Unbelievers I was small for ten years old, very small, so small my feet couldn’t reach the floor when I sat in my waist. I pushed my bangs out of my eyes and remembered my orders for today to not get in We went to a lobster restaurant for dinner, his second treat, then to a movie, where Patick paid would have been the long dark mop of wavy hair, thick as bramble, well past his shoulders, or “She’s with us,” I said, looking up at him again. A cross hung down into the triangle the open He looked up at my dad pleadingly, in such a desperate way that I was frightened, and I caught “Thank you,” he said. We sat next to each other in silence for several minutes before he stood up The hours Lotte was awake were interminable. There was nothing she could motivate herself to “Anyway,” said Carole. “I just wanted to see what you needed. You called a lot.” took seconds to register through her own surprise that this was possible, that she could resent the At a crosswalk, Lotte’s attention was caught by a bright store window. Peeking inside, she was Patrick offered him a beer and Loren accepted, saying preemptively as he followed him into the The pause while Patrick evaluated how sarcastic Loren was being quickly became tense. There intentioned but hollow sermon, like he was being sold on a fabulous promise by someone with I poured Lotte a glass of wine though and let her sit while I folded laundry so that I could at least “What’s going on?” “I love him. I don’t want to lose him. I’ve already lost so much. I had to get a new job, a new Loren when we were with them for too long. Space was a good thing. I didn’t know it would turn
the overstuffed chair at the funeral home. My polished shoes dangled just above the brown carpet
that spread like dead grass around the room.
I was as still as I could be, pretending to myself I was in a painting in a museum and the people
at the funeral were really patrons who had come to see me.
My dad had told me this would be a hard day for my mother. He had come to my room early that
morning to make sure I was up and that I had my dress and nice shoes ready, which they had
been since the night before.
He sat next to me and after a pause so long that my palms had begun to sweat, asked me to be as
quiet as a mouse. Even more unobtrusive than usual was the point. He hadn’t used those words,
had just stuck to the comparison to a mouse, but the meaning came through eventually, like a
slow drip through a rusty pipe.
Dad was apologetic when he spoke to me before Lotte’s funeral, like he knew asking a naturally
retreating child to be even more so wasn’t his kindest moment as a parent, but couldn’t think of a
way around it. He couldn’t even look at me as he spoke, but sat staring down at his knees,
blinking too much and sighing while I sat beside him with my stomach knotted up. I can only
think now that he must have thought himself, even if not consciously, more of a husband than a
father that day. My mother simply needed more from him, from us. We would defer.
It was a damp, spring-like winter day, with heavy rains and muggy air. The deluge we buried my
aunt in had tapered off a soupy drizzle by the afternoon, and the air was like a sponge pressed
against my skin. The urge to squirm was irrepressible. I tried to be inconspicuous, moving only
when no one was watching me. That became another game. I could feel my bangs itching my
forehead, my braids tugging at my scalp, my feet sweaty in my dress shoes. My tights squeezed
the way and sat nibbling at a soggy sandwich I didn’t want.
I hadn’t seen the man approach before he sat down in the chair next to me. When he spoke, I
jumped in my seat, dropping the sandwich to the paper plate in my lap and getting a few splatters
of egg salad on the black skirt of my dress.
“Hey there,” he said. “Long time no see.”
I knew him, a bit. There had been pictures of him in my aunt’s apartment, two that stand out
clearly in my memory; one of him with a dog and the other of them, Patrick and my aunt,
together on a beach on a cloudy day.
Last year, he came over to her apartment once while I was having a sleepover with Lotte. It had
been my parents’ anniversary, and Lotte was watching me for the night while they were out. I
remember the phone ringing when we were playing a board game, a whispered conversation that
she tried to hide along with her grin behind her hand, and half an hour later Patrick showed up
with a small bouquet of pink flowers, which I had been surprised were given to me.
Lotte laughed and swatted his arm while I clutched them to me. His hand drifted to the small of
her back, an act which fascinated me as she briefly moved toward his touch and they spoke softly
to each other, lips against ears. Their hair was about the same length, or maybe Patrick’s was a
touch longer. She reached to brush it from his face. It was like I wasn’t there, but somehow I was
only fascinated, not offended.
