When We Fall (3 page)

Last time.
There were so many different ways her family and friends referred to it now. Besides actually saying it outright.
Last time
was a common one. As in
We don't want you to
get frail and dehydrated like last time
. Other euphemisms came in the form of
You know what? Let's not talk about
you know what
in front of Logan
. And her all-time favorite:
Since
the accident
.
How's Allison doing
since the accident? Popular among her parents' acquaintances.

No one liked to think about the fathers who would never again throw a baseball in Central Park with their sons. Or walk their daughters down the aisle. The mothers who would never again hold their newborn babies or toddlers or teenagers so close to their hearts they could feel the rise and fall of their chests. The children, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who'd done nothing more than decide to go on an innocent company-wide ski trip only to have their futures, and the countless milestones inherent in those futures, annihilated. It was heavy stuff. Too heavy for someone who was just trying to be polite.

“I promise you I'll eat something when I'm hungry.” Allison smiled, rubbing her mom's arm affectionately and pecking her on the cheek. “In the meantime, looks like you've got your work cut out for you.” She motioned to the sandwich on steroids.

“One bite?”

Allison shook her head.

“Fine, I'll wrap it up for Logan.” Her mom grimaced. “Now, where did I put the aluminum foil?”

“Second drawer to the right of the stove.” Allison sat back down on the hardwood floor to continue folding napkins. “It feels good to be home.”

“I'm so glad to hear you say that, sweetheart.” Her mom walked into the pantry. “Cup of tea?”

“Sure.” Allison got back on her feet and reached for two blue mugs so big they resembled soup bowls. She'd bought them because they were the exact same color as Logan's room in their New York City apartment. “It's amazing how much has remained unchanged in Wincourt.”

“Like what?” Her mother dropped a tea bag into each mug and took one at a time from Allison, filling them from the instant-hot-water tap.

“All the stores in town. The school, at least from the outside.” Over the last decade, Allison had barely been home. She'd seen her parents at least once a week, but typically they'd been the ones to come to her. Making things easier on Allison had become their life's mission, and that included not asking her to travel outside her comfort zone any more than was absolutely necessary.

“There are so many new things too. Wincourt has flourished in your absence, my dear.” Her mom tasted her tea and sat down for what seemed like, at least to Allison, the first time in days.

It was hard to ignore the visible proof that Jack's death had aged her mother. But until recently, Allison had been unable to consider the fact that the ramifications of her unthinkable loss had set off a domino effect extending well beyond her and Logan. Not that anyone had dared to mention
their
pain. Certainly not to the grieving widow and newly minted single mom of a child with no father.

Allison's mother had been breathtakingly beautiful in her day, with a glossy mane of sumptuous blond hair cascading midway down her back, which in her mid-forties
she'd cropped into a stylish shoulder-length bob. For as long as Allison could remember, her mother's skin had been implausibly luminescent, she swore from nothing more than bargain-brand soap and Oil of Olay. Much to Allison's delight, her mother's most striking feature—her pale gray eyes—had been passed down to her, along with her long blond hair. Though the one thing Allison had not inherited was her mother's straight and slender nose. Instead she'd been the hapless recipient of her dad's crooked honker, which—as luck would have it—actually suited her face.

Jack had adored her mom. They'd been like partners in crime. Sometimes Allison would come home late from the art gallery where she'd been working at the time and the two of them would be on a movie date without her. Her mother was easily lured by the prospect of swinging into the city for an “artistic flick,” and her father always appreciated Jack's willingness to sit through subtitled French films with his wife, refusing to endure the “chore,” as he referred to it. In fact, to this day, he still said the same thing whenever her mother asked him to see a foreign film: “If I wanted to read, I'd stay home with the paper.”

“Is that so?” Allison couldn't help but laugh. Wincourt was barely as big as a Manhattan neighborhood. “It's a cultural mecca now, huh?”

“Very funny. You'll see.” Her mom furrowed her brow. “Is Logan excited for tomorrow?”

“Are you kidding? He can't wait. All he can talk about, outside of being with you and Dad, is making new friends and meeting his teachers and what sports he can get involved with.” Jack had been the athletic one. The type who,
at twenty years old, having never skied before, had taken the chairlift directly to the top of an intermediate slope and found his way to the bottom as gracefully as someone who'd been at it for at least a few months. In turn, Allison—who'd been skiing upward of a dozen times—had found her way to the bottom on her rear end. Of the two of them, who would have guessed that a ski trip would have been the cause of
his
demise?

“It's remarkable.” Allison's mom nodded definitively. “He is remarkable.”

“I know.” Allison swallowed a lump in her throat. “He's amazing. I can't believe how well he's handling all this.”

“Thanks to you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You should give yourself more credit, Ali.”

“Maybe.” She scrunched her nose.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“I know that look.”

“It's stupid.”

