Don't Kiss the Bride

“I’m fine,” she says simply, like it’s no big deal that she’s been gone for years without a word or a trace.

Her voice sounds the same— exactly like it does in my memories. But as I stare at her, a chill runs down my spine.

In my mind, Erin has always been alive and grew up to be a gorgeous woman. An older replica of her teen self with long, shiny hair, big, bright eyes, a year-round tan, and a beautiful smile.

But the woman in front of me doesn’t resemble the image in my head at all. Her hair is greasy and stringy. Acne scars riddle her pale face. Angry red veins spider through her dull eyes.

Whatever she’s been through, it’s wreaked havoc on her.

“Where’s Mom?” she asks.

I rub my fingers through my short beard. “She doesn’t live here anymore. She lives in Paris with her new husband.”

Her head pulls back in shock. “Paris, France?”

“Yup.”

She makes a surprised face. “But you stayed here?”

“Yeah. I wanted you to know where to find me in case someday you needed me.”

Frowning, she shuffles her feet back and forth and looks past me.

“Do you want to go sit in the living room?” I ask her. “Are you hungry?”

“She ate a whole plate of chicken,” Skylar interjects.

“No, thanks.” Erin avoids making eye contact with me. “I’m okay in here.”

I can’t take my eyes off her. I’m waiting for her to snap out of this subdued mode she’s in and smile at me. Or break down in tears. Something.

“Erin, you gotta tell me what happened. Did someone take you? I searched for you for months. Everyone thought you were dead.”

She leans back against the counter and scratches her head. “No one took me, Jude. I left. I told you that when I texted you. You put yourself in this denial. Not me.”

Skylar covers her mouth with her hand and pours herself into one of the kitchen chairs.

“What?” I repeat.

Erin chews on a jagged fingernail. “I left, okay? Are you dense? I just didn’t want to deal with shit anymore. So I just left.”

“What shit?”

“Mom being a bitch all the time. This fucking dead-end town. Jimmy had some deals set up in Ocala and he asked me to go with him, so I went.”

“Jimmy who?”

“Jimmy Vantz.”

Hearing his name is like swallowing acid. “Wait a minute… You left town with Jimmy Vantz? He was a fucking drug dealer.” I should know. I was one of his biggest customers for a long time. I never made the connection between Erin’s disappearance and him leaving town.

How could I have been so fucking blind?

“Yeah. We were together.”

“For fuck’s sake, Erin. You were sixteen when you disappeared. He’s older than me.”

Her eyes sweep over to Skylar then back at me, with one brow arched up. “So?”

I want to grab her and shake some kind of emotion out of her. This detached, uninterested, cold demeanor is nothing like the Erin I remember. If I didn’t recognize the hue of her eyes and the little scar on her chin from when she fell off her bike at five years old, I wouldn’t believe this was my sister.

“So, you’re telling me you just up and left town with Jimmy Vantz and never wanted to talk to your family again?” I ask in disbelief.

“Pretty much.”

I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. My heart and my head are throbbing trying to make sense of this, because I can’t believe my sister just took off and didn’t give a flying fuck about any of us.

“Why? We were close. Do you have any fucking idea how worried I was about you? How devastated Mom was? We thought you got kidnapped. Fuck—we thought you were dead.”

“I sent you a text. I told you to stop looking. I saw you on the news and I just wanted you to forget it and move on.”

“Move on?” I repeat, leaning down to make her look at me. “You’re my sister. How do I move on when you just disappeared into thin air?”

“Everyone moves on, Jude. It’s what people do.”

I grind my teeth until my temples hurt. “Not me, Erin. I actually care about people.”

Skylar’s been silent, but her mouth curves into a small, empathetic smile.

Erin lets out a noisy sigh that she directs at her bangs, blowing them up off her face.

“I thought you’d be glad to see me,” she says. “Not be all heavy and shit.”

“Of course I’m glad to see you. I don’t get why you left and I don’t understand why it took you this friggin’ long to come back. You couldn’t have sent me a text once in a while to let me know you were okay?”

“I just wanted to forget everything, and not deal with all this guilt-trip shit like you’re doing right now.”

“It’s not a guilt trip, Erin. You don’t just up and disappear when you’re sixteen years old and let your family—hell, the entire town—go crazy worrying about you and looking for you.”