The Language of Sisters by Cathy Lamb

leave the house, unless the house is on fire.
    Clothes are my armor.
    There was only one time when my love of clothes fell apart and I didn’t care anymore.
    That was when everything tumbled into hell.
    * * *
    He called late the next night.
    â€œHow are you?”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œWhere are you?”
    â€œMexico. I needed to move on from India.”
    He had been volunteering in an orphanage in India for months. “On the beach now?”
    â€œYes. I’m volunteering in a local school and talking to people.”
    â€œSleeping?”
    â€œNo.” He laughed, but it was sad, too close to the edge. “Currently I’m being followed by the vegetable garden again.”
    I would laugh, but it wasn’t funny. He was haunted by a vegetable garden.
    â€œI’m also being followed by someone scary. I wake up all the time to this black, lurking presence and screams. Not my screams, a woman’s screams. I don’t get it. Why is all this getting worse these last months? Why am I seeing all these things more lately?”
    Maybe it’s because you know you’ve been lied to all these years, you’re twenty-eight, and you’re searching for the truth and I am a disloyal sister. “Are the memories making any sense?”
    â€œNot much, but I can feel my mind opening up. I’m getting snatches of memories here and there. I keep seeing a rocking horse that’s rocking on its own, no one on him. It’s creepy.”
    I shivered. A rocking horse that rocks alone. A blue ceramic box with a fancy lady on it, and a red and purple butterfly that flies toward scary woods.
    No wonder he thought he was losing his mind.
    â€œI think it’s all from my childhood, but it’s the blood that’s the worst, Toni. I see it on my hands in my dreams. It’s driving me straight out of my mind. Why do I have blood on my hands? How did it get there? Was it mine? Was it someone else’s? Was it hers? Or is it all in my imagination?”
    â€œIt’s not in your imagination.” I remembered the blood.
    Never tell, Antonia, never, ever tell.
    â€œThey know more than they’re telling me,” he said.
    â€œYes, I think they do.”
    â€œI need them to talk to me.”
    â€œI know. They will.”
    â€œI miss you.”
    â€œI miss you, too.”
    * * *
    When the moon was high in the sky, I walked over to his craftsman-styled houseboat. I brought a bottle of wine. “Tired, Nick?” I asked when he opened the door.
    â€œNot for you. Come on in, baby.”
    Nick Sanchez’s houseboat was modern and streamlined. Wood plank floors, darker wood kitchen cabinets, quartz counters, open shelving, and an island in the middle. It had one open room downstairs, and then his bedroom, a guest bedroom, and an office upstairs, which was lined with books. It was a manly-man houseboat.
    Nick had made manicotti and a salad and heated up bread. He is a thoughtful person, kind, even though he often resembles a blond criminal, depending on where he’s working at the moment.
    We ate in bed, then we had sex, then I went home.
    He sighed as I let myself into my tugboat.
    â€œI heard that, Nick.”
    â€œI heard it, too. Come back if you change your mind.”
    â€œI won’t change my mind.”
    â€œI’m always up for a night in your tugboat.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI’ll keep you warm.”
    â€œI have heat.”
    â€œNot personal heat.”
    â€œNot tonight.”
    â€œA night soon?”
    â€œNick—”
    He held up a hand. “I won’t push. But I’ll miss you. My bed is way too big without you in it.”
    â€œYour bed is way too big, period.”
    He laughed.
    I shut the door to my tugboat. I do not spend the night at Nick’s, and I don’t allow him to spend the night at my place, either. The answer is no. What I am doing is already bad enough.
    * * *
    Nick said hello to me