Whisper Me This(56)

This Marley barks a harsh laugh. “You’re in the wrong place if you’re looking for answers. All I’ve got is a lifetime of questions. Ask your mother. What do you think I can tell you?”

“She’s dead. I can’t ask her anything.”

Marley freezes in the act of turning away.

I feel the tears coming and do everything I can think of to stop them. Squeeze my hands into fists and dig my fingernails into my palms. Blink. Swallow. Look at the ceiling. I will not cry in front of this hard, sarcastic stranger who is also my only sister.

But, of course, the tears come anyway, a humiliating river of them. I choose to ignore them, rather than wipe them away, keeping my chin up, trying to hold a modicum of dignity.

“Oh hell,” Marley says. She turns back to face me. I can’t read the expression on her face because she’s all blurry with my tears. Her breathing sounds loud, but maybe that’s just my own. “Listen, Maisey. Some stones are better left unturned. We’ve never been family before; we’re not going to start being family just because your mother died.”

“Our mother,” I whisper.

Marley shakes her head in denial. “Not my mother. I don’t have one. Look, I’ve got to go. We’re driving back tonight, and none of us are eighteen anymore. As for you and me? We’ve met. You’ve done your due diligence and tracked me down. Write it in your journal or whatever makes you happy, and let it go. Don’t come looking for me. Understand?”

“I hear you.” Her words feel like sucker punches to my gut. One-two. One-two. Add a right hook to the jaw, and Maisey is down for the count. I manage to get my unsteady feet moving away from her, but then she calls after me.

“Hey, Maisey!”

I turn back. Her bandmates are staring now. The sound guy comes back. Touches her arm.

“Marley,” he says. “Easy.”

“I told you,” she says, softer now. “I warned you. Go home. Leave me alone.”

I was going to tell her about the funeral. I was going to ask her what she remembers from our childhood, who our father is, if she knows why—why—Mom would have left her there and taken me.

Every muscle in my body feels shredded. My brain keeps spinning round and round, trying to make sense out of what makes no sense at all. What my mother could have been thinking. How my only sister can sing so beautifully while packing around so much venomous hate. My thoughts and feelings are so jumbled and bruised, I can’t begin to know what I think or feel.

Elle, who didn’t go find Mia after all and has been witness to this whole exchange, comes running up and flings her arms around me, clinging. “I don’t understand,” she says. “Like, at all. I thought she’d be happy to meet us.”

“Not so much, apparently.”

I can’t stop shaking. My hands, my legs, my insides, keep shivering like it’s twenty below zero.

Elle and I climb the steps together, and I fall numbly into my chair.

“What was that all about?” Tony asks, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. “The singer doesn’t like fans? Couldn’t hear what she said, but she didn’t look so happy.”

“Marley is . . .”

My voice fails me. I suck in a breath and try again. “Marley is my sister.”

The words feel strange and familiar at the same time. I used to talk about Marley all the time, before my mother chased the words away from me with spankings and scoldings and trips to the counselor. She told me I was imagining things. That it wasn’t healthy.

Even now I sneak a peek over my shoulder to see if Mom’s behind me, ready to administer a quick swat to my behind for saying the forbidden words.

Tony blinks and looks confused. “You two are sisters?”

“Twins.”

“Whoa,” Mia says. “I need another drink.” She pours one from the pitcher and gulps.

“Easy,” Tony warns, in a big-brother tone.

She sticks her tongue out at him.

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I can’t stop talking. “I’ve never met her, that I can remember. I didn’t even know about her until a couple of days ago. I found a birth certificate in my mom’s legal papers. I thought she must have been dead or something, but here she is. In the flesh. And for some reason she hates me.”

Tony and Mia both stare at me like my nose has suddenly misplaced itself and is wandering over my face. “Still boggled,” Tony says.

“Grandma probably left her because she’s such a bitch,” Elle says.

“Elle! Don’t talk like that.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Marley would have been a baby.”

“Bet she cried all the time. Mean crying. On purpose.”

I feel an oppositional desire to defend my sister, the one who just told me to get lost in no uncertain terms. The one who appears to blame me for her childhood. Down below, Marley has her back to us. Sound Check Guy has his arm around her waist. Her head rests briefly on his shoulder, and he pulls her in for a hug.

How would I feel if my mother had left me when I was a baby? Especially if she’d chosen another child over me?

Guilt almost suffocates me, but I welcome it in. This, of all my emotions, is the most familiar. The most comfortable. As it settles its heavy weight into my belly, I’m able to breathe again. My legs and hands steady, although the internal quaking goes on.