My aunt eventually pulled herself away from Patrick and retrieved a large mason jar from a
cabinet in the kitchen and filled it half up with water before putting my flowers in it.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m starved!” Lotte proclaimed. I nodded, barely able to
speak for my excitement.
yet again. He didn’t come up to Lotte’s apartment when he dropped us back off, very late for me,
but kissed my aunt’s forehead in the car and whispered something to her while her hand lingered
on the door.
“Go on up,” Lotte said. She lifted her eyes briefly from Patrick’s and to the rear view mirror,
where I was watching the two of them. “I’ll be right there.”
Lotte handed me her keys and I walked up to her building and to her apartment alone. I was
fiddling with the arrangement of my flowers, putting a particularly large and full one in a place
of importance in the front, when she came in a few minutes later and announced without
preamble that it was bedtime.
She hadn’t been angry exactly, nor had she snapped at me, but I was a sensitive child and easily
picked up on the tension radiating from her. I couldn’t help but notice the tears she held back as
she went to her room and closed the door. I brushed my teeth and changed and put myself to bed.
As I lay on the fold out couch falling asleep, I remember thinking that she hadn’t been sad, but
frustrated, stomping in her room and hissing at someone on the phone. That someone could be
angry enough to cry was a revelation.
Late the next morning, Lotte took me home, and I did not bring my flowers. Instinct told me that
I had stumbled into a secret. I was never told not to tell about Patrick’s visit, but following my
aunt’s lead, I never had. When my parents asked me what I’d done the night before, I told them
about the restaurant and the movie and left out my aunt’s friend.
Now, he was here next to me and I was as surprised as if a character from a novel had appeared.
Patrick was tall, but not so much that it was the the first thing you would notice about him, which
the convivial freckles gathered in a cluster at his nose and spreading to the apples of his cheeks.
“Hi,” I whispered, careful to fulfill my promise to my father to be as unassuming as possible.
There was something cripplingly thrilling about my gut feeling that Patrick was a secret, and
having him here in the open was overwhelming. I could hardly squeak out the one syllable to
greet him.
I sneaked a look at Patrick as I kept gripping the paper plate in my lap. He looked like he had
been crying too, maybe as much as my mother had, like he was also not trying to be strong and
had been tacitly granted this right. The tip of his nose was red, his seaglass eyes bloodshot and
the skin under them dark and puffy.
Like the night he had come over to Lotte’s the year before, Patrick smelled of a recent cigarette.
Neither of my parents smoked, and Lotte had not either, so it was jarring at first, then oddly
pleasant. The smell unearthed memories of the clicking of a car’s turn signal, a news story about
a war in another country on the radio, the image of Patrick and my aunt in the front seats of his
car as he drove, his hand on her knee. I could almost feel the brisk early fall air from an open car
window on my face.
We sat in silence after that. The crowd at the funeral was large and made a curtain that hid us
from immediate scrutiny. My aunt had been a well loved woman.
“I bet you miss her,” said Patrick, and I nodded. His thin shoulders slumped. “Me too.”
Patrick coughed nervously and surveyed the crowd.
“Where is Janet?”
Janet was Lotte’s perceptive little shaggy mutt, currently pouting and confused in our home.
There was real worry in his voice when he asked, and I instantly trusted him.
button on his shirt had left open.
An enraged shout caught my attention then, and my eyes darted across the room to my mother,
who was glaring at Patrick. Dad held her at the elbow, a firm but gentle grip, whispering urgently
in her ear. The room went silent in waves as people took notice. Conversations were sucked right
back into mouths, others guillotined mid-word.
“No!” Mom said, much too loudly again, and more people turned to look, blinking in shock. My
mother had everyone’s attention, which was uncharacteristic of her. She’d been green around the
gills for the better part of a week, but her face was now a lively pink. Anger had restored her
instantly to health.
“April, please-” Dad said as Mom pulled herself away easily. Dad had never been holding her
very tightly. His size and awareness of it wouldn’t let him.
