“I was four when she was born. My earliest memory was holding her because my mother was drunk on the sofa. I remember looking down at her and promising that I was always going to take care of her.”

“Why weren’t the authorities involved?”

“I don’t really know. My mother was good at doing just enough, I guess. We slipped through the cracks. By the time my sister was six months old, I was doing almost everything for her. I went from being the loneliest child on the planet to the happiest. I loved her. And she loved me back. The first word she spoke was Em, and she used to follow me everywhere and sleep in my bed.”

“Sounds like Rachel.” His voice was low. “Drove me crazy. It was like trying to shake off a burr that had stuck to your clothes.”

“Yes.” Her whole body ached with remembering. “I loved it. I loved holding her. Most of all I loved being outdoors with her. I hated our apartment so much. It was cramped, airless, and everything bad happened there. I was the one who begged my mother to take us to the beach. We lived close, but we never went. Spent our days cooped up in one room while she drank her way through whatever money she could scrounge from men.” She breathed. “She wasn’t a prostitute, not officially, but she’d discovered early on that men liked her body, and sleeping with them was a useful way to get what she wanted. It took me years to see that she had a low opinion of herself. That she didn’t think she had anything to offer except a pair of breasts that made men stupid.”

“This is why you dress in black and wear your shirts buttoned up to the neck?”

“Sometimes my curves are all men see. Or they see them first, and make judgments. I discovered it was best to take them out of the equation.”

“Honey, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but buttoning your shirt up to the neck doesn’t hide the fact you have an incredible body—but we’ll come to that part later.” He tightened his grip on her shoulders. “Finish your story.”

“On that particular day she agreed to take us. I don’t know why. Parenting wasn’t her thing, but it was sunny, and by then she was very pregnant with Lana. I guess she thought she could sleep on the beach as easily as she could sleep at home. I remember pulling a blanket from the bed to sit on. Katy had just started walking, and I thought the sand would be a soft landing.”