“Get on with it.” Her mother waved her hand.

“What if I don't make any friends? You know? What if I don't fit in with the suburban mommies?”

“Like me?”

“They don't make 'em like you anymore, Mom.”

“I can't see that happening, Ali. You were always very popular in school. And at summer camp. Weren't you team captain or something?”

“Red Team.” Allison smiled wistfully. It was a big deal to be a team captain. Only four seniors got picked. And everyone
knew Red Team was the best. Jack had been one of her lieutenants.

“Betty Miller's daughter still lives on Oak Drive. I could introduce you.”

“Mom, I went to school with Sara Miller.”

“Reintroduce you, whatever. She's a lovely girl.”

“She's a nun.”

“So? What do you have against nuns?”

“What could we possibly have in common?”

“You both like to wear black and white.” She smirked.

“Very funny.” Allison rolled her eyes. “I think I'll take my chances with the moms at Logan's school first.”

“Up to you.”

“I bet it's really cliquey.”

“Isn't it always?”

“I guess.” She groaned, thinking back to how it had been in the immediate days, months, and years following Jack's death. How so many of her friends—the ones she'd met since moving to the city after graduating from college—had made futile attempts at being supportive, showing up at her front door with bagel and cookie platters. But once it had become abundantly clear to them that gossiping over lunch at the corner café was no longer part of the fabric of Allison's being, they'd dropped like flies, buzzing off together to exist in a world where breaking bread didn't include sobbing into your Cobb salad. It was almost as if they'd deemed her tragic existence contagious.
Don't touch the widow or you might catch dead-husband disease.

Allison had also lost touch with some of her real friends, mainly because she'd been rendered incapable of
maintaining relationships and at some point the physical and emotional distance had become too vast. All except her best friend, Melanie, whom she'd met the first day of freshman orientation at Brown. Melanie's dedication, unlike the others', had been stalwart. She'd made monthly visits from Chicago, shouldering the cost of expensive hotel rooms without so much as a mention. She'd flown back and forth, landing at LaGuardia late on Friday night and returning to O'Hare late on Sunday evening, so she could devote every minute of her spare time to extracting Allison from the depths of her despair. Ten years later, Melanie was still living in the Windy City and she was still a steadfast ally. Only now, there was a husband and a brood of four kids, with a fifth on the way. Even uninterrupted phone calls were challenging.

“Well, I'm not worried. As I said, you've never had a problem making friends before.”

“I was never the woman whose husband died before.”

“You're still the same person you always were.” Her mother tipped her head downward.

“I hope you're right.”

“Right or not, I'm proud of you.” She looked back up, and Allison could see that her eyes were bloodshot. “I suspect moving up here is, in some small way, a second kind of loss for you.” She cleared her throat. “You know, having to part with that physical connection to Jack you may have felt in the city.”

“Maybe.” Allison let her mother hug her, and, slowly, she could feel the weight of the last few days release from her body.

“It's going to be okay.” Her mother squeezed her tight,
like she'd done so many times when Allison was a little girl and scared of the monsters living under her bed.

“I hope so.” She straightened up while—out of the corner of her eye—admiring the sliver of a diamond wedding band still twinkling on her right hand.

“I know so.” Her mother nodded decisively. “Just you wait and see.”

C
harlotte identified an isolated booth, tucked into the hindmost corner of the Wincourt Diner, and was dutifully escorted there by the college-aged hostess, who was smacking her watermelon-flavored bubble gum and humming Carly Rae Jepsen's “Call Me Maybe.” Under normal circumstances, seeing and being seen would have been paramount to Charlotte, but not when it came to dining with her sister.

She slid into the booth, shucked her dark brown quilted jacket, and watched the front door so she could wave Elizabeth over as soon as she arrived. Late. Always late. Even though they both knew she had perfectly suitable transportation in the form of Charlotte's navy Range Rover, with plush, cream-colored leather seats and coordinated navy piping.

“Can I get you a drink, ma'am?” The waifish teenage waitress, with an arm sheathed in vibrant
Twilight
-inspired tattoos, appeared with pen and paper poised to take her
order. Charlotte frowned at the designation. When had she become a ma'am? Probably somewhere between baby and Botox.

“I'll take an iced tea, no sugar. Not Snapple.”

The waitress nodded. “Is someone joining you?” She motioned to the empty seat opposite Charlotte with a ketchup-soaked straw she'd retrieved from the soiled diner floor.

“One would hope.” Charlotte smiled politely and the waitress stared at her blankly. “Yes, someone is joining me. Any minute. I think.” She exhaled, beleaguered by having to justify her sister's boundless incompetence yet again. Namely to someone whose main concerns were evidently ornate body art and extreme piercings—Charlotte had counted six gold hoops in each ear plus one of those ghastly silver barbell-like thingies impaling the tip of her tongue. Who knew how many more there were in regions that, gratefully, Charlotte would never lay eyes on.