Mom stomped toward us, people scrambling her out of her path, their eyes bugging out of their
heads. I watched a good friend of my mom’s step forward and reach out as she passed, touching
the sleeve of her dress as though she thought to intervene and then gave up that thought in the
same second as Mom tore past. Dad was close behind, calling her name.
“Out,” said Mom to Patrick when she reached us. “I told you that you could come to the service
as long as I didn’t see you, and I made it clear you weren’t welcome here.”
Patrick was built like a scarecrow under his rumpled suit. He sighed deeply, filling up his thin
chest with air.
“You did make that clear. I just-”
my father just as he looked away. The guilt and confliction on his face were clear, and I was
confused.
“Loren, please,” said Patrick, entreating my father to intervene.
“I’m sorry,” said my Dad, still unable to meet Patrick’s eyes. “I really am. I appreciate that this is
hard for you. I personally am not angry at you, but I think April is right that given everything,
you shouldn’t be here.”
At that, some of the tension left my mother’s body, and she stepped back toward my father’s
hand. He wrapped his arm around her waist.
“Okay, okay,” said Patrick. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave.”
“Thank you,” said Mom with surprising sincerity. His submission to her request seemed to
instantly dampen her anger. She relaxed visibly in the blink of an eye, slackening and leaning
against my father as though she might fall before turning and briefly burying her face in his
broad chest.
I watched Patrick stand and leave through the nearest door without so much as looking at anyone
else, which stung me deeply. Within seconds, people had looked away from the scene, and were
speaking again in their quiet funeral voices to each other. My parents whispered for a few
moments.
It wasn’t long before Mom joined the crowd again, doing her own job for the day, talking and
thanking people for coming to celebrate Lotte. My father stood there alone for a while though,
staring at the door where Patrick had exited, and then sat down next to me in the chair where
Patrick had been.
and went to join my mother.
I was no trouble at all.
Carole was ten minutes late. Lotte was sure she wasn’t going to come after all, and was not
actually surprised.
The news had broken a week ago in the exact wrong way, not that there was any right way to be
found out in something like this. She and Patrick had been exposed rather than coming clean of
their own accord, which had been on the timetable for vaguely sometime in the spring. Not far in
the future at all, really, and they had stopped seeing each other weeks ago out of guilt. She felt
that should count for something, that they had tried to end it before everything came out, that
they had essentially put the relationship on pause. They still talked a few times a week, that they
couldn’t give up, and anyway, there were plans to be made. The world hadn’t stopped. They had
been doing their best and it had blown up in their faces.
Patrick had resigned immediately after the news broke, leaving his classroom without a teacher.
Lotte had applied for several jobs at local public schools and was using vacation days until she
got an interview and offer. This was to avoid the inevitable firing they knew would be coming if
they tried to hang on to their current jobs. Their lack of interest in fighting what they knew was
coming seemed to have been good enough, and they were allowed to leave without fanfare or
overmuch recrimination. Lotte knew that everyone knew though, and the haughty silence on the
matter was somehow worse than anything else would have been. She hated feeling like the
recipient of smugly offered grace.
do and no one to talk to because no one wanted anything to do with her. April took her calls of
course, as a sister would, but was obviously disappointed. Loren was the only one to be
sympathetic, to tell her that as big of a mistake as it was, that’s all it was and it wasn’t anything a
million other people hadn’t done and eventually found forgiveness for or not and just moved on
from. That was comforting. She was only as terrible as all those other people, not special in her
awfulness.
It wasn’t like Lotte could talk to Loren all that much though. That conversation had needed to
last her and she’d replayed it over and over and over and over in her mind, especially as she tried
fruitlessly to sleep and during the three straight days spent at the library in a comfortable chair
thumbing through magazines and staring out the window.
The only solace was that now at least, she and Patrick could proceed sooner rather than
later since the bandage had been ripped off. That and Carole actually calling her back and
agreeing to meet her.
Carole finally appeared in the door of the coffee shop. She looked around quickly and slumped
into resignation when she saw Lotte. It was obvious Carole had been hoping she wouldn’t show,
and Lotte’s stomach began to churn. This had been a bad idea.
