I GROANED AT the knock on the door and pulled the ties of my terry cloth robe tighter. In the bathroom, the steam from the water filling the tub rose in swirling wafts. I really didn’t want to see anyone. I wanted to escape to my hot bath and wash away the stresses of the day. A teller’s drawer that hadn’t balanced. A snooty assistant manager who seemed bent on disliking me. A man I couldn’t keep from my dreams, either in fairy tale or nightmare.
Maybe . . . but no. Brad didn’t have my address. If he was going to contact me—and after a week of silence, that was a big “if”—he would call. I shut off the water and went to the door. It was probably Emilia, inviting me to dinner. I’d accepted a couple times, and while I felt a true affection toward the family of three that made up my landlords, I didn’t want them to feel obligated to take care of me just because I lived on their property.
I turned on the porch light and opened the door. My sister stood, shifting from side to side, hands tucked into the pockets of her coat.
“Lydia. Hi.”
She took in my attire, or rather, lack of. “Hey. I know I shouldn’t just show up, but I was coming home from Stop and Shop, and Grace told me what street you lived on. I saw your car.”
Her blabbering put me at ease. She was nervous, vulnerable. Good.
“Come on in.”
She gave me a tight smile and crossed the threshold. “Cute place.” Lydia closed the door behind her and stood a foot past the threshold with her coat still on, her arms in front of her chest. I noted the new lines around her eyes and mouth. How many were there because of me?
“It’s small, but it’s all I need.” I mimicked her posture, suddenly feeling exposed in my robe. I thought of Brad’s card. I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t risk her closing up. My questions—my horrible need to place blame at Lydia’s feet instead of mine—would have to wait. A forgotten business card could hardly compare to my crimes. After the bombing, I had gladly identified as a victim, but not in this situation. The victim was Lydia. Her family. And I was the perpetrator.
“Yeah, they really are.” I held out a hand. “Can I take your coat?”
Lydia wavered in her stance, reached for a button of her coat, then let her hand fall. Whatever her doubts were—and there must have been many—they won out. “I really don’t have much time. I have to get home and get supper going.”
“Time for coffee?”
She shrugged, unbuttoned her coat, but kept it on. “Okay.”
I filled the Keurig with water. “How’s Joel?”
She turned to me from the middle of my living room where she stood, somewhat aimless. “He’s good. Getting ready for baseball.”
“Nice. When’s his first game?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure yet. Beginning of April, I think.”
I placed two napkins at the table. “Roger still away a lot for work?”
“No. After—after everything he took a different job in the company. Less responsibility, less travel.” A hint of a smile appeared at her lips. “I guess Mom told you that might be changing.”
She didn’t seem angry that I’d accidentally told Grace about the possibility of a move, but I still winced at the reminder. “Yeah, sorry I spilled the beans the other day. Mom made it sound like it was happening next month.”
“We’re only considering. We don’t have to decide until the summer, figured we didn’t need to work up the kids over a possibility.” She fiddled with the bottom button of her coat. “He took a pretty drastic pay cut the last two years. This move would give us a chance to get back on our feet.”
Why did I feel like all that was my fault? Was it? In my head I could reason that none of that day was my fault—the bombing, Lydia’s minor injuries, Grace’s severe ones. But at the end of all the reasoning, one fact remained: they wouldn’t have been at the Boylston Street finish line that day if it weren’t for me. If I had gone faster that day, we all would have been gone from the scene when that first bomb went off. And if I’d been around to help them the months following, perhaps Roger could have kept his old job. Perhaps my sister and her family wouldn’t be contemplating moving halfway across the world now.
I flexed my foot and felt the familiar pinch of pain in my calf. Memories of Lydia and me playing “tea” as girls with our stuffed bears and dolls pushed to the forefront of my mind. She was older by six years, so there was a lot of overlap time where we just didn’t have much in common. But there were a few precious years, from the time I was about three to when I was six, when Lydia wasn’t too mature, too busy with friends or school or boys to pull on galoshes, grab one of Mom’s umbrellas, and sing beneath a gently falling summer drizzle.
High school and college found us separated more often than not, but we drew closer again as Lydia married and had children. I’d come frequently to help her with Grace and Joel and talk to her about my own struggles with school and work and life. We found each other then as something akin to friends. I didn’t see how we would ever get back to that place.
I pushed aside my thoughts. If I was to survive this visit and move forward, I couldn’t dwell in the past anymore. I scrambled for a question to keep the conversation going. “And work for you? Your patients treating you okay?”
She looked at me a long moment then. I couldn’t keep eye contact, and focused on arranging the saucers beside the Keurig instead.
“I thought Mom would have told you.”
“We don’t talk that much, really. Kind of a freak thing that she mentioned you guys moving to me the other day.”
