Jimi lives in a studio apartment over an antique motorcycle shop downtown, amid the other little shops in the bay. It’s the weirdest location for an apartment, but Jimi knows the owner and puts in part-time hours at the store for cheap rent. She tosses her purse over her shoulder and gets out of her car. Silver clouds are feathered over the pale blue sky. She walks through chilly pockets of moisture. Large sailboats, adorned with names of women, are proudly docked in the marina. The sun cuts through the fog and leaves a light shimmer on the ocean.
The apartment is right at the top of the stairs. She bangs on the door. “Jimi, it’s me. Open up.” She checks her phone and grimaces. It’s noon. Leaning against the stucco wall, she takes a tube of lipstick out of her purse. It’s early, for Jimi. It’ll take him a few minutes to get out of bed and open the door. Wait till he has children. They wake up at six on weekends. And they’re bouncy and happy about it. Children are confounding at times.
She leans against the stucco wall, trembling. “Answer the door, Jimi! You can’t leave cryptic messages on my phone at two AM and expect me to just stand here.”
“Ugh, Gwen. Just forget it. Go away.”
She pounds on the door again. “You said you had something to confess. I am freaking out. Tell me what it is.”
No response. She taps her foot. “Come on.”
Finally the door swings open. Jimi rakes his hand through his hair. He’s shirtless, wearing baggy sweats.
“Jesus,” she says. “Took you long enough.” She steps over a pile of laundry and plops down on the couch. “Sit. We need to talk. Tell me what’s going on. You’re terrifying me, and I’m stressed enough.”
“Well, good morning to you too, Gwen.” He effuses his typical insouciance.
Gwen feels her hackles raise. “Afternoon, technically. It’s lunchtime.”
Jimi sits on the loveseat across from her and puts his feet up on the ottoman. “Can we just forget about that?” he mumbles. “I didn’t mean it.”
“You didn’t mean it? You said you’d done something horrible. What is it?”
Her brother is going to become one of those permanent teenagers—she can see it now. He’s twenty and about to lose his “baby of the family” pass. She grits her teeth, tries a silent primal scream, but it’s not effective. The musty smell in his apartment intensifies her irritation. She resists the urge to start sorting the laundry on the couch. Thank god she and Kevin have girls.
“Maybe I should call you more often. You usually only subject yourself to my humble abode when you have something to lecture me about.”
Gwen exhales. She bites her lip, avoids looking at the pile of dishes in the sink. It’s going to take everything in her power not to wash them. “Honestly, I’m a bit worried about you. Tell me what the hell is going on. Since Charlotte came home—”
“Come on now. Are you still falling for this shit? Do you really believe it’s her?”
She smooths her shirt. “I do.”
He scoffs. “Right. I’m the only one in this family with any sense. You all believe her because you want her to be Charlotte. Well, I’m not falling for it— not till Mom gets that DNA test. Why not run the DNA? It’s logical.”
Gwen thinks for a minute. Jimi isn’t wrong, exactly. “Mom doesn’t want to demand proof because she’s afraid it will drive Elizabeth away. She’s skittish, you know?”
He crosses his arms against his chest and looks at the floor.
“What’s wrong?” She holds her breath and waits. Maybe he’s had some drunken epiphany about what an asshole he’s been to Elizabeth. Maybe he feels guilty about how rude he’s been and needs her advice. She hopes.
He shakes his head. “I might have done something bad.”
“What?” Gwen says softly. “What might you have done?” Jimi is impulsive, always has been. And he can’t even fake subtlety. “You said something to her, didn’t you? Oh god, Mom is going to kill you if she bails town—”
“Well, yeah …”
Her chest palpitates. This family is going to give her a heart attack. Unrelenting stress alters your DNA, kills you young. “What, Jimi?”
He digs through the pile of laundry on the couch. “Why don’t we go have coffee or something? I need fresh air for this.” He retrieves a blue T-shirt and pulls it over his head. “Promise me you won’t tell Mom.”
She glares at him. “I will do nothing of the sort.”
They leave the apartment and head down the stairs. The motorcycle shop seems to be closed. Two businesses over is a small café. The crowds are minimal, which is good, because if she has to kill her brother, there will be fewer witnesses.
“What do you want?” he says.
“Iced latte with no sweetener and almond milk.”
He stands there, hands in his pockets.
“What?” she says.
“Do you have any money?” He shrugs.
