My heart’s still pounding in my chest when there’s a knock on the bedroom door.
“Hello?” Ana’s face peeps through. “Are you okay?”
I’m lying on the floor, where I’ve been for the last hour, worrying about the text message from Richard.
You don’t know who you’re dealing with.
“I’m okay,” I say. Because, for the most part, I am. The letter Alice asked me to write is on the table, my newfound resolve buzzing in my veins.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” Ana asks. She’s hovering uncomfortably, and I remember how we’ve been tiptoeing around each other for days.
“Aren’t you leaving today?” I counter, remembering her expected trip back to Barcelona.
A faint smile plays on her lips. “Only tomorrow.”
She’s been avoiding me ever since that night I saw Seb and her together. This walk could be an opportunity for me to find out what really happened. Or to give her a chance to tell me. Judging by the way she’s looking at me, there’s more to this walk than just a goodbye.
“Give me five minutes?” I ask.
I splash some water on my face and go downstairs. Alma’s bustling around in the kitchen. It’s amazing how she’s recovered from her fall. If only our minds could heal as fast as our bodies.
Leaving the house is like stepping into a freezer.
“Let’s go this way,” Ana says, turning towards a cluster of trees down by the water. I follow her downhill, glancing back towards Deb’s house. I texted her an hour ago, asking if I could come over. There’s evidence now. Proof that her husband is a liar, and I’m ready to tell her.
But her incoming text sends a shiver through me. Can’t. Richard’s in town today. Tomorrow? xx
There’s no sign of his car in the street. Yet.
Ana and I walk in silence for a while. From here, I can barely see the dock behind the trees. It’s like the fog’s locked us in. At the end of the road, she sits down on a bench, burying her hands deep in her coat pockets. I stand beside her, gazing out into the gloom. How far we’ve come—from strangers to almost friends, then back to strangers.
“I think you need to leave.”
Her words are soft, but I don’t understand them immediately. “What?”
We lock eyes, and her face is expressionless. She holds my gaze, then looks to where the dock should be. “You’re not happy here. And this place—my family,” she says. “It’s not good for you. And it won’t get better.”
I say nothing, and she stares at me. “It’s going to kill you,” she says.
My feet are rooted to the ground, but her words batter me harder than the cool sea breeze.
I breathe. “I saw you two,” I finally say.
She doesn’t look away. But her expression shifts, losing its hard edge. She’s both thrown me a lifeline and made me question everything. The images from that night form again in my mind. A brother and sister. Kissing the way that brothers and sisters shouldn’t.
I move closer to her. “I thought I was crazy,” I say. “But I’m not, am I?”
She looks away.
“We used to come out here as kids,” she says after a beat. “Seb never liked Basque, not like I did. We were in Madrid most of the time. But every now and again, we came here.”
I perch on the edge of the bench.
“We didn’t get along very well,” she continues. “I was always out talking to people and making friends. But my brother kept to himself. He was always in his room. He never wanted to be outside.”
I imagine a younger Seb in his bedroom. Reading. Brooding.
“He didn’t talk much either,” Ana says. “My parents took him to doctors, but they said nothing was wrong. He just needed more time to process things. But I was different. Outgoing, curious, silly. I didn’t know…” she trails off.
“Then there was this one day. I was up in my room.” Ana’s words come haltingly. I feel uncomfortable for her. “I was sixteen. Still getting used to my body. But back then we didn’t feel so shy about stuff.”
I look over her slender figure, her golden skin. A body to be confident about.
“I wanted to swim, so I was changing. I left my door open—just a little—and I didn’t hear him.” She leans forward, her hands on her knees.
“He was standing in the doorway. And when I turned and saw him, he was shocked, like he’d never… he wasn’t supposed to be there. To see me like that.”
She’s silent again. I don’t move.
“I should have yelled at him or slammed the door or… something. But he was always so passive.” She gesticulates with her hands. “I just wanted him to do something. To say something.”
Her eyes brim with tears. “So I let him watch me.”