Carole made her way to the table and took a seat across from Lotte, not even bothering to
remove her coat. Instead, she pulled it even tighter around herself and coughed nervously.
“I don’t have long,” she said, flinching as their eyes met and then averting her gaze again.
“Oh okay.” Lotte tried not to let her face fall completely. “Well, thanks for coming.”
Carole shrugged. Her eyes darted around the coffee shop, never quite able to settle on Lotte, who
was now blushing deeply with shame as she realized how reluctant Carole was to be here.
“Cool. Sorry. Yeah, I appreciate it. I just wanted to say-”
The sobbing took over without warning, swallowing the rest of her sentence. Lotte risked
looking up at Carole, who was now staring at her with her mouth open. Shock flickered briefly
over to sympathy, and for that second Carole’s face was one Lotte actually recognized. Lotte
tried to gather herself, but her crying was conspicuous and seemed to be fueled by her own desire
to stop. She raked her sleeves over her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t as hopeless as she’d thought, if
someone else didn’t hate her.
The compassion on Carole’s face was gone already when Lotte looked up again, and she was
fidgeting now, flustered as she pulled at her scarf and looked behind Lotte at some other patrons
who Lotte presumed were gawping at her.
“Lotte, calm down,” Carole hissed.
Lotte gulped and tried to catch her breath, settling down after a few strained attempts. That done,
she mopped at her eyes with the napkin she’d been twisting in her hands.
“Sorry. Sorry, It’s just, well, everyone hates me now. No one will talk to me.”
Carole huffed and hugged her purse to her torso. Her sharp nose was lifted into the air. Lotte
thought ungraciously that though Carole was two years younger than she was, that she looked in
that moment like one of the fussy old women at mass.
“I’m not really sure what you expected.”
“I didn’t do this by myself!” Lotte protested, feeling childish and not caring. It was as much
strength as she’d had all week. There wasn’t any left to carve out room for shame at having a
tantrum. It was the first time she was mad at Patrick, and the realization that she was hit her with
the full force of shock, and her tears stopped. That Carole was now glaring at her with contempt
man she adored so much. Up to then, her feelings for Patrick had been easy; love, lust,
excitement. The thrill of being chosen over his wife, of being irresistible to a man who professed
to be so devout. There had never been anything negative.
“We’re pretty mad at Patrick too, as it happens,” snapped Carole. Lotte was still so stunned at
her momentary anger toward Patrick that she wasn’t even sure she cared very much anymore that
Carole was almost yelling at her in a coffee shop. “Julia just lost a baby last year, Charlotte. How
horrible of you two.”
Carole stood, shaking her head and lifting her hand to ward off any potential protests to her exit.
“It’s best if you don’t call again. Any of us. Just give people time. Let Julia make her choice
without you hovering around begging for forgiveness.”
Choice? The thought of Julia having a choice in any of this evaporated quickly, not really
settling properly in Lotte’s mind. She’d never really thought of Julia having any say in what
happened between her and Patrick and wouldn’t start now.
When Carole was gone, Lotte sat at the table by herself for a few more minutes collecting herself
and regaining her strength before going out onto the street, where the darkness was thickening so
quickly as to almost be perceptible by the second in the way it did right before the shortest days
of the years.
She hurried, still feeling panicked by the meeting with Carole and the feelings it had unearthed.
It was astounding to Lotte that no one on the street so much as looked her way, and the reminder
that most people didn’t care what she had done soon consoled her. A beautiful woman in a
bright coat met her eye as she passed and offered a quick nod. It was such a pleasant moment in
its normalcy that Lotte felt calmer instantly.
reminded in a comforting way of a doctor’s office in that the cleanliness and the unrelenting
shine of the light conveyed honesty, somehow.
The high end makeup store was busy, each employee distinguished by her idiosyncratic good
looks and a white jacket worn over fashionable clothes. One of them, pale red hair wild, the skin
of her face almost entirely obscured by freckles, made eye contact with Lotte and smiled. She
looked friendlier than anyone Lotte had talked to in the past weeks. The light changed, and Lotte
turned from the street and walked to the door of the shop.
