My Sister, Myself

“She did, didn’t she?” Phyllis finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Tory said, her brow furrowed.

“I guess. Yeah, she was kind of always there, encouraging me, helping me get ready for dates, choosing just the right clothes for me to wear. But then, she was my older sister. She was supposed to do that.”

Feeling the other woman’s confusion, her pain, Phyllis smoothed the bangs from Tory’s eyes—and saw, for the first time, the ugly red scar marring Tory’s forehead just beneath her hairline.

“What happened?” she gasped.

Tory rearranged her bangs self-consciously.

“When Christine wouldn’t pull over, Bruce got more and more reckless, bumping into the side of the car, trying to force us to stop.” Head down, she played with her fingers. “I don’t remember much else,” she confessed. Tears dropped onto her hand.

“When I came to in the hospital, they told me there’d been a one-car accident—no one’s fault. We’d lost control on a curve and driven over a cliff—and that my s-s-sister was dead.”

Phyllis drew the young woman into her arms. “Oh, Tory, honey, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, over and over again, as her own tears fell on Tory’s hair.

Oh, Christine. Dear, sweet, tortured Christine. Have you finally found your peace?

TORY COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d slept. Coming slowly awake Saturday morning in the comfortable bed, the comfortable room, feeling almost rested, she wondered at first if she was still dreaming. A dream she didn’t ever want to wake from.

She glanced sleepily around the room and saw the luggage she and Phyllis had carried in the night before, the new dresser—and the empty twin bed across from her own.

For Christine.

That split second was all it took for everything to come tumbling back. The dread. The fear. The soul-crushing despair.

“You awake?” Phyllis’s voice followed a brief knock on the door.

“Yeah, come in.” Tory quickly pulled her bangs down over her forehead. After years of hiding bruises, the action was purely instinctive.

“Good morning.” Phyllis smiled, carrying a cup of coffee, which she set on Tory’s bedside table.

Being waited on in bed warmed Tory even more than the coffee Phyllis had brought.

They discussed trivial things for a while—the unbelievably hot Arizona weather, the pretty house Phyllis had found in August when she’d preceded Christine out to Shelter Valley. Also some of the people she’d met. People Tory would likely meet.

Trying to listen, to absorb, Tory settled for concentrating on Phyllis’s smile, instead, the steady cadence of her voice, the calm strength she emanated as she sat in the middle of Christine’s bed. Her nerves bouncing on the edge of her skin, Tory somehow made herself stay put, made her thoughts stay put. Forced down the panic inside her.

Phyllis was being so darn nice. Other than Christine, no one had ever been so nice to her before. And for no reason that she could fathom.

“We’re going to have to call Dr. Parsons and let him know Christine isn’t coming,” Phyllis finally said gently.

Here it comes, Tory thought, taking a deep breath.

She’d rehearsed the speech. A hundred times on her trek across the barren New Mexico and northern Arizona landscape.

Another deep breath, and still nothing happened.

She couldn’t do it.

“Life insurance was part of her benefits package,” Phyllis said, her eyes full of compassion. “I know Christine’s was already in effect because it was done at the same time as mine. We can give Dr. Parsons a copy of her death certificate, and at least you won’t have any financial worries.”

Tory stared at her.

“I’m counting on you to stay right here with me, just like we planned,” Phyllis continued. “Until you have time to decide what you want to do, anyway. It’s kind of lonely having an entire house to myself after living in an apartment for so long,” she said, obviously giving Tory whatever time she needed to enter the conversation. “I guess I need to hear life on the other side of my walls.”

“There isn’t one,” Tory stated bluntly.

Phyllis frowned. “Isn’t one what?”

“Death certificate.”

“But—”

“At least, not for Christine.”

“I don’t understand.” Phyllis was still frowning. “The hospital told you your sister was dead, but no one signed a death certificate?” Her face cleared. “If they haven’t seen her body, she may still be alive.” She looked at Tory. “Maybe Bruce has her, after all.”

Watching the expressions chase themselves across Phyllis’s face, Tory shook her head.

“The hospital authorities saw her.” She paused, swallowed. “I…saw…her.” Arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, Tory stared down at the bed. “I had her cremated like she always said she wanted.”

Maybe most sisters didn’t talk to each other about their burials while still so young, but she and Christine had. With the lives they’d lived, the home they’d grown up in, death had been a constant possibility.

“You can’t do that without a death certificate.”

“I had one,” Tory admitted, biting her lip. “Just not Christine’s.” Her head hurt and her face was numb as she silently spun in the unending loop of terror inside her mind.

“Christine and I look so much alike….”

Chin resting on her knees, Tory studied the bed through blurry eyes. Tears dripped off her face, rolling slowly down the sides of her knees, but her voice was almost steady as she related what she’d been told so compassionately by the clergywoman who’d visited her in the hospital.

Tory’s bed sank on one side with Phyllis’s weight. She tried to concentrate on the comfort of the other woman’s hands rubbing slowly back and forth along her back.

“My driver’s license was brand-new. Christine’s was six years old….”

The hand on her back slowed, stopped moving, hung there suspended.

“We were both pretty messed up in the crash….”

“Tory—”

“She’d gotten cold, my monogrammed sweater was the only thing within reach for her to put on without stopping and—”

“Oh, my God.”

“When word got out that the woman who died in the crash was presumed to be Tory Evans, Bruce, who was apparently beside himself, sent one of the family staff to identify me. Her.”