The silence spreads. We let it sit there, threatening to engulf us. I blink once, twice, and then Ana breaks the silence.
“I was stupid. Just playing around. I don’t know why. Maybe I was waiting for a reaction. I didn’t think any of it would have…”
She trails off again.
“He was only a child,” she says. “But something about that day must have set him off. I’ve read so much about it since then. It’s like something cracked inside of him.”
My mind won’t let her words land. All it does is circle around a nursery rhythm. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
The tears are flowing freely down her cheeks now. “After that, he was different. At first, he watched me when he thought I wasn’t looking. And then he stopped caring if I saw him at all. After a while, he started coming into my room at night, sitting on my bed, like he just wanted to…”
I want to reach out and grab her hand. But I’m frozen.
“…wanted to just watch me,” she stammers. “And then I’d push him away and tell him to get out. But it was too late. It was all so wrong already.”
My head swells. Beats pass with no words, and finally, I find my voice. “Did you tell your parents?”
Ana shakes her head. A violent back and forth. “No, no. I couldn’t tell them. Never. I made him like that. I let him watch me that day. How—sick is that?” She reels back, her face twisted in disgust. “My own…”
Sobs wrack her body. Heart-rending, animalistic. I give her a minute or two, then speak again.
“And he’s still doing it? Watching you like that?”
I want her to say no, but there’s a need for a yes, too.
Her nod is almost imperceptible. “When we were older, he started cornering me when we were alone. I never let it go anywhere,” she says. “I tried telling him we could fix it together. Talk about it. But he never wanted to. Not even when our father caught him.”
She puts her hands over her face. I feel nauseous. “Your father?” I ask.
“Yes,” she nods. “We were here, in Basque. He caught Seb cornering me in the house. He was still a teenager. I didn’t think my father would know what was going on, but he did. He grabbed Seb by the scruff of the neck and dragged him outside.” She points in the direction of the dock. “He took him out there. I don’t know what he did or said, but Seb came back a different person.”
“It was the last summer we spent together,” Ana continues. “After that, we weren’t teenagers anymore. We didn’t keep in touch. I tried, but he kept his distance. He didn’t even come to my wedding. He made up some excuse. The last time I saw him was two years ago.”
I stare at Ana. She looks defeated. “Did your father tell Alma?”
“No. It would break her heart.”
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
“I thought time would heal it, make it go away,” she says, the words rough in her throat. “And when I heard he was engaged, I was so relieved. I really thought we could put it all behind us. But I was wrong.”
All at once, things start clicking into place. Alma’s fall, how it brought Ana back here, how Seb changed. Something had happened to him to shape him into this person. A mound of complicated feelings triggered by one moment, a precedent set where there should never have been one. I swallow hard as the nausea rises in my throat again.
I wonder what his father had said on that dock. What he’d done to get Seb to see the world differently. Either way, it led him to me. A person barely equipped to handle her own broken life, let alone someone else’s. Two cracked eggs together in a basket.
I stare into the fog. “So it happened. What I saw the other night.”
“Yes.”
“He kissed you?”
I can feel her shudder beside me. “Yes.”
And all I can do is sigh. And as I do, I feel a strange relief. The last few years have been a series of made-up stories. Stories of my thin body, my circle of friends. Stories of you, stories of Seb and me building a life together. All fairy tales.
Finally, I’m not telling myself a story. I’m confronting the facts. And it feels good.
“But I pushed him away,” Ana says urgently. “Nothing else happened, Lisa. What you saw… that was all there was.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. Because none of it does. In my head, I’m already miles from here. “But you lied to me. I saw it happen, and you denied it.”
She goes quiet, but I don’t. “I know you wouldn’t want to tell me. I’m basically a stranger to you,” I say. “But why keep lying for him? Why keep his secret?”
The change is swift and astonishing. Ana’s face morphs from fragile to determined in an instant. Her eyes harden and her shoulders tense beside me.
“Because I love my brother,” she says, her eyes locking on mine. “And I have a part in this, and doesn’t matter what happens, I’ll always protect him.”