I don’t question why the hell my sister’s in a bar already and it’s only eleven a.m. I’m learning not to question a lot of things. Rebel leads me across a broad patio toward a low-lying building with cracked plaster, painted a very pale sunshine yellow unlike the industrial grays and blacks of the other buildings.
“Is that your clubhouse?” I ask.
Rebel looks over his shoulder, face drawn into a look of horror. “What about this building screams Widow Makers HQ to you?”
“The charming décor, obviously,” I grumble.
“Our clubhouse is downtown. We run an ink shop out of there, too. Gotta keep things looking legit for the tax man, right?”
“So what do they think this place is then?”
“Running bets are on religious cult or free-sex community.”
“Oh.” Not much I can say to that, really. Rebel gives me a grin that’s only half as wicked as normal. He opens the door to the bar and stands back so I can enter. “Good luck,” he whispers. And then the door is slamming behind me.
Motherfucker. So much for letting Lexi know I’m here. Guess that’s all on me. My eyes struggle to focus in the sudden dimness of the room. It smells of sticky, syrupy liquor and fried food. The kinds of smells you’d associate with any normal bar. Except there’s a chemical bite to the air in here as well. Something unfamiliar yet recognizable at the same time. It hits me at the same time my eyes manage to adjust to the darkness. Paint. It smells like wet paint.
“Sloane?”
I spin around startled by the voice behind me. And there she is, my sister, dressed in what can only be an oversized man’s dress shirt, though where she got that is anybody’s guess. Seems as though it’d be hard to find a guy around these parts who frequently wears anything but a black T-shirt and a leather cut. Alexis shakes her head slowly, as though she can’t actually believe her own eyes.
“Did he tell you I was dying again?” she whispers.
“No. He didn’t. I just…I thought…”
Alexis walks toward me, her eyes locked on me like she thinks I’ll vanish if she even blinks. “You came to see me,” she says simply.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” She puts something down—a paint palette. The object looks odd in her hand. I’m used to seeing her with a textbook pinned under one arm and a cell phone in her other, but a paint palette? Yeah, I’m having trouble making sense of the image. The shirt she’s wearing is actually covered in paint—small splashes and long laces of color that stain the white fabric from collar to cuff. “Um,” she says, and the two of us just look at each other. “Is everything okay with Mom and Dad?”
“Maybe you should go visit them. I’m sure Mom would love to see you. It’s been a long fucking time since she laid eyes on you, y’know?” Since running into Dad with Agent Lowell, I’ve spoken to him twice on the phone—once to let him know I was back at work, and a second time when he called me to let me know he’d told Mom. Told her the truth. Since I knew Alexis was alive and things with the DEA had come to a head, he figured it was okay for Mom to finally hear the truth—that her daughter hadn’t been in a horrific car crash and forgotten who she was. That instead she found herself involved in a dangerous court case that had swept her as far from her family and her old life as she could get.
“I just don’t know…what to say to them.” She paces around me, a look of anxiety pulling on her features. She’s different now. The last time I was with her, I didn’t take the time to look at her properly. I was too busy exploding at the news that she was married. Now that I’m seeing her in this environment, the subtle differences and the changes in her are plain to see. Even though she’s stunned by my sudden arrival and clearly on edge, she carries herself with a confidence she never really possessed before.
I’d always thought she was still a baby before she vanished into thin air. The truth is that she was an adult even then, but now she seems older. More woman than girl.
“I can understand that. But…you should still make the trip. It won’t matter what you say to them. They’ll just be happy to see you alive.”
Alexis walks across the bar, eyeing me carefully out of the corner of her eye. She goes to stand in front of a canvas that’s been erected in front of a window, where the tables and chairs of the bar have all been pushed back to make room. “Aren’t you going to give me hell?” she asks. She picks up a paintbrush and slowly draws it over the material in front of her, though I can tell she’s not really paying attention to what she’s doing.
“No, I’m not.” I surprise myself when I say this. The whole journey here, I’ve gone over everything I want to say to her. How badly I want to tell her she hurt me. How badly I worried. How sick and twisted my head got when I used to lie in bed at night and imagine what was being done to her. And lastly, I thought about how I would tell her all about what I gave away in order to get her back.
But now we’re here and Alexis is standing in front of me, I don’t want to make her feel bad. I just want to understand, and I want to move on. Desperately. I want to shelve the toxic anger eating away at me, and I want to stop feeling so betrayed.
Alexis places the tip of her paintbrush handle into her mouth and turns to face me, drawing in a deep breath. “I can understand how you feel. And I’m really sorry for keeping things from you. You deserved better than that. You know...” She sighs, apparently struggling with her words. “I always loved you, Sloane. I do love you. I didn’t want what happened to me, and once I found myself in a situation I couldn’t get out of, I didn’t want you to be dragged in or harmed in any way, either. I did what I thought necessary to keep you safe. And I know it backfired. I know you ended up in danger anyway, and I know you nearly lost everything because of me. You’ll never know how sorry I am for that.”