“This is quite the place,” Vanessa went on, looking up the boulevard, which was lined in palm trees. “Sunny Cal-i-forn-i-a.” She said the last part like eye-ay. Was there a slur to her voice? Had she always talked like this? “I drove around a little bit this morning before finding you. That beach is gorgeous! Must be nice, living near the ocean.”

Ronnie licked her lips. “It’s okay.”

Vanessa snorted. “So’s the fact that you’re two thousand miles away from me, I bet.”

When Ronnie shut her eyes, she felt hot tears. “Nessie. I wanted you to come. I didn’t mean for it to be like this.”

“Yeah, right.” Vanessa’s voice was brisk. When Ronnie opened her eyes, her sister was calmly unwrapping the rest of her sandwich. “Then you would have called me from the road. You would have checked what happened to me instead of just grabbing my kid and getting the fuck out of town without another word. You changed your name, Ronnie. Who the hell is Ronnie Stuckey? And what’s this I hear about changing my girl’s name to Esme?” She made a face. “What kind of name is that?”

The hate was so seething it practically radiated off Vanessa in concentric circles. Ronnie wanted to grab Vanessa across the table and say, Hey. Remember me? Remember playing tag in the backyard, and elaborate stories featuring our dolls, and you squeezing my hand after you gave birth to your girl?

The two women were nothing alike, and they never claimed to be friends. They had fought a lot as kids and adults, and there was a lot of shit that was unsaid. But they’d come from the same family. They had the same memories, up to a certain point. They shared a bed as kids, and helped their mother make pies at Christmas, and sledded down their backyard hill on cardboard boxes. They fought like wild animals, but they always made up. Back then, Ronnie liked to think she had her sister’s best interests at heart, and vice versa, but that was before the bitterness, and her parents’ death, and the drugs, and Jerrod, and finally Esme.

It had been easier imagining Vanessa was dead, Ronnie realized, because then she didn’t have to fully confront what she’d done.

“I’m sorry,” she admitted. It felt like there was a big rubber band around her chest. “I was scared. And . . . well, Jerrod.” She dared to look at Vanessa. “Taylor would have died there, you know.” It felt strange to use Esme’s original name. “And you would have, too, eventually.”

“You’re being dramatic. And also, it’s not up to you.”

“So I was supposed to just stand there and watch it happen?” Bile rose in Ronnie’s throat.

“You always did think you could handle things better. Always got the good grades, had the better boyfriends, made the better money.”