“I am satisfied.” Terry casts me a baleful look. “Until she comes around, and I think of all the things I don’t have. What I gave up.”
“I bet you were glad I couldn’t bring myself home to face you, weren’t you?”
“I really didn’t want to hurt you,” Terry says. “But on some level, I did want you to know how it felt not to have what you wanted. For someone else to have it, because it felt like you had it all. Ironically, I drove you out of town and onto all the things I always suspected you’d have and I wouldn’t.”
“What exactly did you think I had?” I ask, puzzled. “You were the popular one. The prettiest one. The one everybody wanted.”
“I wasn’t the one Brand wanted,” she said softly. “I’m ashamed to say it now, but I went after him to prove I could do it. And once I had him, he hated me. Do you know how it feels to be married to someone who’s in love with someone else? Who loves your sister and resents you for ruining that?”
“Are you saying that he still—”
“Not anymore.” Terry chuckles, a wry grin playing at the corners of her mouth. “I think he finally accepted he was stuck with me and decided he may as well get on with loving me, since we had no choice. At first, though, yeah. So I didn’t want you around, no.”
“Quianna mentioned some trouble between you two,” I venture. “Are you—”
“We working on it.” Her lips tighten and she fiddles with the pile of yarn in her lap. “Marriage is hard, but we trying like everybody else.”
“I’m . . . well, I’m glad.”
Dr. Okafor enters, carrying a clipboard and her usual air of efficiency.
“Terry,” she says, a bright smile on her face. “If you’ll come with me, we’ll start the first battery of tests.”
Terry sets her knitting aside and stands to follow Dr. Okafor. I can’t let her go like this. We just spent the last ten minutes talking about things we should have been discussing the last twelve years.
“Terry,” I say, not sure what should come next.
She turns at the door, her expression guarded again—braced for the resentment, the anger that has characterized our relationship.
“Yeah?” she asks warily.
“Just . . . thank you.”
She doesn’t smile exactly, but relief flickers in her eyes and maybe the first kindling of hope. She’s my sister. Used to be my best friend. Has been my enemy. Bad blood has been between us for years—maybe we can finally find our way to a clean start. I’m literally hooked up to a machine taking all my bad blood and making it clean. Making it new. Surely, somehow, she and I can do the same.