Inevitable and Only(18)

And she was so … white. My fears from the night before had come true. Elizabeth had strawberry-blond hair, like Dad’s and Josh’s but a lot longer. With Dad’s freckles, too. Just like I’d imagined.

I realized I’d failed at the whole not-staring thing.

I snuck a peek at Dad, standing behind Elizabeth with his hands on her shoulders. But he wasn’t looking down at her, or even at Mom. He was looking straight at me. He had a too-wide smile pasted on, but his eyes were searching. I could almost hear him thinking at me: Cadie, please be nice. Be friendly. Be welcoming. Be my Cadiest.

I thought back at him: Nice and welcoming to your secret other daughter? Who looks just like you? Who you’ve probably already given a nickname to on your long bonding train ride? Who looks completely perfect and I don’t even know her yet but I already hate her?

“Dinner’s almost ready,” said Mom crisply, interrupting my internal dialogue. Dad gave her a questioning look. “And by dinner, I mean takeout. I’m so sorry, Elizabeth, Ross is really the cook in this house. I didn’t want your first meal here to be one of my sad attempts. But our local Thai restaurant is excellent.”

“Takeout’s fine,” Elizabeth said politely.

“Great!” Mom beamed. “I’ll just run out and pick it up, then. No sense in paying extra for delivery, the place is just around the corner.” She couldn’t have moved toward the door more quickly if the snapping hounds of hell had been at her heels. Elizabeth leaped out of her way, and Dad laughed. His laugh sounded like a word we didn’t know in some other language. We all turned and looked at him.

“Cadie,” he said, in Jovial Suggestion Voice, “why don’t you help Elizabeth move her things upstairs? You can give her a tour of the house while we’re waiting for Mom.”

And so I trudged upstairs with a duffel bag over each arm and showed Elizabeth the room we were going to share, now complete with a new twin bed against the far wall. My old bed was under one of the windows. I had to admit that that was one advantage of this bedroom—the two big windows that looked out over the street.

The duffel bags weighed a ton. “Did you bring rocks or something?” I said, dropping them on the floor with a thump. The words sounded much ruder than I’d meant them to be, as soon as they were out of my mouth. I bit my lip.

“No, those are books,” she said, as if I’d asked nicely. “And—there are a few more downstairs.”

Hmm. Good thing we had an extra bookshelf we could bring up from the basement.

Elizabeth complimented everything: Micayla’s paintings on the walls, the rag rug, the patchwork quilts on the beds. But she had a wide-eyed rabbit look on her face the whole time, as if she was still considering whether or not to bolt. I showed her my old room, which was completely filled by the queen bed, with about two feet of space around the edges. I didn’t tell her that my parents had given up their room for us, but I think she figured it out.

When I showed her Josh’s room, with his cello and music stand set up in the corner, she said, “I’m looking forward to hearing your brother play. Ross told me how good he is.”

Ross? At least she wasn’t going to call him Dad, or at least not right away. That would make things feel even weirder. I wondered what she’d call Mom. Then I remembered that she didn’t have a mom anymore, and I felt bad for feeling good about the Ross/Dad thing. Sheesh.

“I guess Josh is your brother, too,” I mumbled, and she shot me a startled look.

“Oh. Um. I guess he is.”

The rest of the tour didn’t take long. I showed her the half-finished basement, filled with our old couch and a mishmash of boxes and other random items like a baby stroller, a gigantic doll-house, and an exercise bike Dad had found at the Goodwill and used exactly once, before it occurred to him that he already had a real bike that he enjoyed using to actually ride places.

I showed her the back deck and our tiny backyard, with its one tree and view of the alley. “Stray cat central,” I said. “Don’t get any ideas, though. My mom won’t allow anything that would shed in the house.”

Elizabeth nodded. “I’ve never had a pet, either.”

“Oh, we’ve had plenty of pets. Fish, mostly, but once we had a snake. It was supposed to be Josh’s snake but he was terrified of it, so I took care of it. It was a she. Rosie. She was really sweet.” I was doing my babbling thing again, like I’d done with Farhan that afternoon. I pressed my lips together and noticed Elizabeth was staring at me in alarm.

“You don’t still have the snake, do you?”

Oh, for crying out loud. “No, she died years ago. I don’t think it’s very good for snakes to keep them in little tanks.”

Elizabeth let out a sigh of relief. “That’s too bad. I’m terrified of snakes, too, though. Just like your little brother.”

I could tell she was trying to make me smile, so I refrained from reminding her again that he was her little brother, too. After all, I wasn’t going to force her to share anything about my family if she didn’t want to.

“Girls!” Mom called. “Food’s here!”

And that’s when the Great Shocker happened.

We were sitting around the table, passing out cardboard boxes and chopsticks, the lilies staring at us from the kitchen counter because there wasn’t room on the table. I’d gotten stuck with the folding chair. Mom said, “Does everyone have what they want? There’s some more orange bean curd over here,” and Dad said, “I’ve got the tofu pad Thai.” (I noticed Mom had ordered a separate pad Thai with beef, for Elizabeth.) We all filled our plates. Elizabeth hesitated, so Dad said, “Well, let’s dig in!”