, Shiro. I swear I do.”

She smiled from my face. It was odd. I had seen her before in pictures, on VHS tapes … as technology advanced, so did the methods our psychiatrists used to show us to each other. Always I had seen her as a petite Asian-American woman when everyone swore she was a tall blonde like me, that Adrienne wasn’t a redhead but a tall blonde. I still saw her, but in my body. Her expressions, the way she held herself, the way she spoke … those were all Shiro.

If she saw a tape of me, whom would she see?

“I know you know this,” she told me. “You will have figured it out by now. I wanted to explain my motivations and to tell you I will help you with this any way I can. I know you love Dr. Gallo as I do. And I know you will be kind to Patrick. I will help you with that as well.” She paused, and seemed to shrink inside herself a little. When she spoke again I could hardly believe it: Shiro was afraid. “Since I am demanding you do this right now, I will—I will tell Patrick if you cannot. That sort of thing is not my strength, but we cannot keep hiding behind walls built in childhood. I cannot accuse you of using me as a trapdoor and then insist you do something I do not want to face. I will tell him. If you want me to.”

“I’ll do it,” I told her. “I don’t want to either, but it’s my decision, too.”

She sat a little straighter and smiled at me. “Thank you, B.S.” Big Sister, her old, old nickname for me. I hadn’t heard it in years. It was true, I was the oldest; I had made the other two. They were born of my terror and despair; that was true, too. “I love you. Always.”

“I love you, too,” I told her. And that was also true. That was the best truth.

Shiro made as if she was going to stop recording, then caught herself. “I do not know when you will see this, so just in case, Sussudio is Ian Zimmerman. Good night.”

Oh, goddamned Shiro Jones!

I had to laugh. The whole thing, it was just too weird. Maybe that was the best truth.