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TAYLOR
FIVE YEARS LATER
It’s funny how someone can look so familiar and still feel like a stranger.
The high society blonde beaming at me from the photograph in the news article isn’t my sister. She’s wearing too many jewels, smiling too perfectly, holding herself too gracefully.
And yet she is. She’s Celine.
This is the sister who dutifully did my hair every morning when I obsessed over French braids. Who baked me cookies on the days I was too sick to go out and play. Who built blanket forts and read books with me by flashlight when Mom and Dad went out on their increasingly sporadic date nights.
I used to think I knew her better than I knew myself. How do decades get wiped away in five short years?
Not that they were short for me. The past five years have felt like a life sentence. I’m only twenty-seven, but in my bones, in my heart, I feel so, so much older.
“Good afternoon, Tater Tot,” Dad chimes, ambling into the kitchen.
He’s really committed to this whole suburban grandfather persona. Some might say he’s slightlyovercommitted. Sweater vest, brown corduroys, the works.
He makes a beeline straight to the coffee pot and pours himself a mug. “Why the long face?”
I swipe out of the news app on the tablet and lay it facedown away from me. “Nothing.”
He frowns, clearly not buying my half-assed poker face. Taking the seat opposite, he drags the tablet toward him and flips it back over. I don’t want to watch him stumble across the exact same picture I was just obsessing over, so I let my gaze wander elsewhere. To the steam spiraling up from his cup of coffee. To the afternoon sun peeking through the window blinds. To his pale hand tapping on the tabletop.
He still wears his wedding ring. It makes my heart hurt to see that.
I’m jittery as hell, so caffeine is the last thing I need, but when I see Dad pull open the news app, I get up to refill my own cup.
I chose this house purely because of the kitchen. The garden window sits in front of the sink, which is big enough to bathe a toddler in. I tested it with Adam when we first moved in. He loved splashing around, blowing raspberries at the window, giggling when his rubber duck bobbed in the suds.
I cried when he got too big for it a year or so ago. He caught me with tears in my eyes, hugged me, and told me he’d squeeze himself back in it if it would make me smile.
I told him he didn’t need to. The image made me smile, and that was enough.
That’s my son, though. Kind-hearted. Sweet to a fault.
I decide against a refill, so I pour out the dregs and leave my mug to soak. When I turn back around, Dad has the tablet tilted forward, and I catch sight of the photograph I’d been staring at for the last half-hour before he walked in.
I’ve practically got it memorized at this point. But I still walk up behind him and look again. I’m becoming more and more of a masochist these days.
Celine is a vision, in a teal dress with a skirt made of shimmery fringe that seems to move even in the still image. The strapless corset highlights how much weight she’s lost since I last saw her. Not sad skinny, not scared skinny or sick skinny, but the toned contours of someone who’s worked hard to carve out the figure they want for themselves.
Diamonds glitter from her ears and neck, and the rock on her finger is big enough to sink a warship. Her blonde hair is lighter than I remember. It’s funny—we’ve got the same nose, the same chin, but on her, it looks glamorous and chic; on me, I just look ordinary.
Of course, as dazzling as this version of my sister is, it’s hard not to be distracted by the man standing beside her. The suit clings to his body like a second skin, and his features look harsher under the unforgiving flash of the camera. But rather than take away from his appearance, he just looks fiercer, more hauntingly handsome than I remember.
Dad closes the tablet and sighs. “You need to stop Googling them.”
I slide back into my seat. “It doesn’t affect me as much as you think it does.” I’ve taken years to home in on this tone of voice—something detached and uncaring, like,Oh, that silly stuff? It’s nothing. “It helps, actually.”
My father’s eyes are watchful and sharp. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?”
“That Celine is happy, so it’s all worth it.”
I can’t see the picture on the screen anymore, but the memory of her restrained smile is burned into my mind’s eye. I don’t know if I’d call her happy. Satisfied, maybe. Contented. But nothappy.
