At the end of the message, Claire—and I know it’s her, because I know her screen name, like I know Tess’s, like I used to know everything about them, or thought I did—has typed:
sigh. dinner time find u later xo always
I look for Tess’s reply but there isn’t one. Just that last line, from Claire. xo always
I don’t—what is this?
I close the message and click on one of the photos. It’s of Tess, and was taken before she was a senior. I can tell from her hair, which is long, practically down to her waist. She only wore it short her last year in high school, cut it so it barely reached her shoulders right after—
Right after she found out about Claire.
In the picture, Tess and Claire are lying on Tess’s bed, grinning up at the camera and snuggled against each other like … like friends, but more. You can see it in how one of Tess’s hands rests on Claire’s leg, lies curved familiar above her knee.
You can see it in how Claire is turned toward Tess, one hand tangled in Tess’s hair as the other holds the camera above them. Both of them are smiling, and they look …
They look happy.
They look like they’re together.
I click through a few more photos. Some of them are like the one I just saw, and some of them make everything even clearer, show Claire’s bare back shielding Tess’s front as Tess grins up at the camera she’s holding, eyes half closed.
In the last one I look at, Tess’s head is resting in the crook of Claire’s neck as her hands cover Claire’s breasts, and Claire has her eyes closed, her mouth turned toward Tess, seeking.
I have to sit and look at the floor for a little bit after that one. I just … Tess and Claire. All those times they were in here with the door closed, listening to music and working on homework, they were …
No wonder Tess always yelled at me for trying to come in her room without knocking.
I look at the dates on the photos, and they seem to run from Tess and Claire’s freshman year to right after their senior year started. To right before Tess came home and spit out, “Claire’s pregnant.”
The last two photos are dated about the time I figure Claire got pregnant. The first one is in Claire’s room—I’ve seen Cole scrabbling across the comforter that lies tangled on the bed.
It’s morning, and Tess is lying on her stomach, sleeping, her closed eyes facing the camera but not seeing it. Not seeing anything. The light is tangled in her hair, shining off it and the bare skin of her back. She looks otherworldly, beautiful.
Underneath, someone has added Bliss in an elegant, cursive font, like they tried to title the photo.
The second photo shows Tess at a party on the beach, sitting and talking to a guy. She’s smiling, mouth curved wide, familiar, but her eyes are looking at the camera, not him, and they look—
They look sad, but they look angry too.
The same font has been used to label this photo as well. It says Your Choice.
I stare at it, wondering who wrote those words—Tess? Claire?—and what they mean. I know what happened, but there’s something … there’s something I’m not getting. Not seeing.
I close the folder and open the other one, “beth messages.” There’s only one thing in it, and it was last opened—
It was last opened on New Year’s Eve, right before Tess left for her party.
It’s another online conversation, but it’s not from that night. It’s from before, from Tess’s last semester in school, from last fall, and from the first line, when someone says, I need to talk to u, I know it’s a fight.
I think it must be the fight that ended things.
It’s hard to tell, though, because the person I think is Beth (Beth0728—it has to be her) is the only one talking.
She says she needs Tess to trust her, and that she wants to stop pretending.
There’s no reply, but Beth keeps writing, types that she knows who she is, and adds that everyone knows about us already.
Still no reply, and Beth types, i don’t know why you cant admit it. i want us to be together for real i want to be able to say this is my girlfriend.
Still no reply and Beth types, say something say anything don’t get all quiet on me okay? Please? Tess?
Nothing and Beth types, fine. i can’t take it anymore. you have to do this or it’s over. OVER. you know Im not Claire I won’t break your heart.
Tess finally types something back then.
She types, I broke my own heart.
“Oh,” I say, and my voice is loud in the silent room, so loud I can hear it above the roaring in my ears, hear it past the words I’ve just read and the memory of those photos of Claire and Tess.
Claire and Tess and in the very last photo, Claire wasn’t in it at all. It was just Tess and that guy, Tess smiling at him as she stared at the camera. Stared at whoever was taking the picture like she was sad and angry. Stared, but wasn’t moving. Was sitting by the guy’s side like it was where she wanted to be. Had to be.
Claire took the photo. Claire was the one Tess was looking at.
Your Choice.
Claire told me, “She only ever said she loved me,” and now I realize what that means. What Tess did. She said it, but only in private. She said it, but would never, ever do anything more. Anything public.
Claire didn’t break Tess’s heart. Tess broke hers.
I just don’t know why. Was it because Claire got pregnant? Did Claire cheat on her and Tess couldn’t—wouldn’t—forgive her?
I broke my own heart.
Those words are so familiar. Too familiar.
I call Beth, because she’ll know what happened. She has to, but as soon as I say, “It’s Abby, Tess’s sister,” she says, “I’m not talking to you. I know you’re angry, but you have to understand that I can’t—”
“But that’s just it,” I say. “I didn’t understand, but now I do, and I just want to know why you and Tess broke up.”
Beth laughs and it sounds so much like Claire’s laugh when she talked about Tess before, so brittle and angry and sad, that my skin prickles.