“Okay, so do you know what this person wants to drink?” The waitress wound a section of stringy brown hair around her middle finger as her beady green eyes darted from table to table in pursuit of a diversion.

“She'll have the same.” Charlotte scanned the restaurant, anxious to make sure there was no one she recognized or who might recognize her. To say that the Wincourt Diner was not her usual stomping grounds was the understatement of the century, except where Elizabeth was concerned. Charlotte far preferred Chez Louis' grilled shrimp and vegetable platter or the poached salmon at the Ivy Grill. But, predictably, Elizabeth wanted greasy griddle food. And what Elizabeth wanted, Elizabeth got, which was just fine by
Charlotte, since her sister's soggy stack of pancakes came with a welcome side order of anonymity.

“Okay.” The waitress disappeared into the throng of indistinguishable servers, and Charlotte rifled through her monogrammed carryall to find her iPhone.

The Louis Vuitton had been a gift from Charlie for their tenth wedding anniversary, which meant he'd given her permission to buy something for herself.
Within reason.
He'd never bothered to ask what he'd gotten her. One bag was the same as the next to him—their definitions of
clutch
being, quite clearly, very different. In Charlie's world, a clutch was what Derek Jeter came through in with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Charlotte scanned the e-mails in her inbox, which were mostly snippets of gossip from her best friends, Sabrina and Missy. There was also a slew of “immediate action required” notes from Gia's school principal, since fourth grade would officially commence the following day. It was hard to believe that almost a decade had elapsed since Gia's birth, an occasion that, for most new parents, would have been indisputably blissful. But not for Charlotte and Charlie. Any joy they'd articulated in the weeks leading up to, at, or immediately after Gia's birth had been swiftly squelched by Charlotte's mother, for fear that it would intensify the excruciating agony stemming from Elizabeth's catastrophic loss. And the agony wasn't confined to Elizabeth. There'd been a sinister cloak of despair encasing her entire family for at least a month.

“You would not believe the fucking traffic I just hit on the Post Road.” Elizabeth's snarky voice called Charlotte to attention. Her sister appeared purposefully casual, as usual,
wearing a crinkled white men's shirt tucked into faded and shredded blue jeans, the soles of her perfect size-seven feet flattening the back of an old pair of Vans sneakers and her auburn hair gathered into a messy chignon. Often, Charlotte wondered how Elizabeth managed to look so good with such little effort and even less money for shopping.

It was hard to remember a time when she hadn't been jealous of Elizabeth's naturally lean physique, her warm olive complexion, and the way her enviable blue eyes illuminated when she was passionate about something. Elizabeth was by far the more desirable sister, in Charlotte's opinion and—she felt quite certain—in the opinion of anyone who'd met them. She was also the more outgoing and possibly smarter sister, though Charlotte always made better grades in school thanks to her staunch work ethic.

“Shhh.” Charlotte surveyed her surroundings again, perusing the thankfully unrecognizable faces.

“What? We're not at the ballet.” Elizabeth dropped all one hundred and three pounds of herself into the plush booth with a thud.

“I know, but do we really need the f-bombs?” Charlotte sniffed and widened her eyes. “Are you smoking again?”

“What?” Elizabeth flailed her lean, tanned arms to summon the waitress, who promptly rolled her eyes.

“You heard me.” Charlotte tucked her skillfully straightened, collar-bone-skimming brown hair, highlighted with streaks of deep red, behind her ears and arched a professionally plucked eyebrow dubiously. “It's a repulsive habit and you better not be puffing away in my car. Charlie will kill you.”

“What else is new?” The waitress appeared. “Saved by the bell.” Elizabeth smirked. “Can I get a Coke? I wouldn't drink this crap if you paid me.” She pushed the iced tea toward Charlotte, causing it to splash onto the table. The waitress balked at the spilled liquid and smacked a handful of napkins on the table. “Well, maybe if you paid me. But it would have to be a lot.”

Charlotte often considered how two such different people could be derived from the same genetic cloth. Sure, Elizabeth had changed significantly since the tragedy, but hadn't she always been somewhat rough around the edges, a bully of sorts, even though she was the little sister?

There'd been more than a dozen occasions through the years, at least that Charlotte could recall, when she'd been both mortified by and in awe of her sister's gumption. Like when Charlotte was in fifth grade and Elizabeth was in fourth and Peter Becker—the meanest and also cutest boy in Charlotte's class—had told everyone that Charlotte had showed him her boobies behind the gymnasium bleachers. And that she was as flat as a board. Unbeknownst to Peter, he'd picked the wrong girl—and the most prudish—to mess with. Not because Charlotte had been prepared to defend herself or, really, to do anything but cower behind the very same bleachers Peter had cited, crying her eyes out from utter humiliation. Of course she hadn't shown him her boobies—nor would she ever show any boy her boobies until she was married—but who would believe a loser like her over the perennially popular Peter Becker? Only Elizabeth.

