Dear Enemy

“Macon?” I can’t believe this. “He hated me. He was dating you.”

“He was wasting time with me.” Her lips pinch sourly. “And there’s a fine line between love and hate. At best I got apathy. You got his attention. God, no one even calls him Macon but you.”

Her jealousy is so foreign to me that I can only gape. It takes effort to find my voice. “So this was all about Macon?”

Sam shrugs and hugs her arms to her chest. “No. Not all of it.”

“Then what?”

“You were their favorite,” she whispers. “Mama and Daddy. They were always so proud of you.” Her voice takes on Mama’s tone. “Our Delilah got straight As again. Did you taste Delilah’s casserole; I declare it’s the best in five counties. Delilah is such a special child.”

I’m poleaxed. Unable to breathe for a long moment. “They had to say all that. Because I was fucking miserable, and they knew it!”

Her silvery-blue eyes, so like my mother’s, flash in outrage. “They said it because they meant it, Dee. You can’t be that clueless. They loved you best.”

“I wasn’t even their child!” My shout comes out of nowhere, hurting my chest, my throat.

“What?” Sam asks, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m adopted.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say, given that she knows this.

Sam swallows hard, then takes a hesitant step closer. Her voice softens. “Do you honestly think they loved you less?”

“Not anymore.” My conversation with Mama eased the last strands of those worries. “But back then? It was always on my mind. Oddball Delilah, sticking out like a sore thumb amid the rest of you.”

Sam shakes her head. “Hell, Dee. They picked you. I was an unexpected arrival; they had to love me.”

My laugh is unhinged. “I can’t believe this. All this time you were jealous of our parents’ love for me, and I was jealous of the same?”

In our mother’s cheery kitchen, Sam and I stare at each other, and then she starts to snicker. “I guess we were.”

We both laugh; it isn’t really in amusement. I’m too battered, but it feels good to let it go. Sam finishes with a shaking breath and then sobers. Tentatively, she reaches out, and I accept her hug. She smells of Chanel and cigarettes that I know she still smokes on the sly. “I’m sorry, Dee. So sorry.”

“You hurt me.” I still hurt.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. I know she means it. But it doesn’t feel like enough.

“And you let Macon take the fall.”

Her nose wrinkles. Red faced and teary eyed, she’s still beautiful. Still guarded. “He insisted. The night he dumped me, he said he’d do that for me because of all we’d been through together, but he was done with the Baker sisters.”

It wasn’t exactly what Macon said to me. In Sam’s version, Macon was protecting her, not me. This again. The same old manipulations and twisted truths. I pull out of her embrace. “You should have told me.”

“I know.” Sam worries her bottom lip.

“What’s done is done.”

She brightens at that. “And hey, I returned and brought the watch back as promised.”

Does she want a cookie for doing the right thing? Inside, I grow a bit more numb. She’s my sister. But the person she’s become is the absolute worst version of her.

She won’t meet my eyes. “It was stupid taking the watch. No one would touch it . . .” She trails off with a strangled sound, realizing what she’s said.

I stare at her, disappointment so keen that I can’t seem to move. She tried to sell the watch. “What’s going on with you, Sam? Why did you need that much money?”

The gentle sweep of her jaw lifts. “I just did.”

“Three hundred thousand worth? Why?”

When she finally turns my way, her eyes are hard. “I have a bit of a gambling addiction. Sometimes I run low on funds.”

She could have knocked me over with a feather. Sam smirks. “You should see your face, Dee. So shocked.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“No,” she snaps. “It’s not. At any rate, I had a good run and no longer need money.”

A good run? My sister is a gambler, and I never noticed. What the hell has she gotten herself into? “Sammy . . .”

“It’s my business, so don’t go getting all Saint Delilah and try to fix it.”

My impulse is to snap back, tell her off. But I’m suddenly weary. I don’t want to fight her. I just want to get on with my life in peace. “Don’t worry, Sam. I learned my lesson. You fight your own battles now. I’m officially done.”

The clock on the wall ticks loud and clear as she stares at me. Some emotion passes over her face—regret or worry, I can’t tell—then she pulls in a breath and straightens her shoulders. “I’ve learned my lesson too. No more stealing for me.”