TWO YEARS LATER
The city is stifling. The asphalt radiates heat, the sidewalks reek of trash, and families passing by clutch melting popsicles that ooze down their hands with each step. Sunlight reflects off buildings like laser beams in an old-fashioned heist movie, and I feel like a glazed donut left out in the sun for days.
Despite being five months pregnant in this heat, Libby looks effortlessly radiant, as if she just stepped out of a shampoo ad.
“Three times,” she marvels. “How does someone get dumped and end up in a full lifestyle makeover three times?”
“Guess I’m just lucky,” I reply. It’s really four, but I’ve never been able to tell her the whole story about Jakob. Years later, I still struggle to process that one myself.
Libby loops her arm through mine, her skin soft and dry despite the midsummer humidity, while mine feels sticky in the heat. Though I inherited Mom’s height, everything else—her strawberry-blond hair, her wide ocean-blue eyes, and that sprinkle of freckles—seems to have funneled down to my sister. She’s short and curvy, taking after Dad’s side of the family, though we wouldn’t know for sure since he left when I was three, and Libby wasn’t yet born. Where her eyes are a clear, vibrant blue, mine are more stormy and dull, a shade closer to “frozen-over lake.”
She’s my absolute favorite person, the Marianne to my Elinor, the Meg Ryan to my Parker Posey.
“Oh, Nora.” Libby pulls me close as we reach the crosswalk, and I savor the moment. No matter how hectic things get, we’ve always been in sync. I’d think of calling her, and my phone would ring, or she’d suggest meeting up for lunch and we’d already be in the same neighborhood. Lately, though, it’s felt different. Like we’re not just in separate lanes but entirely different lakes—me a submarine, her a paddleboat.
Now I often miss her calls while I’m in meetings, and by the time I call her back, she’s asleep. She finally invites me to dinner on a night I’ve promised to take a client out. And even when we are together, something feels off, like we’re not quite aligned.
At first, I thought it was the new baby stressing her out, but she’s only seemed to pull away more with time. I lie awake at night, replaying our last conversations, searching for signs, tiny cracks.
The light changes to WALK, but a few cars still race through the red. When a man in a sharp suit steps off the curb, Libby nudges me along after him. There’s an unspoken rule that cab drivers won’t hit people who look like him. His outfit says, “I have a lawyer,” or possibly, “I am a lawyer.”
“I thought you and Andrew were good together,” Libby says, slipping easily back into the conversation—never mind that my ex’s name was actually Aaron, not Andrew. “I don’t get what went wrong. Was it because of work?”
Her gaze shifts to me when she mentions work, sparking a memory: me sneaking back into our apartment during Bea’s fourth birthday party, only to find Libby giving me that sad, wide-eyed look, like a disappointed cartoon puppy. Work call? she guessed. I’d apologized, and she’d brushed it off, but I suddenly wonder if that was the moment I started to lose her—a subtle shift where our lives began to drift just far enough apart to weaken the seams.
“What went wrong,” I finally respond, jumping back into our conversation, “is that I probably wronged some powerful witch in a past life, and now she’s cursed my love life. He’s moving to Prince Edward Island.”
We stop at the next crosswalk, waiting for traffic to ease up. It’s a hot Saturday in mid-July, and everyone is outside, wearing the bare minimum, eating melting ice cream or popsicles packed with flavors that probably have no business in a dessert.
“Do you know what’s on Prince Edward Island?” I ask.
“Anne of Green Gables?” Libby replies.
“Anne of Green Gables would be long dead by now,” I say.
“Wow. Spoiler alert.”
“How does anyone go from living here to moving somewhere where the big attraction is the Canadian Potato Museum? I’d die of boredom within days.”
Libby sighs. “I don’t know. I could go for a bit of boredom right about now.”
I glance at her, my chest tightening. At first, she looks as she always does—perfect hair, a healthy flush to her skin—but as I look closer, I notice little things I missed before. The way her mouth droops at the corners, the slight hollows in her cheeks. She looks tired, worn out.
“Sorry,” she mutters, almost to herself. “I don’t mean to be the Sad, Droopy Mom. I just really need some sleep.”
My mind is already buzzing, mapping out ways I could help Libby and Brendan without them noticing. Money is always their underlying worry, but they’ve been too proud to accept direct support for years, so I’ve had to get creative. The recent “work call” Libby may still be annoyed about was actually a Birthday Present Trojan Horse: a “client” who “canceled” a “nonrefundable room at the St. Regis,” which only “made sense” to use for a girls’ midweek slumber party.
