“I don’t carry it around . . . I don’t think. But it hurts to see her, Dad. Can’t you understand that? It hurts to even see her with him.”

“I know your pain. I do. The loss of someone you love can tear a hole in the soul. But can you not imagine that Hallie must hurt also? She lost you.”

“She chose to lose me. She made her choice. There might not ever be a way to reconcile. Some things are just too far gone . . .”

“Just try.”

Chapter Eight

I don’t know how much longer I have to know you.

Lisa Genova, Still Alice

It wasn’t Dad’s fault that he was able to choose the good parts and overcome the bad ones. He didn’t sit in Colleen’s heart and mind to witness the hell parts. Hallie had been Colleen’s best friend. They were only eighteen months apart in age. Almost Irish twins, their dad had always said, and yet not once had their mother laughed at this joke. Whenever he said it, her laughing mouth went into a line as straight as a stick, and she walked away or changed the subject. She didn’t much like talking about private things, and how often and when they might or might not have had sex to produce two children so close together was embarrassing to the prim Elizabeth.

A few times she’d seen Dad embrace her to assuage the comment. “I love you, Betty,” he’d say and with his finger under her chin, he’d tip her face up for a kiss.

He was the only one who was allowed to call her Betty. He was the only one given access to her private thoughts. But that was okay with Colleen and Hallie because they had each other, and then soon, a little brother to pass around and dress and feed until they grew bored of him and their mother gladly folded him into her arms.

They absorbed their dad’s proclamation seriously—they were twins of a certain sort. It confused them later when Colleen went off to kindergarten and Hallie had to stay home and play alone with Shane. Colleen remembered, even now at thirty-five years old, the desolate feeling of being in school without her sister. She felt half-finished, as if she’d forgotten her arm at home. When it was time to open her Clifford the Big Red Dog lunch box on the first day, she burst into tears. The teacher, the lovely Ms. Hannity, thought her homesick, but she was merely Hallie-sick. Hallie had put a daisy in her little snack baggie. It was the first time ever that she’d eaten lunch without her sister. Who would eat the pickles off her sandwich?