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“It’s against the Cottonmouths! I have to be there,” I explained, and he nodded like he understood. He also gave me some advice about how to treat the injury until I did manage to get myself back to the doctor, and then he seemed ready to send me on my way.
I had another purpose for coming to talk to him today, though, one that I’d been searching for a way to introduce. “How is Aubin doing?” I asked tentatively.
“Aubin?” he repeated. “Fine. Good to see you, Sissy.“
“Good to see you,” I repeated. “But, um, before I go, I wanted to talk to you about my sister.”
His expression, which had tightened when I’d said her name, drew into a frown. “What about her?” He picked up a towel and passed it from hand to hand.
“She came with me to pick out my wedding dress and she seemed different,” I explained. “Something seemed to be wrong with her, and I can’t guess what it is because I don’t know about her—”
I’d been trying to say that I didn’t know about her problems with her business, the ones that Danni had alluded to before, but Bill interrupted me. “Exactly,” he stated. “That’s it, exactly.”
I blinked. “What? What’s it?”
“You’re her sister. If anyone should know about her, it’s you,” Bill said. “And you don’t, so you have to ask me, and it turns out that I don’t know her, either. I don’t think anyone does.”
I blinked again, surprised. He didn’t know his wife, his own wife? “Maybe we should talk to Jess,” I suggested, because she was Aubin’s best friend and her partner.
“The two of them aren’t speaking.”
“What?” I asked again. “What’s wrong?”
“I have no idea. Do you want to know how I found out about it?” he asked, and mutely, I nodded. “I ran into Jess at the grocery store and she wouldn’t speak to me, either. I was waving and saying her name and thought that she must not have heard me, until she announced that she was ignoring me on purpose. She told me that after what Aubin had pulled, she never wanted to see either of us again. I was just staring at her and she asked if I knew, and I said no. Did you?”
Knew what? I shook my head.
“Jess took pity on me and my ignorance. She said their business was over, shut down. She said they’d been having issues for months and two weeks ago, she told Aubin that she was done and it was a failure, and then she ranted about what a horrible person my wife is. She started crying and ran out of the grocery store.”
“Surprised” didn’t describe me now. Stunned, thunderstruck, and bowled over were more accurate depictions of how I stared at my sister’s husband. “Their business failed? Aubin failed? She did something to Jess? They’re best friends! What did Aubin do to her?” I managed to ask.
“That’s an interesting question.” Bill twisted the towel in his hands until his knuckles turned white. “Aubin told me that there’s no problem. She said that she and Jess had a minor disagreement over an inconsequential business matter, but that they’ll work it out.”
“Ok, well, that doesn’t sound too bad.”
“She was lying, Sissy. Jess wasn’t that angry about something ‘inconsequential.’ There’s no ‘minor disagreement’ that leads to your best friend, your partner, refusing to speak to you. Aubin won’t tell me what’s wrong. She’s acting like everything is great, there’s no problem at all.”
“Bill, it’s hard to explain, but that’s how we grew up,” I tried to tell him. “Everything in our lives was a secret. We were always hiding everything from everyone and that gets to be a habit.”
“What are you talking about? What was a secret?”
“Everything!” I assured him. “Everything, from our mom leaving us, to our dad’s alcoholism, to our poverty, everything.”
He stared at me. “What did you say? Your mother did what? Your dad has a problem with drinking?”
Oh. Oh, no. “You knew…you didn’t know?” How did he not know these things about his wife?
He threw the towel onto the ground. “What the hell is going on?”
“Wait, wait. It wasn’t really so bad,” I said. “We weren’t that poor and he didn’t drink that much.”
“Now you sound like your sister,” he told me. “Everything is always fine, good. That’s bullshit.”
“Growing up, we were an island, alone, and all these secrets kept us there,” I said. “We did it because we were trying to protect our dad and our family.”
“That’s also bullshit. Maybe you were trying to protect him, but not Aubin. She tells everyone that they have a good relationship, that everything is fine, but that’s not right. Every once in a while she’ll drop her guard and I get to see a little bit of what she’s really feeling. I think she hates him.”
“They have issues,” I said lamely.