So during recess that day, in front of all of the fourth, fifth, and even sixth graders, Charlotte's scrappy little sister had
marched over to Peter, standing on her tippy-toes so their faces were a mere two inches apart. She'd pointed her index finger right at him and shouted, so everyone could hear, “Your penis is so small, I bet you have to search for it when you wanna pee.” It hadn't necessarily been the most clever or well-conceived attack, but it had done the trick. Their fellow classmates had burst into a chorus of derisive laughter, rendering Peter Becker shocked and woefully shamed. He'd been put in his place by a girl, and a pint-sized one at that. Charlotte had cringed. Not in a million years would she have stood up to Peter or said the word
penis
aloud in front of half the school. But she'd also been beset with pride. Elizabeth had defended her honor, impervious to the notion that confronting Peter could have destroyed her as yet untarnished elementary school reputation. More than that, Elizabeth knew who she was. She knew what she wanted. And she didn't falter in pursuit of it. Something Charlotte had never been able to do.

“So listen.” Charlotte readied herself to deliver the speech she'd rehearsed the night before, in the shower that morning, and then again on the car ride over. “I need your help.”

“
You
need
my
help? That's rich.” The waitress returned with Elizabeth's soda. “I'll take the pancakes. Tall stack. Don't skimp on the syrup.” Elizabeth squinted to read the name tag on her uniform. “Heather.” Heather nodded sardonically. Charlotte imagined Heather recounting the story of her “bitchy customer” later that night to her similarly pierced and inked boyfriend over beers at a local dive bar, the invasive shrieks of a Z-list cover band drowning out her trifling grievances.

“I'll just have a house salad with grilled chicken. Dressing on the side, please. Actually, oil and vinegar will be fine.” Elizabeth scowled at her. “On the side.” She turned back to her sister. “So, as I was saying.”

“You need my assistance. . . .”

“Right. One of us has to go to Florida to help Mom deal with Dad.” Their father had recently suffered his third heart attack in three years, and this time he hadn't bounced back the way he had in the past. He was practically immobilized, forcing their mother—who by her own admission was hardly the poster child for a healthful lifestyle—to work overtime caring for him. Charlotte had offered to pay for a full-time nurse, someone to whom cleaning bedpans was as commonplace as scratching her head, but her mother had obstinately declined, declaring that it was their house and she didn't need some “meddlesome intruder” with her nose in their business.

“Okay?” Elizabeth wasn't going to make it easy. She never did.

“So can you do it?”

“By myself?” Elizabeth scoffed.

“Yes, by yourself.” Charlotte added, “I'll pay for your plane ticket.”

“Oh, wow, thanks!”

“Fine, pay your own way.”

“I would, but I'm not going.” They both knew she wouldn't, even if she was amenable to making the trip. Was it really so much to ask of a grown woman to hop on a prepaid flight from New York to Fort Lauderdale to take care of her sick father? How many times had Charlotte done the
very same thing? The fact was, it was expected of Charlotte, not of Elizabeth. Nothing was expected of Elizabeth.

“Lizzy, Gia starts school tomorrow. I have a million things going on, and for once, I can't handle everything.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” The waitress arrived with their lunch, and Elizabeth immediately drenched her pancakes in syrup. Like aunt, like niece. In turn, Charlotte sprinkled vinegar on her rabbit food.

“It means I'm always the one to go. I'm sorry, but it's true.”

“You're sorry?”

“You know what I'm saying, Lizzy.” She took a bite of her salad. “Do you have something specific going on that hinders you from going? I'm sure Mom and Dad will happily accommodate your schedule.” The whole notion that Elizabeth even had a schedule was preposterous. Her hours working as a salesgirl at the Posh Teen in town were sporadic at best and seemed to correspond directly to how empty her pockets were. Aside from that, there were scattered therapy sessions, which—as evidenced by that week's appointment—could easily be postponed.

“Do you?” Elizabeth countered.

“I just told you that Gia's starting school and I have other stuff to deal with.”

“What stuff?”

“Who cares?”

“I do.”

“Fine. Guess what? I'll go. As usual. I'll do it all.” Charlotte threw her hands up in the air. “I've lost my appetite.” She stood to leave. “You know, you should really be a better
daughter to Mom and Dad. They've supported you through everything.
Unconditionally.
”

“Whatever you say,
perfect child
.” It was what Elizabeth had called her for the better part of their high school career.

“As if you listen to a thing I say.” Charlotte swung her purse onto her shoulder and folded her jacket into the crook of her arm. “I'll talk to you later.” She stalked off.

“Um, big sis.” Charlotte swiveled back around to find Elizabeth's smug expression. “You forgot to pay the check.”