“Why?” she says. “You want to know why, like it’s just one reason, just one thing?”
“Okay, I’m sure it was complicated, and I didn’t mean—I just want to know what happened. You lived with her, you two were—”
“I can’t talk about this,” Beth says. “I just—I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“No,” Beth says. “I mean I can’t. I don’t know why she wouldn’t admit we were together. Go ask Claire, always lurking around her hospital room, always hanging around in Tess’s head, always—always there.”
“Claire?”
“What, you’re surprised? You didn’t know?”
“I do, but I don’t exactly know what happened.”
“I don’t either,” Beth says, her voice weary. “All I ever knew is that something happened with Tess and Claire and—well, my guess is Tess freaked out because Claire ran off and had a baby rather than admit she loved Tess and it fucked Tess up. Ask Claire if you want to know. It’s not like—God, it’s not like you haven’t had the chance.”
“But—”
“No,” Beth says. “Two years, okay? I loved Tess so much and she loved me but not enough, never enough, and I finally told her to choose and she just—she shut down, spent the rest of the semester looking through me, and now she’s in the hospital and I won’t ever—” She sniffs once, twice, like she’s struggling not to cry. “I’ve had to let her go and I can’t—don’t call here again.”
And then she hangs up.
“What are you doing?”
I look over my shoulder and see Mom standing in Tess’s doorway, glancing from the computer to the phone in my hand, and then to me. She looks worried but not surprised, and I wonder if she’s trying to figure out why I’m in Tess’s room.
“I was—” I point at Tess’s computer. “I was just looking for something. A file. For school.”
/>
“On Tess’s computer?” Mom says, shaking her head at my transparent lie, and I say, “I just—Tess was—is—” and watch her expression change ever so slightly.
Watch her realize I’ve found out something she already knows.
Mom knows, and I stand up, putting the phone down as I say, “You … why didn’t you tell me about Tess?”
I figure Mom will try to talk her way out of it, say she wanted to wait or something like that. But she doesn’t.
She just says, “It wasn’t my place to tell.”
“Wasn’t your place?” I can hear my voice rising. “All this time I thought Tess—”
“What?” Mom says, eyes narrowing, and I think she actually believes I’m going to judge Tess for who she cared about, that I—
“Hey!” I say. “I’m not—you mean you didn’t tell me because you thought I’d, what? Try to set her on fire? What kind of person do you think I am?”
“Abby,” she says, coming toward me and touching my arm. “I didn’t—”
“You did too.”
“No,” she says softly. “I didn’t. I don’t. I—I just don’t know what you know.”
“How about Tess was in love with Claire, and I’m pretty sure Claire loved her, but it looks like Tess got hurt. And then she met Beth but couldn’t bring herself to admit they were a couple, so—”
“We’d better go downstairs and talk,” Mom says. “There’s … there’s some things your father and I need to tell you.”
“You mean there’s more?” I say, stunned, and Mom nods before turning away. I hear her walking downstairs.
After a moment, I follow.
forty
I figure we’ll sit in the living room stiffly, like we’re strangers, and that Mom and Dad will be nervous, look at each other as they tell me about Tess, using each other’s expressions to figure out what to say and how to say it.
Instead, we sit in the kitchen and eat dinner like we used to. Like we did when Tess was home. Like we did before her accident, back when Mom and Dad wondered out loud about how Tess was doing, gesturing at her empty chair like she was still there as they talked about their days and asked me about mine.
I’m not prepared for this, for how easily my parents start talking about Tess, Dad glancing at Mom as I sit down and nodding once before saying, “I don’t know if Tess would have ever told us anything if I hadn’t walked in on her and Claire when I went to tell them good night back when they were fifteen.”
“You might not remember,” Mom says, passing me a bowl of corn. “You were twelve, and—”
“The night Claire went home because she was sick from eating too much ice cream, only I never saw her eat any, right?” I say, and Mom nods.
I always knew something had happened then. I just didn’t know what.
“Anyway, we sent Claire home because—well.” She clears her throat.
“You were surprised,” I say, still feeling pretty surprised myself, especially as I watch Dad take the smallest amount of corn he can, just like he always does. Shouldn’t there be drama? Shouldn’t we at least be speaking in hushed voices or something? Shouldn’t it not be so … normal?
“Well, yes,” Dad says. “We were surprised. But Tess—well, she was the one who asked Claire to go.”
“Dave,” Mom says, fondness and exasperation lacing her voice, and gives him another scoop of corn before looking at me. “So then your father and I talked to Tess. And yes, before you ask, that’s why we let you stay up late and watch television downstairs.”
“Right,” I say, watching as Dad sneaks the extra corn back into the bowl just like he always … just like he always did back when us eating dinner like this was normal.
But this isn’t normal.
We haven’t eaten dinner together in ages, not like this, so why now? Why tonight? They didn’t know I knew about Tess, there’s no way they could have, so this dinner—
They planned it. Before Mom found me in Tess’s room, this was going to happen. They set this up to tell me something, I’m sure of it.
But what?
“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice sharp, and Mom glances at Dad, and Dad glances back at her like I thought they would at first, like how I’d pictured. Like they’re trying to figure out what to say. How to say it.