“You’re not Sad, Droopy Mom,” I say, squeezing her arm. “You’re Supermom. You’re the one strutting around Brooklyn Flea in a jumpsuit, toting her stunning kids, a bouquet of wildflowers, and a basket of lumpy tomatoes. You’re allowed to get tired, Lib.”
She squints at me, amused. “When was the last time you counted my kids, Sissy? There are two of them.”
“Not to make you feel like a terrible parent,” I say, nudging her belly, “but I’m pretty sure there’s a third one on the way.”
“Fine, two and a half,” she admits, eyes flickering toward mine cautiously. “So, how are you, really? About the breakup, I mean.”
“We were only together for four months; it wasn’t serious,” I reply.
“Serious is how you date,” she points out. “If someone makes it to a third date with you, he’s already passed 450 separate criteria. It’s hardly casual dating if you know their blood type.”
“I don’t know their blood types,” I argue. “I only need a credit report, a psych evaluation, and a blood oath.”
Libby throws her head back, laughing. Her laughter is like pure serotonin to my brain—maybe it’s my heart? Probably my brain. Serotonin in the heart would be a medical emergency. The point is, her laughter gives me a sense of control, of everything being right with the world.
Maybe that makes me a little narcissistic, or maybe it’s just a thirty-two-year-old sister thing, remembering whole weeks when I couldn’t pull her out of bed after we lost Mom.
“Hey,” Libby says, slowing down as she realizes where we’ve ended up, almost as if we were unconsciously drawn here. “Look.”
If you dropped us into the city blindfolded, we’d probably still find our way here: gazing wistfully at Freeman Books, the cozy West Village bookstore beneath the apartment where we used to live. That tiny space was where Mom would spin us around the kitchen, all three of us singing along to the Supremes’ “Baby Love” into whatever kitchen utensil was closest. It was the place where we’d spend countless evenings on a floral pink-and-cream couch, watching Katharine Hepburn movies while snacking on a buffet of junk food spread out on the coffee table Mom rescued from the curb, a stack of hardcover books taking the place of its broken leg.
In books and movies, characters like me always seem to live in cement-floored lofts decorated with bleak, modern art and filled with strange, four-foot-tall vases of scraggly black twigs for no reason I can fathom. But in reality, I chose my current apartment precisely because it reminds me of this place: old wood floors, soft wallpaper, a hissing radiator, and built-in shelves overflowing with secondhand books. Its crown molding has been painted so many times that its edges have softened, and the tall, narrow windows show the slight warping of age.
This bookstore and that apartment upstairs are my favorite places in the world. Even though it’s also the place where our lives changed forever twelve years ago, I can’t help but love it here.
“Oh my gosh!” Libby grabs my arm, waving toward the display in the window—a pyramid of Dusty Fielding’s runaway hit, Once in a Lifetime, now with a fresh movie tie-in cover. She pulls out her phone. “We have to get a picture!”
There’s no one who loves Dusty’s book more than my sister. And that’s saying something, considering it’s already sold over a million copies in just six months. People are calling it the book of the year—a blend of A Man Called Ove and A Little Life.
Take that, Charlie Lastra, I think to myself, as I do every so often when I recall that fateful lunch. Or when I pass his closed office door—a little extra sweet now that he’s working at the very publishing house that released Once, surrounded daily by reminders of my success.
Fine, I think Take that, Charlie Lastra more often than I’d like to admit. One doesn’t easily forget the first time a coworker provoked her into extreme unprofessionalism.
“I’m going to see this movie at least five hundred times,” Libby tells me. “Back-to-back viewings.”
“Better pack a diaper,” I advise.
“Not necessary,” she replies. “I’ll be crying so hard there won’t be any liquid left in my body.”
“I didn’t realize you had such a… comprehensive understanding of anatomy,” I say.
“The last time I read it, I cried so hard I pulled a muscle in my back.”
“Maybe a little exercise wouldn’t hurt,” I tease.
“Rude.” She gestures toward her pregnant belly, then nudges us back on course toward the juice bar. “Anyway, back to your love life. You just need to get back out there.”
“Libby,” I say, “I get that you met the love of your life when you were twenty and have never had to date. But picture a world where thirty percent of your dates end with the guy confessing his love for feet, elbows, or kneecaps.”
Honestly, I’d been floored when my whimsical, romantic sister fell for Brendan—a nine-years-older accountant who’s deeply interested in trains—but over the years, I’ve come to realize he’s the most reliable guy I’ve ever known, and he and my sister are soulmates.
“Thirty percent?!” she cries. “What kind of dating apps are you even on, Nora?”
“The normal ones!” I protest.
To be fair, yes, I’ve taken to asking about “quirks” right away. It’s not that thirty percent of men mention their unusual interests twenty minutes in—that’s my whole point. Just last month, my boss, Amy, went home with someone new and discovered an entire room filled floor-to-ceiling with ceramic dolls.
