I remind myself that leaving everything else aside, Mom was also just a mother dealing with two infants less than a year apart. Of course she was frazzled. Of course all she wanted was for her babies to sit still and suck quietly on their pacifiers.

“I wouldn’t have changed my mind, you know,” Mom says quietly. “Even if I had known we were going to have you.” She looks at me. “It’s the sort of thing people wonder: If you had known, would you still have…? But I would have, Gillian. I’d always have wanted your sister. I always have wanted her.” Mom swallows.

“She’s my daughter.”

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

I see her as the glass doors slide open, her hands clasped behind her back, her face taut. I’m struck again by how beautiful she is, my sister. Beautiful the way a sheer cliff is beautiful. Or a stormy sea. She steps towards us, fast and hesitant at the same time. Her eyes travel quickly over mine, over Mom’s. And then they lock on the person beside me.

“Sam.” His name is a question.

“Hi, Mom,” he says, steady and careful. If her voice was a question, now his is the answer: no, I haven’t forgiven you yet, not completely. I see how much she wants to hug him and instead, rests a hand over his shoulders, half-ready for him to shake her off.

“Gillian.” She looks at me and I see the thank you in her eyes, for bringing Sam to her. But there’s something else too—almost a defiance, a so now you know in the set of her chin, the narrowing of her eyes.

Does she still see me as her sister? I feel like someone’s taken scissors to the threads that link us together. Threads that for years we haven’t truly been nurturing…but I’d always just assumed were there, would always be there, because you can’t undo blood. But now everything feels unstable, like my sister could shake us off if she wanted, and maybe it wouldn’t take so very much at all.

“Abigail…” Mom says.

My sister reluctantly meets her eyes.

“Hi,” she says. Not hi, Mom. She says nothing to her, just looks back at the rest of us.

“Ready?” she says. “The car’s outside.”

*

As we drive I see Abigail’s eyes in the rearview flicking towards me, skittish and questioning. All these years, I think, and we still haven’t found a way to trust each other, she and I.