She opens her wallet and hands him a twenty. “Hurry up and order.” There is one family sitting across the café, right by the water. The two children, a boy and a girl, are eating organic muffins—probably. The four of them are wearing tennis outfits. The woman laughs heartily at whatever her husband has said. Her hair is all the way down her back. She wakes up early to straighten it, not one to let kids keep her from a beauty routine. Gwen simultaneously admires and hates her. Or maybe her children sleep in, which pisses Gwen off so much she shifts her thinking. Probably, these people make heart-shaped sandwiches and grapes for the kids’ lunches. Then they pack them in forty-dollar bento boxes. The kids eat them with gratitude and never leave the boxes at school to be stolen. They don’t allow plastics in their home—BPA causes cancer. The man carves their toys out of wood with a pocketknife.
On top of this, they both have careers they excel at. She’s a doctor. He’s a lawyer who occasionally models for Calvin Klein. She never misses a Pilates class.
Meanwhile, Gwen’s family could be featured on a reality TV show. Motherfucker.
Jimi saunters toward her in his wrinkled shirt, carrying their coffee. He sets them on the table and hands her a fistful of cash and coins. “Here’s your change.”
She takes a sip of her latte. The beans are burnt to hell, and it definitely has sweetener. “All right,” she says with a grimace. “What did you do?”
“Remember the knife they found in her room?” he says, head turned away from her.
“Yes,” she says, her heart in her stomach. “What about it?”
“I put it there.”
“What?” she hisses.
“I said, I planted the knife. I’m sorry—I really am.” He takes a sip of his coffee after dropping this nuclear bomb on her head.
“Why?” Her eyes are close to popping out of her head. This is confounding. “Did you slash Mom’s painting too?”
“No, no. Of course not. Don’t hate me for this. I was panicking. I’m sorry.” He bursts into tears. “I just wanted … I don’t know—”
“You scared everyone. Jimi, I cannot even believe this. I can’t. You need to accept that our sister is home.” She sinks in her chair. “Charlotte is home.”
He clenches his eyes shut. “Are you telling Mom?”
She considers this. “I don’t know. Maybe not. I’m not sure it would help anything—not anymore. That’s all over, luckily for you. You promise you did not slash that painting, Jimi?”
His jaw tightens. In a low voice, he says, “I am not that awful. I would never go that far.”
Gwen nods. She tries to read the expression on his face. Which way is it people look when they’re lying? Left or right? She can’t remember.
“I’m serious.” He sighs. “I just panicked. Thought it would make her leave. You know how Mom is. All the time, thinking random guests are Charlotte Barkley. And then it actually happens? It’s rare.”
“It’s rare, yes. And it’s a miracle. If she was lying, she would have bailed after you tried to frame her.”
He nods. “It sounds terrible when you put it that way, Gwen.”
She shrugs. It is terrible. What does he expect her to say? “All right, then. Thanks for the coffee. I’ll call you tonight. I need to take a walk.”
She dumps her coffee cup in the trash and heads to the parking lot. Gets in her car, turns on the ignition. The family that was sitting across from them is still there, laughing and chatting away. Gwen shifts her car into drive and heads for the beach.
Gwen slides down the grassy embankment, her hair smacking against her face from the wind. As soon as her feet hit soft sand, she begins to shiver. The cold marine layer sends goose bumps down her neck. She trudges toward the sun-weathered driftwood cove she and her friends hunkered behind, drinking and smoking weed and kissing. She runs her fingers along the eroded tree. Underneath, there is evidence of their parties—charred sections where plumes of campfire smoke darkened the thick, gray branches.
She remembers every contour of Jared’s body, the way his left big toe curled to the right, the scent of his aftershave. He was her first love, and like all teenage firsts, everything was so damned vital. A little argument necessitated crocodile tears, raised voices. It required a girlfriend to comfort her, a cigarette to calm her shaky hands. Every event with Jared was momentous, larger than life. Gwen expended almost as much time picking a homecoming dress as she did later on Savannah’s birth plan.
Images of her sister, flailing in that water, are emblazoned in her consciousness. The crackle of the cell phone, as she called her parents at the restaurant, cavorts through her dreams. She can hear each trill ring, feel the ground snatched from beneath her feet. Knocked breathless, she knew she was about to break her own mother’s heart. Once someone cheerfully answered, “Giovanni’s!” reality would sink its teeth into her flesh and never let go.
She thinks about the pickup truck Elizabeth arrived in. Most likely, she was taken in a similar truck with an ancient, growling engine. Why didn’t she hear it drive up? She imagines her sister’s screams, but Charlotte’s little voice was no match for Gwen’s big emotions for Jared. Stupid Jared. She wouldn’t think twice of him now, if not for that evening.
It’s over. She has come to erase the memories.
But what if Elizabeth Lark is not Charlotte? What if Jimi is right?
Gwen takes a deep, cleansing breath. She sinks into the sand and lies her upper torso over her knees, stretching her fingertips as far as they’ll go. Child’s pose. Her clothes will be ruined; her hair will be a mess of salt and sand. She remembers her mother spraying her hair after a day at the beach. “You’ve got sand clear to the roots, Gwen. How’d you manage that?”