The lie that he had told to be here in Patrick’s new apartment didn’t actually make Loren feel too
bad.
Loren understood why April was so upset. He had a sister too, and knew April just wanted to
protect Lotte from someone she saw as bad news, someone who had taken so much away from
her and hadn’t yet been able to give anything back. But Loren had a measure of removal that
allowed him to see a different side, to let his guard down in a way April didn’t feel she was able
to. He’d only known Lotte as an adult and was more accepting of her being allowed to act like
one, imperfectly and disastrously even.
It was good, Loren thought, for one of them to keep an open mind, to gather all the information
possible as this whole thing progressed instead of shutting down every time the subject was
brought up. He would let April know one day, when things had calmed down, that he’d come
here.
kitchen that he couldn’t stay long, but that he would enjoy catching up for a moment. With a
nod, Patrick accepted the small offering of his presence with good grace, likely aware that April
might not know he was here.
The place was much less spartan than Loren had thought it would be. There were boxes
everywhere still, some packed with belongings from his and Julia’s place, and some recently
delivered holding newly purchased items. This building that still smelled of paint and caulk was,
as Loren admitted to himself, shockingly clinical in its current blandness. Despite that, it was
obviously the apartment of a man making a home. That was a good sign. Patrick was serious
about the split, and about doing it with some modicum of self awareness and maturity, not
intending to mope around until Julia took him back or enough time had passed that moving in
with Lotte wouldn’t stain him as the worst kind of cheater.
“Are you two speaking much at the moment?” Loren asked as Patrick sat down next to him on
his new couch. It was pristine, devoid of any little tears or stains or wear, and slightly too hard
still from not having been worn in. The smell of chemicals and plastic lingered on it.
“Me and whom?” Patrick asked wearily, a hint of sarcasm catching at the end. There were dark
circles under his eyes, and he looked thinner, his normally perfectly groomed beard a few days
overgrown. There was a button missing on the bottom of his shirt. His general air was unkempt
and distracted.
“Julia wants space, but says she wants to leave open the possibility of being friendly one day.”
“And Lotte?” asked Loren. “What’s going on there?”
Loren caught the fleeting smile that broke through the exhaustion on Patrick’s face.
Not often, but we do. We had plans and we’re going to pick them up.”
“I want to trust your intentions,” said Loren. “But you made those plans when you were
married.”
Patrick flinched and cast his eyes to the floor as he took a sip of his drink.
“I know it’s hard to believe me. We messed up very very badly and I was the one who was
married to a woman in a vulnerable state, so I messed up worse. April is right that I can’t be
trusted right now. But I hope I can make it better.”
Loren nodded noncommittally to give himself a moment to think. If April were here, she’d call
this bullshit, a show of penitence. She might be right for all Loren knew. But Loren didn’t hate
Patrick. He didn’t think Patrick wanted to hurt Lotte and he trusted Patrick when he said that he
cared deeply about his sister-in-law. How far that would actually get anyone was yet to be seen.
Not wanting to hurt someone and not hurting them were different things.
“I’m going to counseling,” said Patrick.
“Good. That’s a good start.”
“And meeting with a priest. I want to find out how I lost my way.”
At this, Loren could only shrug. He and April had always made a gentle private joke of her
sister’s enthusiasm for religion and all its social accouterments and he was never sure to respond
to sincere references to it. He let the silence grow like weeds between them.
“Have you seen her?” Patrick asked eventually.
“Frequently. She’s April’s sister.”
was a flicker of genuine annoyance on his face that Loren watched him wipe away with
conspicuous effort. Patrick finally forced a weak smile and lifted his hand in defeat.
“Okay, okay. I get it, you’re not going easy on me and you shouldn’t. I messed up badly. But
Lotte’s well? When we talk she sounds so sad sometimes.”
“It‘s because she is.” Loren was shocked by how terse he sounded, and the strength and volume
of his own voice surprised him. He was normally so careful not to take up too much space, to be
too loud, but he was getting away from himself. “She had to leave her job. She lost a lot of
friends.”
