Like a Sister(41)

I selected his number from Recent Calls. It was either the late hour or God taking pity on me because Green finally picked up.

“Ms. Scott. Sorry it’s taken so long to connect, but we’re making progress on the Tesla—”

“She was pregnant when she died. She was supposed to have an abortion, but she just pretended. Even sent a picture from her accident a couple of years ago as fake proof.” I stopped to take a breath, and he didn’t say anything. “She was pregnant,” I said one last time.

Finally he answered me. “You’re mistaken. We test for that sort of thing.”

“She had a pregnancy test. A positive pregnancy test.”

“I’m not saying she was never pregnant. I’m saying she wasn’t pregnant when she died. When do you think she was pregnant?”

I chose to ignore his emphasis. “A few weeks ago.”

“Okay. It can take a couple of weeks for the level of hCG in a woman’s blood to return to normal. If she’d had an abortion—”

“She wouldn’t.”

“Or a miscarriage, say, last month, then we wouldn’t know. It would explain a depression, though. A desire to be reckless. More so than usual.”

A thought hit me so hard I damn near tripped.

What if Green was right?

*



“Thanks. I’ll be right down.”

I slipped the bellhop one of two bills I had on me—a five with a missing corner—then watched as he carted all three designer suitcases to the elevator. Desiree’s belongings packed more neatly than her life had ever been. It was only when he turned the corner that I stepped back into the suite and closed the door.

I’d been at the Omni bright and early. I hadn’t dreamed about hide-and-seek the night before, but only because I couldn’t sleep, too busy trying to make sense of the possibility that maybe everyone else was right. That they knew my sister better than I had.

I’d hit up Google at four in the morning like I was making a booty call. Lying in bed in the dark, I studied how to overdose and ignored the first mention for the National Suicide Prevention hotline. Mixing cocaine and heroin increased the risk. Was that why she’d gotten over her fear of needles? Because she’d gotten over her fear of dying?

Did any of it even matter? It wasn’t like it would bring her back.

By 5 a.m., I’d accepted that the only thing I could do for Desiree was pack up her stuff for real. Then I’d emailed Omar, thanking him for sending his notes and telling him I’d see him in Grant Writing on Monday. By habit, I checked for news stories on Desiree. There were fewer than the day before. Again, no one had had anything new to report. Not even Stuart.

Packing Desiree’s things had taken longer than it should have. Blame my mother for being one of those a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place people. Beds were immediately made. Dishes immediately washed. Clothes placed in the properly color-coded hampers. It was no surprise that she’d taught packing as an art form. Everything had been rolled and grouped and placed together just so.

Though I’d rebelled against my mother in many ways—I didn’t own a comforter, much less put one on my bed every morning—it turned out that when it came to organizing my dead sister’s belongings, the familiarity of her rituals had been oddly comforting. It had been a brief respite, one that lasted just until I’d zipped up the last suitcase.

With the bellhop taking the final traces of Desiree to the lobby, there was nothing left to do. I should’ve left then. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I found myself staring around the suite like it was Desiree’s final resting place. I couldn’t leave it like this. The place still resembled some white-boy frat house. Half-filled cups, dirty-ass plates, and so much trash that it had erupted from the bin and blanketed surrounding areas. Though I knew there were people who got paid—though not well—to tackle the mess, my home training kicked in.

Starting with the cups, I gathered as many as I could and lugged the whole lot to the bathroom. There, I dumped the liquids in the toilet, the colors combining to create a murky green much worse than anything that could come out of your body. I left the glasses in a neat line on the bathroom counter and then gathered plates as if on a scavenger hunt. The bed was made next, pillows plumped, wrinkles smoothed out.

That left the trash. The suite had come with several strategically placed trash cans. Desiree had elected to use just the one in the living room. I grabbed an empty one from the bedroom and brought it back to the mountain of mess. The excess of garbage appeared harmless. No gross food, no used tampons, nothing that would make you want to vomit. I still took no chances. I’d gotten a bottle of Poland Spring at the Duane Reade on my way over. I placed the plastic bag over my hand glove-style and picked up as much as I could.

One piece of purple paper was covered in Desiree’s handwriting. It’d been haphazardly ripped in half so the bottom of the letters was missing. I could still make it out, having read secret notes from Desiree for years.

Check Karma.

The last line of the a extended to the paper’s edge. She’d done the same thing when spelling my name. Her handwriting matched her personality. Melodramatic as hell.

Check Karma.

I just hoped it hadn’t caught up to her.

I added the paper to the new can and kept going until everything was off the floor. Then, I grabbed my book bag, left the other five dollars from my wallet, and headed out the door. It was time to check out—in every way possible.