You Are Not Alone(28)

Cassandra notices me gaping and pulls away her hand, giving me a better look.

“Your necklace—it’s—”

Cassandra gazes down at it, as if she hadn’t even thought about what she was wearing.

“Amanda had the same one,” I finally manage to say. It’s the only explanation.

Jane’s eyes widen. “Actually, she didn’t. I had a matching one and I lent it to Amanda. Our mother gave them to us as Christmas gifts when we were teenagers.”

Cassandra smiles, looking as if she’s reaching for a memory. “Mom told us we were her sunshine. I guess we cherish them because of that, even though we’re not close to her now.”

At my look of surprise, she shrugs. “There was a rift in our family years ago.”

Jane says wistfully, “I guess mine was lost along with Amanda.”

I want to sink into my chair. I gave away Jane’s special necklace. I have to tell her, to explain there was no way I could have known.

I swallow hard. “I think—I mean, I know where the necklace could be.”

“You do?” Jane gasps. “How?”

“Right before Amanda—before I saw her—I found it on the floor of the subway station. I forgot I even had it until a few days ago.”

Jane leans forward and grabs my hand. “You have it? I would give anything to get it back.”

Cassandra is smiling at me, like I’ve just solved all their problems. “Fate must have brought us together.”

I clear my throat. “The thing is, since I thought it was Amanda’s, I brought it to the police.”

I expect the sisters to be upset—maybe even angry. But they look strangely relieved. Jane exhales slowly and recrosses her legs. Cassandra takes a long sip of her drink before finally speaking again.

“That makes sense.”

“I can try to get the necklace back for you,” I blurt.

“You can?” Jane gasps.

“I’ll go back to the police station and explain to Detective Williams that I got it wrong, that the necklace doesn’t belong to Amanda. Besides, that’s the truth.”

I flash to Detective Williams leading me down that long, silent hallway. But I push back against the quick jab of fear in my gut: Being afraid has already interfered too much with my life; it doesn’t have any place at this table.

“That would be incredible,” Cassandra says.

“I would be so grateful,” Jane adds.

I’m riding something—endorphins, or maybe it’s the second cocktail—that makes me feel like I can accomplish almost anything tonight.

I’m desperate to know more about the sisters and about Amanda—to discover the intimate details you can’t find online. So I ask how they met her. I got the impression they’d known her since childhood, maybe because Cassandra and Jane hosted Amanda’s memorial and I saw Cassandra hugging the woman who must have been Amanda’s mother.

But when I ask if they were family friends, Cassandra and Jane look surprised.

Jane shakes her head. “No, she was from Delaware. We met here in the city.”

Cassandra chimes in, “It’s funny, we hadn’t even known Amanda all that long, but we just clicked.”

I nod eagerly, leaning forward.

“She had a rough time growing up,” Jane confides. “No one ever really cared for her, which makes it so admirable that she became a nurse to help other people. Her father died when she was five, and her mom started drinking heavily. She never remarried. Would you believe poor Amanda used to come home from grade school and find her passed out on the couch? She started making her own dinners when she was just a little girl.”

“Maybe we connected so deeply because Jane and I don’t really have parents, either,” Cassandra says. “It’s hard to understand if you’re close to your family and you’ve got grandparents and cousins you adore.… But those of us who feel a bit more alone in the world tend to recognize each other.”

Her words hammer into me. She’s speaking to my deepest longing.

“In a way, Amanda became another sister to us,” Cassandra finishes.

With those few words, Cassandra has just articulated everything I’ve been yearning for—not just lately, but for my entire life: A place to belong. A home that has nothing to do with a physical structure and everything to do with a feeling of love and acceptance.

“I do know,” I whisper. “I’m an only child.… I’m not all that close to either of my parents.”

I’ve never said those words before. I guess I’ve never wanted to admit them, even to myself.

Jane and Cassandra look at each other, then they both turn to me with what feels like heightened interest. “I didn’t realize we had so much in common,” Jane says.

Her words hover between us, like a gossamer thread. I’m here with these two incredible women who seem to be turning into friends. It seems that the data is true: Sharing personal information and emotions leads to increased feelings of closeness.

We talk for another hour, and I’m surprised by how interested the sisters are in everything about my life—from my weakness for chocolate to how Jody clearly feels discomfort with my presence in Sean’s life.

All the while, I hold tight the knowledge that I now have a reason to see them again.