"How inconvenient would it be to fall in love with someone only to discover they had a room full of dolls? The answer is ‘very.’
“Can we sit for a second?” Libby asks, slightly out of breath, and we maneuver around a group of German tourists to sit on the edge of a coffee shop’s windowsill.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “Can I get you something—water?”
She shakes her head, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I’m just tired. I need a break.”
“We should have a spa day,” I suggest. “I’ve got a gift certificate—”
“First of all,” she interrupts, “you’re lying, and I can tell. And second of all…” She bites her lip, gloss catching the light. “I had something different in mind.”
“Two spa days?” I guess.
She cracks a small smile. “You’re always saying that August is dead in publishing and you don’t have much going on…”
“I have plenty to do,” I insist.
“Nothing that requires you to be in the city,” she counters. “So, what if we went somewhere? Took a few weeks to relax? I’ll have a break from all the kids, you can stop thinking about Aaron, and we can just get away from being Supermom and Fancy Career Lady. Maybe even go for a whirlwind romance with a local... lobster hunter?”
I stare, trying to figure out if she’s joking.
“Or, a fisherman? Lobster fisherman?” she says, shrugging.
“But we never go anywhere,” I point out.
“Exactly.” Her voice has an edge, and she reaches for my hand, her nails chewed down. I try to swallow, but it feels like my throat is closing. In that moment, I’m sure there’s more going on with Libby than just exhaustion, money worries, or frustration with my schedule.
Six months ago, I would have known exactly what was wrong. I wouldn’t even have had to ask. Libby would’ve shown up at my apartment unannounced, flopped dramatically onto my couch, and sighed, “You know what’s bothering me, Sissy?” I’d pull her head into my lap, gently teasing my fingers through her hair while she poured out her worries over a glass of crisp white wine. But things are different now.
“This is our chance, Nora,” she says quietly, her voice both urgent and pleading. “Let’s take a trip. Just the two of us. The last time we did that was in California.”
My stomach drops. That trip—like my relationship with Jakob—is a part of my past I do my best to avoid revisiting. Nearly everything I do is aimed at ensuring Libby and I never fall back into the dark place we were in after Mom died. But the truth is, I haven’t seen her look this close to breaking since then.
I swallow hard. “Can you really get away right now?”
“Brendan’s parents can help with the girls.” She squeezes my hands, her blue eyes bright with hope. “When this baby comes, I’m going to be a shell of myself for a while. Before that happens, I really, really want to spend some time with you—like it used to be. And honestly, I’m three sleepless nights away from pulling a Where’d You Go, Bernadette, if not going full Gone Girl. I need this.”
My chest tightens as I imagine a heart trapped in a metal cage. I’ve always struggled to say no to her. Not when she was five and wanted the last bite of cheesecake, or when she was fifteen and wanted to borrow my favorite jeans (they never quite recovered from her curves), or when she was sixteen and, with tears in her eyes, said, “I just want to not be here.” So, I swept her off to Los Angeles.
She never actually asked for those things, but she’s asking now, her palms pressed together, her lower lip jutting out. I feel panicked and breathless, even more rattled than I am at the thought of leaving the city. “Please,” she whispers.
Her fatigue has softened her presence, making her look almost translucent, as if my fingers might pass right through her if I tried to brush the hair from her brow. I didn’t realize it was possible to miss someone this intensely while they’re sitting right beside you, until now, where every part of me aches with it.
She’s here, I remind myself. And she’s okay. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.
I push down every excuse and complaint bubbling inside me. “Let’s take a trip.”
Libby’s face breaks into a wide grin as she shuffles on the windowsill to pull something from her back pocket. “Good, because I already bought these, and I’m not sure they’re refundable.” She plops the printed plane tickets into my lap, and in an instant, it’s like none of this heaviness ever existed. For the first time in months, I have my carefree baby sister back. I’d give anything to keep us frozen in this moment, to hold onto her when she’s this radiant. My chest loosens, and breathing feels easy again.
“Aren’t you even going to see where we’re going?” Libby asks with a laugh.
I glance down at the ticket in my hand. “Asheville, North Carolina?”
She shakes her head. “That’s the closest airport to Sunshine Falls. This is going to be… a once-in-a-lifetime trip.”
I groan, and she throws her arms around me, laughing. “We’re going to have so much fun, Sissy! And you’re going to fall in love with a lumberjack.”
“If there’s one thing that really gets me going,” I reply, “it’s deforestation.”
“An ethical, sustainable, organic, gluten-free lumberjack,” she amends with a wink.
