Page 130 of Stand Your Ground
She ran to the counter where Carter had dropped the bags, digging through them and pulling out items one by one. Black-and-white cookies. A box from a bakery I recognized from Long Island — soft everything bagels wrapped in white paper, a pint of scallion cream cheese. Rainbow cookies in a little windowed box. A jar of deli pickles as big as my forearm. Entenmann’s chocolate frosted donuts and a loaf-pan icebox cake with the unmistakable mark of chocolate wafers and whipped cream. Malt powder. A six-pack of cream soda. A carton of tart cherry juice. Ginger candies. Lemon drops. Saltines. Peppermint tea.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what to get,” she said frantically as she kept unloading. “But I knew I wanted to bring you a little bit of home. Did I remember the cream cheese correctly?” She held it up. “Scallion, right? I thought maybe it was the almond one, but then I was like nowaymy sister would sabotage a perfectly good bagel with a sweet cream cheese.”
My smile was wobbly. “You’re right. Scallion.”
“I knew it.”
But she wasn’t done. She pulled out a plush robe next, and then fuzzy slippers, a maternity dress still on its hanger, the kind that draped rather than clung, in a green that would melt against my skin. There was a little toiletry bag jingling with prenatal vitamins, a belly oil I recognized from a boutique, and a silk scrunchie. On top of it all, a handwritten note folded intoquarters and tied with a piece of raffia in the way only my sister would think to do.
My throat closed.
“I made a pregnancy package,” she said, like she needed to explain the obvious. “For nausea and comfort and… and so you feel taken care of.” She swallowed. “Like you should have felt back then.”
There it was. The rift, the fault line we both stepped on the last time we spoke and the earth gave way.
“I’m sorry,” Lacey said. She said it quick and sure, like pulling a bandage. “I should have said those words first. I should have said them weeks ago. It’s not an excuse, but I need to tell you—when you told me about… Robert, and about Mom and Dad—” Her face crumpled. She steadied it with a breath. “It felt like my world tilted. I was blindsided, and that made me feel guilty, because another part of me wasn’t. It was like hearing the end of a story I’d been reading with pages missing. I think I knew something awful had happened. I just… didn’t know what.”
I stared at her. The honesty of it was both a balm and a blade.
“I wasn’t sure where you stood,” I admitted. I kept my voice even, the way I did when I was telling a patient hard news. “I’m still not.”
“I know.” Lacey rolled her lips. “I kept thinking if I took a minute, took a breath, I’d come back with the right words. And the longer I took, the more wrong every word felt. Meanwhile, you were here. Alone. And I made it worse. I’m so, so sorry.” She reached for my hand before she could second-guess herself. Our fingers linked. They still fit. “I’m getting married, Liv,” she said, her voice wobbling but sure. “And of course, I grew up picturing our parents there. I imagined judging what Mom spent on the flower arrangements and Mom telling the band how to play a Motown set properly. I held on to that picture even when I didn’twant to. I tried to force the world to make sense so the picture wouldn’t have to change.”
I squeezed her hand when her chin trembled. “I get it, it’s—”
“I told them not to come.”
Air left the room in a rush.
“You…what?”
“I told them if they weren’t capable of protecting their daughter when it mattered, then they didn’t get the honor of standing in the front row of my new life.” Her jaw was set, eyes bright, shoulders squared. “I told them if they couldn’t say your name without spitting, they could keep it out of their mouths and out of my day. They argued, and wheedled, and threatened me with a hundred different silences. Mom said she’d cut me off just like they did with you.”
“She means that,” I warned.
“I know. I don’t care. I didn’t waver.”
My hands hovered over my lips. “Oh, Lace…”
“And if you’ll reconsider,” Lacey continued, her voice breaking, “I want you by my side.”
The sentence knocked me back like a wave. For a second, everything was static. Then the softness returned, the smell of vanilla, the cooling air, the quiet insistence of my own heartbeat in my ears.
“I—” I started, eyes burning, rib cage pressing in. “You really want me there?”
“I have always wanted you there.” She leaned forward, our foreheads almost touching, her hands tight in mine. “And I don’t care if Mom and Dad never come around. I don’t care if they want to live in denial for the rest of their lives to save face. I believe you.”
It wasn’t loud, the way she said it. It wasn’t dramatic. It was simple. It was steady.
It was the exact key my rib cage was waiting on to unlock.
Everything in me gave way.
We fell into each other in a hug so healing I gasped at the pressure of it. For years, I’d wondered what it would be like to have my family back, wondered how my life could have differed if I’d have played by the rules my parents played out for me. I never regretted standing my ground, but I regretted losing Lacey in the process.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” I choked out. “I should have. I just… I’m your big sister. I’m supposed to protect you. I didn’t want to have to put you in the position to choose.”
“The last thing I ever want you to do is apologize.Iam sorry. I knew something had happened, but I was content living in my own blissful ignorance, and I didn’t pry like a good sister should.”
