Madly (New York 2)

But in just four days her mom and Justice would be together at some big event, somewhere in the city, possibly involving a Harry Winston engagement ring, and Allie needed to be there with her sister by her side. She needed to ask May to help her figure out what to do about their dad, to ask both of them to be with her, to stand with her, to be a family and talk through things and face the future together. She couldn’t have that—not any of that—unless she got through this conversation.

She took a deep breath. “Listen. I need to tell you some things.”

—

“She hung up on me after that,” Allie said. She poked her fork into the yolk of her egg, releasing a blob of sticky gold. “So…yeah. That’s when I texted you.”

May’s pancakes sat untouched on the table. She hadn’t said anything, not one word the whole time Allie talked. She’d just sat there with her head down and her hands knotted in her lap, and whenever Allie faltered, she’d hoped May would look up, react, give her courage to go on. But her sister was utterly silent and utterly still.

Allie put a bite of egg and some kind of greens in her mouth and chewed it, but it refused to break down into smaller pieces or become swallowable. She chewed and chewed, thought about spitting it into her napkin, couldn’t face that. Finally she held it in her cheek and filled her mouth with cold water and got it down that way.

Her body felt like cold water. Like lead spiked with adrenaline. Like doom.

She wished she’d worn something normal. People kept looking, and she didn’t have any twirl left inside her anywhere.

“You’re going to have to say something eventually. You know that, right?” Allie asked.

May looked at her at last. Her face was gray, her eyes wet and angry.

“If you—” May shook her head. Looked down again.

“May, please.”

One of Ben’s terrified servers came to their table with the water pitcher, and Allie wanted to murder him. She felt a tiny spark of sister solidarity when both of them whipped their heads at him and barked, “No, thank you.”

May cleared her throat. “If you wanted me to say something about what you just told me—if you wanted my opinion on finding out you’re my half sister, or what happened between Mom and Dad when I was a baby and Mom ran away—then you could’ve said something. Years and years and years ago.”

“I know, I—”

“No. You don’t know. I really don’t think you do. Allie, I never, never felt like I—belonged. I was big and tall and I was always wrong.” May looked down again, furiously scrubbing at her face, and Allie wanted to fix it but didn’t know what to say because May was right, she hadn’t known. It was news to her that May hadn’t felt like she belonged. May had always belonged the most. May was the oldest, the most like their parents, the best behaved, the prettiest. May had been everything she wanted to be and could never figure out how.

“Mom picked at me for being too fat,” May said, “and Dad tried to make it up by leaving candy on my dresser, and—”

“Please. I know, I know. I hated how Mom was with you when we were teenagers and stuff. I just wanted to be like you, I just—”

“And you had all this—style or something. Got away with all kinds of things. You had some eighty-year-old man for a best friend and started a business in high school. I wanted something like that, that permission you always seemed to have to do whatever, be whoever you wanted, while I had to follow the rules and do what Mom said—”

May took a breath. Her hand came up to her throat, which had gone a mottled pink and looked raw and reminded Allie of when they were kids, how May always turned pink when they fought, how she would bait May because she wanted to break her composure enough to see her sister turn a different color.

She’d never been a good enough sister. She’d never been a good enough friend, or listened hard enough. This was what she was learning, from talking to her sister. How much better she had to do. Would do. For all of her family.

Because she loved May, had always loved May, felt her heart swollen and her body jumpy with the anxious need to turn her love into some kind of action that would prove it.

“You remember that time in college we were at the funeral,” May said, “and I found out that Mom’s friend Cynthia from high school who she always told us she was going to visit had actually moved down to Florida? I overheard it, and I went looking for you right away—right away, Allie—because it didn’t make sense, why would Mom say that when she wasn’t doing it, that’s what I was thinking. But when I found you, and told you, you said I was wrong. You said Mom hadn’t told us she was going to see Cynthia in a long time. You said you already knew Cynthia had moved, that we all knew, and probably I just forgot.” The pink had spread up May’s neck. “You lied to me. You knew then about Dad, about where Mom was going, who she was probably with, and you didn’t want me to find out.”

They’d spent an entire day inside a stuffy, hot funeral parlor in a suburb outside Milwaukee. She and May had driven down together, and Allie had smoked a blunt with the windows down, so happy to have a chance to get away from campus and spend some time with her sister, who’d been busy studying and having a life separate from hers, so that even though they lived in the same house off-campus, Allie felt like she never saw her.

They’d hovered around the veggie trays, eating broccoli and dip, talking to cousins and holding babies, and Allie had felt like she and May were grown-up, fully part of their family.

And then May had left to pee, and come back with this thing about Cynthia, and the whole day was ruined.

Mom had never been hanging out with Cynthia. Allie knew that, because she’d found out about Justin and stopped trusting her mother. She’d snooped on her computer and rifled through her purse and learned things she never truly wanted to know—and she hadn’t wanted May to know them, either. She hadn’t wanted May’s relationship with their mom to break even worse than it was already broken, or for it to be her fault.

She’d wanted to preserve May’s family for her, her home, even as her own felt irrevocably broken.

“I was trying to protect you.”

“No. No. I didn’t want protected, I wanted a fucking sister, Allie.”