She zips her jacket to her chin and focuses on the sea, with its frothy waves ebbing and flowing, quiet and sharp at once. The clouds hover just over the offing, so close the water looks like it has been blended against the sky with a paint sponge.
She hates the ocean she used to love.
Someone calls from behind her. Gwen quickly pulls herself up, startled.
“Is that you, Gwen?”
Her mother.
“Gwen!”
She spins around, blinking stinging sand from her eyes. “God, Mom. You scared me. What are you doing here? Thought you’d be with Charlotte.”
“Elizabeth.” Myra swallows. “I came to watch the water. I do that sometimes.”
“Well, you don’t have to anymore, right?”
“Gwen, please. Can’t we start over?”
“So,” Gwen begins, “now that my sister has returned, I’m forgiven?”
“You’ve been forgiven. I do not blame you for this. I never have.”
Mom doesn’t lie well.
“Sure,” she says, “but if you’ll excuse me, the girls have soccer practice.” Turning toward the embankment, she swears under her breath.
“Can we talk?”
Gwen almost pretends she doesn’t hear.
“Please,” yells Myra.
Gwen flips toward Myra and sighs. “What is there to talk about? I thought you’d be happy.”
“I am happy.” Tears drip down her nose, and Gwen has a sudden urge to wipe them away. “I just want a normal life. To have a relationship with you.”
Myra’s words are foreign. It hits her that this silver-haired woman is a stranger. Finally, she says, “Everything is fine, Mom.”
Myra steps toward Gwen, and as the distance between them closes, a stream of sweat runs down Gwen’s neck. Her stomach churns. And when Myra finally envelopes her in a hug, Gwen’s anxiety cuts right to the bone. She fights hard not to cry; she will not let Myra make her cry.
Because Myra has never hugged Gwen so sweetly.
Gwen begins to walk toward the embankment, wagging her fingers goodbye.
“Come back here! Why do you think I blame you? You say this constantly. It’s not about blame. I lost my little girl. Until now. Not your fault she was taken. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I was … obsessed. I admit that. But it was never about blame.”
Gwen turns around and slides back down to the sand. “Right.”
Neither speaks. The ocean rolls, and Gwen finds herself lost in it. She remembers when Savannah was born, how she’d breastfed around the clock, insistent her daughter never be given a bottle. Kevin offered to feed her, but Gwen was determined. Maybe it was sheer stubbornness, but the raw determination to feed her new baby only at the breast came from a deep, internal need to get parenthood right. And by god, the La Leche League mothers had told her, if you give bottles, your supply will dwindle and dry up, and in the end that kid’s gonna end up on chemical-laden formula.
Gwen would not fail at breastfeeding. Babies wake to feed every two hours, the books all said, and she could handle this.
But Savannah hadn’t read those books, apparently, because she woke up every hour, sometimes every thirty minutes. Gwen remembers her frustration because she needed predictability and structure, and her baby didn’t. And the La Leche League moms said, well, this is common. Cluster feeding. Growth spurts. Gwen grit her teeth, and kept her daughter attached to the breast for what seemed like twenty-four hours a day, handing her to Kevin now and then to change a diaper.
But dammit, this was not what she’d expected out of motherhood.
One evening, her eyes were so bleary and her brain so foggy she thought she was literally losing her mind. Just like Mom. And Kevin said, you need sleep. You need it Gwen. You cannot go on doing everything—you’ve got to give up control. Lie down, just for an hour. Really.
So, she did. She fell into a sleep so deep and dreamless she was almost comatose. For six hours she slept. When she woke, a surge of panic ran through her. It was horrifyingly similar to the night she’d lost Charlotte. That feeling—it had returned. She bolted up in bed. Her milk let down, soaking her shirt. In her head, Savannah was gone. She was just gone. The sense of missing her, that she should have been there, in the bassinet by the bed, was like missing her own arm.
Slowly, she remembered. Kevin has Savannah. I was only napping. And she could breathe again, feel her limbs.
That’s when she understood. By losing Charlotte, she had done this to her mother.
“No,” she says finally. “A part of you was … amputated. Taken away—”
“Gwen, that is not—”
“Dammit, let me talk!” She wipes a tear from her eye. “I’m serious. Let me talk. Every time I saw you waiting there at the desk, waiting for her, after my own children were born … the anger grew deeper because I could never forget. I cut off my own mother’s arm.”
They stare at the ocean together for a long while.
“You didn’t,” Mom finally says. “He did.”
Gwen swallows hard. She nods, but the truth is, not everything can be erased; some things cannot be forgiven. And for that, she can’t blame her mother. Not entirely.