Then he put the phone in his pocket and said he was going to bed.
I stood alone in the kitchen with the cooler full of snacks and the dishwasher humming.
I told myself I was imagining things.
I’ve spent a lot of time since then thinking about all the things I told myself.
My sister Rachel is three years younger than me.
When we were kids, people used to say we looked like twins. Same brown hair. Same brown eyes. Same laugh, according to our mother. But we were never really alike. I was the careful one. The one
who did her homework before dinner and kept her room clean and saved her birthday money in a coffee can under the bed. Rachel was the fun one. The loud one. The one who got away with everything.
And Rachel always wanted what I had.
I don’t think she could help it. I think it was just how she was built.
When I was ten, I saved up for eight months to buy a red bicycle. Twenty-five dollars from
babysitting, forty from birthdays, and every single dollar the tooth fairy ever gave me. I bought it with my own money at the hardware store on Main Street, and I rode it home, and I was so proud I thought I’d burst.