Shocked, Patrick sat silent and unmoving on the couch next to him, and Loren was filled with
guilt at being unintentionally too intimidating. He sighed deeply.
“All this will pass though.”
“It will,” said Patrick, his words fervent. “I’m going to be kind to Julia as we finish things,
straight as an arrow, and then Lotte and I will find our way with a fresh, honest start. Better men
than I am have made worse choices, I suppose.”
Loren’s eyebrows shot up. He was glad all over again that April wasn’t here.
“What I mean,” continued Patrick, “is that I am going to take the opportunity to learn from this
and become a better person.”
“Sure. Good.”
The beer in Loren’s hand was going warm. He took a large swig to finish a good portion of what
was left and set the last tepid quarter of the bottle on the table, realizing as he did that wouldn’t
pick it back up. The conversation with Patrick made him feel a bit like he was listening to a well
an immense amount of faith in what he said but little power to deliver.
“I’m just hoping for the best for everyone,” said Loren with gentle magnanimity, but not trying
to hide the room for skepticism he was leaving. “Whatever that might be.”
Patrick nodded, the tired smile reforming on his face like he’d possibly translated what Loren
had said into something different and more affirming.
“Of course. Yes. That’s exactly what I want too.”
A few minutes later, Loren apologized for not being able to stay longer and made his way from
Patrick’s apartment, accepting far more sincere thanks for coming by than he knew was
warranted.
After arriving back to his car, Loren sat in the driver’s seat alone for several minutes. His
attention was eventually drawn back to Patrick’s building. He watched a woman with arms full
of groceries struggle with the front door, and eventually he looked up to the window of Patrick’s
living room, which was empty but for a crooked blind.
About two weeks before the accident, my sister came over unexpectedly one night.
God, it was late. 11:30 or so I think. Loren was out of town for work, so I was holding the fort as
it were and I was tired. I didn’t, if I can admit it, want Lotte there just then. Not at all. It was past
my bedtime and she had been getting on my nerves the last few months, like how only your
siblings can, in that way that makes you feel like you might actually burst, like actually
strangling them isn’t out of the question. I loved my sister, but she had lost her head over this
Partick business.
get something done while she talked. Lotte wasn’t taking the hints though. After a while, I just
tuned her out, even more annoyed that she hadn’t noticed I was doing so.
Patrick’s name was nothing but a buzzing in my ears, and so was Julia’s. It was too much to
engage with all Lotte’s relationship drama just then. Patrick was separated, and the divorce was
supposed to have been set in place weeks ago. Lotte and he were on paper at least not talking too
much, not seeing each other, biding their time until it was official. It was part of the song and
dance of doing penance for how they got started, buying back some goodwill. Honestly, if this
was going to happen, it wasn’t a bad strategy. I gave them that at least, in that it was cunning if
not good. A lot of people would eventually forget about the affair just enough for it to be
awkward when someone remembered how they got together. Enough time would pass that
people would lose steam to pass judgment. It would have been better if Lotte felt worse about the
affair, but she seemed willing to at least make some concessions to respectability.
It was obvious though that they, especially Lotte, were becoming less and less interested in that
as time dragged on though, getting impatient. The only way I could deal with how annoyed I was
to ignore as much of this as I could.
My ears perked up, however, at a sudden change in my sister’s voice, at the word cancer.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
Lotte was wide eyed, on the verge of sniffling.
“Julia might have cancer.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. Lotte glared and I guessed I deserved that. Where else would
she have heard? It struck me as a particularly stinging violation that Patrick would share this
news about Julia with his mistress. I was filled with shame for both him and Lotte.
“I don’t know!” Lotte screeched indignantly, as if this should be obvious. She threw herself back
into the flowered chair she was sitting in, reminding me of a dramatic teenager. “Patrick told me
she’s worried, she’s been through a lot the last few years, and he wants to be there for her if he
can. He feels really really guilty about the baby they lost and the affair and all that. You know
him. He wants to do the right thing.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, April! Jeez.”
