“Me too,” I confide.
“Are you serious?” she chortles. “You’re telling me we’ve both been going to see him in that creepy-ass cemetery alone when we could’ve gone together all this time?”
I laugh at how ridiculous it sounds when spoken out loud.
“Looks like it.”
“Jesus, Vee. Why have we never talked like this?” She exhales and grabs my hand.
“You mean aside from the fact that you’re always at some photoshoot? Or at an early lesson? Or making out with basketball players in a bathtub? Beats me,” I tease, and my sister grins.
“Let’s promise to never drift apart again, okay?” She offers me her pinky, because everybody knows a promise isn’t valid unless it involves a pinky swear. Joy flowing out of me profusely, I nod and lace my pinky around hers.
“Okay.”
* * *
“Where the hell have you been?” Mom blusters when we pad into the house twenty minutes later. We got carried away talking about Dad and Mom’s selective amnesia. She’s sitting at the kitchen island in the darkness, her stern features obscured by worry and her lack of sleep.
I almost didn’t see her, as the only source of light in the room emanates from the kitchen hood. Mom leaps off the swivel stool before I can blink and thuds toward us. She’s in her black satin nightgown, her short hair less tidy than usual.
“Out,” Ashley says without a thought for her survival.
Brave.
Stupid but brave.
“What the hell did you say to her?” Mom turns to me. “How did you convince your sister to lie and go to this delinquent party—”
“She didn’t make me do anything, Mom,” Ashley interrupts. “I went all on my own.”
Mom’s gaze shifts between Ashley and me for a moment as if she’s waiting for one of us to say “Psych.”
“But… Ashley, honey, why would you want to—”
“Live? Enjoy my youth? Experience new things? Gee, I don’t know, Mother, maybe because I’m human?” Ashley exposes how toxic this “momager” situation of theirs truly is. Mom’s lips part for a fleeting second before she slaps her poker face back on.
“Ashley, sweetie, why are you acting out? When we’re so close to our goal.”
“My goal, Mom. Mine,” Ashley corrects. “Not yours. This is my life. My future. My dreams. Sometimes, I think you forget that.”
“After everything I’ve done for you, quitting my job and working for you, you want to pretend like this has nothing to do with me? You are way out of line here, young lady.”
“Me? How about you? Weren’t you out of line the night you burned Dad’s letter?” Ashley knocks me on my ass with her comeback.
I wish I were like her.
Courageous, ballsy enough to speak my mind.
Mom shuts down the second the word “Dad” echoes through the room. She schools her expression, chasing the emotions off her face until the blossoming love inside her heart is swapped with dead, infertile soil.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Mom says, her expression blank and lifeless.
“That’s too bad,” Ashley insists. “Because we do. Vee and I had a talk, and we can’t keep living like this. When are we going to talk about Dad? It’s like you just erased him, Mom.”
“I did not. I sent you to therapy so we could all move on.”
I see a wave of pain roll through her eyes as she says it.