“Just tell me,” I snap when neither of them speaks, and Mom looks at me as if she’s never seen me before.
As she does, I realize there is a lot she doesn’t know about me. I’ve kept myself hidden from her and Dad just like Tess kept herself hidden from me.
“First of all, don’t talk to your mother like that,” Dad says. “And second—” He picks up a piece of chicken like he’s going to take a bite, like this is still a real dinner, like Tess is going to walk through the door. Like she’s still really here.
“Stop it,” I hiss. “Stop pretending, stop—just stop all of this and tell. me. what’s. going. on.”
Dad frowns, clearly unhappy with my tone, but Mom leans over and squeezes his hand. “We spoke to the hospital today,” she says. “We’ve made arrangements for Tess. The day after tomorrow, we’re having her moved and we—we’d like you to be there, Abby.”
I crack into a million pieces then. How can I not, with Eli and Claire and Tess—who she was, who she is—how can I not crack when I have all these unknowns? How can I not crack when Tess’s being taken out of the hospital? When she’s being written off?
How can I stay whole when everything has changed so much, so fast?
“I—you’re really doing it? You’re willing to say this is it, this is the rest of her life, forever lying in a bed somewhere not seeing the world, not seeing anything?”
“Abby, honey, we’re only moving her,” Mom says at the same time Dad says, “Abby, it’s not like—you know it’s not like that. Tess could wake up, she could. But we—”
He breaks off then, and looks at Mom.
“We’re moving her,” he finally says, his voice very soft. “We have to. She’s just—” He clears his throat. “She’s just not ready to come back. At least not now.”
I can’t believe this is happening. Why now, when I see that I’ve been so wrong about Tess, that I don’t even know her at all? I mean, her whole life; all the plans and excitement about seeing guys, about talking to them, all of that—all of them—meant nothing to her, but Claire—Claire meant everything. Tess and Claire were together, and Dad found out and Tess asked Claire to …
Wait.
“Hold on. You said Tess told Claire to leave when you—when you found them?” I ask Dad, and just like that dinner collapses. Oh, we’re still here and the food is still here, but nobody’s eating now, and the tension I was sure would be here before is out now, smothering the room in silence.
It stays like that, so quiet—too quiet—for a long time, and then Mom puts her fork down, pretense done.
“Tess didn’t—she said she wasn’t …” And my mother—my always together, always polished mother—gestures at the air helplessly, like the words she’s looking for are just out of reach.
“She said she wasn’t a lesbian,” Dad says, and when Mom looks at him, he says, “We have to tell her everything, Katie.”
“Tell me everything?” What else could there be?
Dad pushes his plate away. “Your sister wasn’t—she wasn’t comfortable talking about her sexuality.”
Well, there’s a word I don’t ever want to hear Dad say again. He must somehow know I’m thinking it too, because he gives me a small, sad half smile and says, “Tess looked at me like you just did whenever I tried to talk to her. Said she and Claire were friends, and the way I understood the world had changed.”
“But—”
“But they were more than friends,” Mom said. “We could see that. Tess and Claire spent so much time together, and neither of them ever dated anyone else, not seriously, but Tess would never talk to us, never—”
“Never admit it?” I say, and Mom shakes her head.
/>
“It’s not that simple, Abby. She eventually told me she did have feelings for Claire but that she—she was afraid.”
“Afraid?” I say, and then think about Claire. About Cole. “Oh. She was afraid Claire didn’t—?”
“I don’t know—no, that’s not true,” Mom says, and folds her hands together. “I don’t think she was afraid that Claire didn’t care about her too. She knew that she did. I think Tess was afraid that if she—”
“Came out?”
“No,” Dad says, touching Mom’s hands briefly. “She was afraid that if she admitted she loved Claire, she would lose her. Your sister was—she had some problems.”
“Like being afraid to come out?”
Dad shakes his head, and Mom knots her hands together so tightly her knuckles go stark white, bloodless. When she speaks, she sounds like she’s trying not to cry. “She … Tess was a lot like my mother. Even as a child she could be so happy one minute, and then the next she’d pull away from the world.”
She looks at Dad, who nods at her, and Mom closes her eyes.
When she opens them, they are wet with unshed tears. “Do you remember when Tess went to see the college admissions counselor during her senior year?”
I shrug, but I remember. How could I not? She pitched such a fit about everything, and my parents wanted to help her get into the school she wanted to go to, wanted to—
Wanted to help her.
“Oh,” I say. “So senior year, she wasn’t—all those times she went to talk about getting into college, she wasn’t talking about college at all, was she?”
“You must have noticed how she acted after Claire got pregnant,” Dad says. “She was—”
“Upset,” I say, and think of how Tess’s sometimes moodiness had come more often and gotten stronger, worse. All those things she did—like the meatballs, that sudden furious, frightening outburst—and I never thought—
“I didn’t know,” I say. “I thought … She was Tess. She always—everyone said she was so amazing. So perfect.”
“She wasn’t,” Dad says. “She was … she was very unhappy.”