A heavy sigh escaped my chest. I knew it sounded judgemental, because it was. Sympathy was
not on the cards at just that moment, and several tense seconds passed while my lack of response
hung there with purpose. A few frustrated tears flowed down the side of Lotte’s face. She wiped
them away and then swirled her wine guiltily in the glass.
“I hope she’s okay, of course. Of course! I know I fucked up her life- we fucked up her life and
she didn’t deserve that. Doesn’t deserve to be sick. Maybe sick. But also…”
“What, Charlotte? But what?”
She narrowed her eyes at me.
“You don’t have to be like that. I’m having a rough time with this.”
“You’re worried this will hold things up is what you are. You’re worried Patrick might not
decide to go through with the divorce if Julia is sick.”
“So what if I am?” A thin little hiss of a sentence. Her hair was becoming wild as she continued
to push it away from her damp face. God, she was getting on my nerves. Looking back, I hate
that she was, that one of our last times together was like this. But, she was a pill that night.
church. My friends won’t talk to me.”
“Lotte.”
I had been planning to say more, but just then, exhaustion got the better of me and I could only
sigh again and set down the shirt I had been folding. Lotte cocked her head at the sound of her
name like a bird.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m tired. I think I need to go to bed.”
Lotte didn’t respond for several seconds, but I watched annoyance build until her face was pink.
Her glass plonked as she set it roughly on the table, threatening to slosh wine on my coffee table
but not doing so, and she stood in a huff.
“Got it. I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
Lotte scrambled for her shoes just at the periphery of my vision and then was gone. Honestly, it
was nothing but a relief. I drank that wine myself in a big gulp, and left the rest of the laundry to
be folded another time before turning off the lights.
Upstairs, I pretended not to hear my daughter whisper for me as I passed her room as I was too
tired and pissed off just then to be motherly, and went to call Loren at the hotel where he was
staying. The sound of his voice unknotted all my frustrations and I slept well.
In the morning, I didn’t reach out to Lotte and she didn’t reach out to me. I was glad of it at the
time, assuming I would need to build up months, years of reserve, that I had the gift of a long life
of being faintly annoyed with my sister over this, of rolling my eyes in secret conspiracy with
into a void where my sister had once been.
If I had that night to live again, I don’t think I would have, or could have, done anything
differently, even knowing what I know now. I would have let Lotte cry, I would have let her
slam her wine, and I would have let her go home feeling just a bit guilty about things, because I
still believe she was better than all this. Part of me, admittedly, wanted this to not work out, for
her bad choices and selfishness to not be rewarded, at least not immediately.
That was how I felt the next time I saw her too, just a few days before the accident, when she
was numb with the revelation that Patrick had slept with his wife and was, as Lotte hysterically
quoted him, conflicted. He’d apparently cited his vows taken in church, his religious
commitment to his marriage, which had almost made me laugh. Smugness must have dripped
from me at the knowledge that she was paying dues for her part in this mess, that she got a taste
of the uncertainty and betrayal Julia had been feeling. It was good for her to be uncomfortable, I
thought, for this situation to be a little precarious.
If I was sanctimonious, it was well earned. I hadn’t cheated. I didn’t go to church every week and
wring my hands about my failings while doing nothing about them. My patience had worn thin
and when Lotte acted like Patrick possibly getting back together with his wife was the surprise of
the century, I’d said what was on my mind without holding back.
‘If you ever thought Mr High and Mighty, the saint himself, would do something as dirty as
leave his marriage, you’re more gullible than I thought.’
I wasn’t kind that night shortly before Lotte’s death, and those words have lingered in my mind.
Sometimes I regret them, and others it’s as much of a certainty that Lotte just needed to hear the
But that morning at the start of the last weeks of my sister’s life, with Loren home in a few days
and my mind filled with missing him, with our daughter to get to school, she truly wasn’t much
on my mind at all.
“I don’t want to offer her more than I can give right now. Things are very messy. But we talk.
or not. I said what I said and three days later, my sister died. Nothing can be changed now.
About the Author
Heather Whited is a writer living in Portland, Oregon.