Lydia stared at the tan linoleum of my kitchen floor. “I left nursing. Too much for us right now. The kids—they’re not going to be home for much longer. I want to be there for them, as much as I’m able. Life can be too short.”
I breathed around the tightness in my chest.
“I’m a teacher’s aide now. At the high school. I get to see Grace every now and then, help struggling kids. It’s not bad. If the nursing position at the school ever opens up, I’ll apply for that.”
Guilt wormed its way inside me again. I had been living my life worrying about no one but myself for the last twenty months. Meanwhile, my sister’s life was entirely rearranged. I couldn’t help but wonder if her job move was a healthy one. Had she taken the job for the sole purpose of watching over Grace? I mean, the girl was seventeen. She didn’t need her mom hovering over her every minute.
“And I’ll go back to it. Someday.” She readjusted her purse, glanced at her phone. “Yikes, didn’t realize it was so late. I really do need to run home. Joel’s got a friend coming for dinner.”
She wanted out. Out of my apartment, out of my life, probably. I couldn’t let her get away so easily. She had made the choice to come. There must be some part of her that wanted things right between us again. “But coffee . . . ?”
She closed her eyes, shook her head, dark hair swinging around her chin. When she opened her eyes, it was with an exasperated sigh. “I’m trying here, Annie. Really I am. But you don’t get it, do you? You can’t waltz back into our lives after all this time of silence and expect everything to be like it used to. I mean, listen to us. We don’t know anything about one another anymore. We’re—we’re different people than we were two years ago.”
“I—I know. But—”
“We needed you. Grace and I needed you. But you bailed. Now that the mess is over, now that we’re not waiting on doctors every minute of our lives, now that I’m not lying with her in bed at night just to reassure her everything’s okay when she wakes up and remembers she doesn’t have a leg, when she wakes up screaming that her foot—the one she no longer has—is killing her with phantom pain—now you want in? Sorry, but I have a family to protect.”
The comment made blood rush to my limbs. True, I already saw myself as the culprit. But to hear Lydia claim she had to guard her family from danger—from me—was just too much. “I know I made a mistake, and Lydia, you have no idea how very sorry I am. But believe me when I say I never meant to hurt you or Grace.” I didn’t know what words could make the situation better. For whether I’d intended to or not, I had hurt my sister and niece. I looked at the carefully arranged coffee, knew it would be entirely inappropriate to ask her if now was a good time to choose a flavor. Instead, I swallowed, made an effort to mollify my tone. “I know I don’t deserve—”
“You deserve nothing.” Lydia reached for the door handle. “I came here for Grace, but you know what? Maybe it’s time I think about me. Because seeing you—knowing what you expect—”
“I don’t expect anything!”
She froze at the threshold. “It’s just too hard right now, Annie. For me. Please don’t call or come by.” Her gaze flicked to my feet and her voice softened. “Not yet, anyway. I just—I need more time.”
Then she was gone, her footsteps echoing on the wooden stairs of my apartment.
I rubbed my eyes, waited for her car to pull out of the driveway before I shut off the outside light and flopped onto the couch. I’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. But Lydia’s visit grounded me thoroughly in that reality.
Before visiting Grace the other day, I thought Lydia and I could take some time, work out our problems, and eventually reconcile. Now I realized that if we ever came to the point of understanding, there would still be this ugly thing hanging between us. This harbor of resentment. Maybe it would ease with time. Perhaps the sting would settle to a dull annoyance—like the pain in my leg—but I couldn’t imagine it ever going away.
On the coffee table, my cell phone vibrated. Christina Perri’s voice sang out “A Thousand Years,” and I scooped it up. Brad Kilroy’s name flashed up at me and I tried to push the disappointing visit with my sister from my mind and focus on the call I’d been waiting for all week.
“Hey, Brad.”
“Hey yourself. How’s it going?”
“Okay.” A trite lie to the guy who saved my life didn’t bode well for my conscience, so I settled for the truth.
Maybe should’ve gone for the lie. I sounded like a definite downer.
“Rough day?”
“Kind of. . . . My sister just stopped by—you know, the one you gave your card to. It didn’t go so well.”
“Sheesh, I hope I didn’t cause any problems between the two of you.”
I laughed, a dull, humorless sound. “No, we’re pretty good at causing problems on our own.” I shook my head, as if he could see me. “Anyway, sorry. Didn’t mean to vent. We’re not at that stage yet.”
I could’ve kicked myself for the overly familiar comment.
“I don’t mind.” He cleared his throat. “But I did want to talk to you about something I stumbled upon today.”
My fingers found the ring at my neck. “About the ring?”
“I think so. I wanted to see what you thought.”
I sat up, pushing my feet farther into my fuzzy slippers. “You have my attention, that’s for sure.”
“I found something in the newspaper today. Are you up for a ride and maybe some dinner? It might be better to see this in person.”