an awkward step forward, holding her hand out stiffly. Bean grasped our older sister’s thick fingers with her own manicured talons and peered at the ring. A gleaming sapphire set in antique worked white gold. Rose had treasured the romanticism and uniqueness of the ring when she and Jonathan had selected it. In front of Bean, however, she was sure it looked cheap.
‘Pretty,’ Bean pronounced. ‘Different. It’s better that way. Diamonds are so boring.’ As she released Rose’s hand, Rose caught a flash of Bean’s pinky finger, the fake nail snapped off in a jagged edge. Rose’s hand hovered uncertainly in the air for a moment before she pulled it back to rest on her thigh.
‘Thanks,’ Rose said. ‘I like it.’
‘How’s Mom doing?’
‘Fine. You know, as fine as you’d expect. She’s nearly finished with the chemo course. This is one of her off weeks – we’ll take her back next week for her next treatments. She’s tired, and she doesn’t eat much, but it’s not as bad as it could have been.’ There was more she could have said – that our mother had been so exhausted after her first treatment that she had slept for nearly three days; that a little while later the chemotherapy had torn out her hair, and Rose had found her crying on the bathroom floor, nearly bald, clumps of wet hair wrapped around her limbs like seaweed; that even after the worst had passed, it seemed the fight would never end, but Bean would understand the way things were soon enough. ‘We’re making it through.’
‘Huh,’ Bean said. She could have asked follow-up questions about our mother’s health, but she was more interested in the way Rose made it sound as if she were a vital part of the whole enterprise, when our parents had survived so long as a nation of two.
Rose squared her shoulders slightly. ‘We’re okay here. You didn’t have to come home.’
Bean sneered a little bit, reaching up and tucking her hair back into shape half-heartedly. ‘Yeah, I should have guessed you wouldn’t be glad to see me.’
‘That’s not it,’ Rose said, and the defensiveness in her voice surprised her. ‘I was just thinking the other day that I wished we were all here.’
‘Well, now you’ve got your wish,’ Bean said, spreading her hands out, palms up, in a what-more-do-you-want-from-me gesture. ‘Cordy’s not here, is she?’
‘No,’ Rose said. ‘I’m not even sure where she is. Dad sent a letter to the last address Mom had in her book, but you know how Cordy is.’
‘Good. I can’t deal with her right now anyway.’
‘So how long are you staying?’ Rose ventured delicately.
Bean shrugged. ‘For a while. Dunno. I quit my job.’
Well, that was news. Bean had worked in the human resources department – well, Bean was the human resources department of a tiny law office in Manhattan, though if you met her over drinks, she just would have told you she was in law, and let you assume the best. Or the worst. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
‘Oh,’ Rose said. ‘Why?’
‘Why does anyone quit a job? I didn’t want to work there any more.’ Bean pushed herself off the counter and strode over to the door. ‘I’m going upstairs to change. Where are Mom and Dad?’
‘Dad’s at school, and Mom went out somewhere. They’ll be back later.’
‘Great. Then I’m going to take a shower,’ Bean said, and clopped off down the hall. The excitement over, Rose followed Bean up the bare wooden stairs and went back to her book. If we had been sisters of a different sort, Bean’s reticence might have been cause for curiosity. As it was, it was simply another secret we held from each other, one of a thousand we were sure we would never share.
Our parents, more out of atrophy than intent, had not changed our bedrooms in any way since we had officially moved out. This often led to curious paths of discovery, as it preserved objects and memorabilia we did not want to have with us in our new lives, but were still valuable enough that we couldn’t bear to throw them away.
Bean threw her bags on her bed – the heavy, tulle-crowned four-poster that she had swapped Cordy for years ago. Cordy now had the heavy, wrought-iron white bedstead Bean had deemed not sophisticated enough. To her, at fifteen, the heavy wood posts at the corners of this bed had seemed the height of elegance. Now it looked sad, the tulle grown dark with dust, the wood dull and unpolished, the bedspread faded where the sun had fallen, leaching out the colour. She kicked off her shoes and walked over to the window, restlessly drumming her fingers against her stomach. The taut, trembling sensation in her belly would not release, even now, even five hundred miles from the city.
Pulling the curtain across the dormer, Bean walked back towards her bed, peeling off her clothes. The torn, sticky nylons went into the wastebasket, her suit she laid out on the bed. There was a grease stain on the skirt from a hamburger she had eaten on the road. She’d have to see if Barney had managed to get itself a dry cleaner while she was gone. When she took off her jewellery, a silver bangle watch and tiny diamond earrings, the tight feeling in her stomach welled up again.
She pulled off her underwear and wrapped a towel around her chest before she walked across the hallway to the bathroom the three of us had always shared. The heavy claw-foot tub still stood there, but with a new shower curtain wrapped around it in a circle. The shampoo she had left here the last time she visited – Thanksgiving? Last summer? Longer? – sat on the windowsill, thank heavens, because she hadn’t had time (or, let’s face it, money) to stop at the salon before she left. She turned the water on, icy cold to take away the sticky heat of the journey, and stepped under its punishing blast, baptismal, praying for the stone inside her to slip down the drain, to disappear.
Bean hadn’t thought of what she would do now. She’d been so focused on getting out of the city, sure that putting miles between that life and this one would grant her some kind of pardon. Annoyingly, this had proved untrue. In the car were boxes and boxes of clothes – for heaven’s sake, what had she needed all those clothes for? – each one a reminder of what she had done. Thief, she thought as she scrubbed her face. Thou art a robber, a lawbreaker, a villain. What was left of her makeup disappeared into the soap and water, but she kept pushing the washcloth over her face, her skin going raw and red.
No plan. No past. No future. She was at home, and of course Rose had to be here, too. She who might have been voted Most Likely to Judge You Harshly. Even Cordy, flaky as she was, might have been better. But Rose. Jeez.
Bean leaned down and shut off the water. She was going to have to solve this, somehow. Find a job. One that wouldn’t require a reference, of course.
If she could do that, could pay back the firm and get rid of everything she’d bought with that money, maybe she could make a fresh start. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to New York yet, but another city – San Francisco? Better weather there anyway. There she could forget. There it would all be different.
At seven o’clock, the sun was finally considering its rest, bringing relief from the heavy heat of the day. In the kitchen, Bean sat on one of the counters, her back pressed up against the yellow wall, her arm hemmed in by the cabinets on one side. She hulled strawberries, as many going into her mouth as the bowl, it seemed, her fingers sticky with juice. The heavy ceramic bowl had come from our Nana, and it made Bean miss her.
Our mother stood in front of the sink, her fingers deftly flicking over a cucumber, peeling it with a knife, a skill none of us has ever mastered without risking serious bodily injury. She is a tremendous cook, but a notoriously unreliable one. If our mother is responsible, dinner is rarely served in our house before nine, and we remember, at times when we were young, our parents awakening us to eat, nodding heads drooping towards the table, thin legs in white printed pyjamas swinging sleepily like pendulums under the chairs. Our mother is capricious, likely to be struck by a whim to prepare a four-course meal on an ordinary Wednesday, and then struck by equally strong whims to wander off in the middle of that preparation and take a soothing bath, or to pick up the