Page 27 of The Better Sister

“Kiddo here says you made a reservation at some swank hotel for me.”

“The Marlton, right down Fifth Avenue.” It was relatively new and nicer than the Washington Square hotel where we usually put her, but the real reason Ethan liked it was for the pastries they sold at their coffee bar. They had some fancy French name we always forgot, but they were known in our family as crack croissants.

“Thanks for the offer, but if it’s okay with you, I’m fine on the couch. If I’m going to be here, I want to spend actual time with you guys.” Nicky had never balked about staying in a hotel before, but apparently that was because we were living with Adam. She did a double take at the far wall of my office. “Is that a Murphy bed? I don’t think I knew you had that. In fact, I don’t even think I’ve been in here before.”

“It’s really uncomfortable. And the bathroom’s all the way down the hall.” I knew I was being obvious, but didn’t care. I did not want Nicky underfoot twenty-four hours a day for however long she was planning to stay with those giant suitcases.

Before I could stop her, she had pulled the bed open. “This is perfect,” she said, plopping down on the neatly tucked-in white coverlet. I noticed Ethan slip out of the room while he had the chance. “And I promise I’ll stay out of your way. This room is huge. Quite a step up from your original middle-school home office.”

My father had made Nicky switch bedrooms with me when I was in the eighth grade so I could have the room that was large enough to house a desk. By then, it was clear that I was the one who would actually use it, but Nicky always saw it as punishment for dropping out of college after the first semester.

I tried one more time as Nicky was rolling the first of her suitcases into the office. “Seriously, don’t you want a whole room to yourself where you can unpack and spread out? Have a little privacy? And really, I don’t mind paying for it at all.”

“I know. You’re always so generous, but really, I don’t want to go to the hotel. You won’t even know I’m here, I promise.” She swallowed hard and then added, “Please, Chloe.”

I nodded, averting my gaze. “Of course. Whatever’s best for you.”

“And I’m sorry again about offering your bathroom to Jeremy. I should’ve texted you first, but my battery was dying. And for what it’s worth, I’ve been seeing someone anyway, so I wasn’t cruising him, if that’s what you thought.”

“Really, Nicky, it’s okay. And I’m happy for you about seeing someone.” Nicky’s habit of unloading the personal details of her relationships had ended once Adam left her. I had no idea whether it meant that there were no details to be had, or that she had simply figured out that I could no longer be the person with whom she shared them.

“We’ll see. He’s fifty-two. Divorced with two kids. I haven’t even told him about Ethan yet, so—” She stopped abruptly at the sound of footsteps approaching in the hallway.

Ethan was lugging Nicky’s second suitcase into my office when my cell phone rang. It was a 631 area code. Long Island. I decided to answer.

“Ms. Taylor, this is Detective Guidry. I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a few more things I’d like to go over. I have to come into the city for a district attorney thing anyway. Is it okay if we talk in person? I could come to your place, if that’s okay.”

I was suspicious about whether Guidry was actually planning to be in the area, but if I couldn’t find a way to stop Nicky from occupying my office, I didn’t know how to refuse a police officer’s request to see me in person. I wondered if I had made a mistake asking Guidry to be the one to call Nicky with the news about Adam. I had no way of knowing what she might have said about me.

Because as much as Nicky said she loved me and was grateful for the life I had given her son, I knew she had never forgiven me for marrying her husband.

16

I never meant to fall in love with him.

The first time Adam actually met me was when he came by the house to pick up Nicky for a date and ended up giving her kid sister a lift to her friend’s house in Shaker Heights. But I remembered knowing about Adam when he was still in high school. I must have been in the sixth grade, and my parents would let me hang out at the mall with my friends all day on Saturdays.

Maralyn Fisher, Kristin Hoesl, and I were sitting on the bench outside Limited Express, right by the food court and movie theater. We spent the afternoon protecting our prime mall-watching territory no less seriously than gangsters fighting for turf, until Kristin’s older sister and her friends decided that they were going to take our space if we all wanted a ride home at the end of the day. We stood nearby and eavesdropped as they rated the various classmates who walked by: hot or not. Their attention eventually landed on the kid with the dark wavy hair and green eyes taking movie tickets at the Regal.

“Great jawline, but he’s a total dork.”

“You know how grown-ups say ‘she’s got a good personality’ about ugly girls? He’s like, theoppositeof that. Everything’s blahbut his face. I tried glancing at his algebra test last year, and he nearly knocked over his desk trying to block my view.”

It was Kristin’s sister who reserved judgment, watching him like a collector summing up a piece of artwork. “I don’t know, you guys. I think he’s gonna be that stud we all regret blowing off one day when he shows up at the high school reunion with his Harvard degree and a private jet.”

When he disappeared at the end of August, I wondered if he really had gone away to Harvard. I noticed him a few times around Christmas and the next few summers, but never actually talked to him. To me, he was just that smart movie theater guy that Kristin’s sister had lodged in my imagination.

But then, more than ten years later, when I was the recent college graduate coming home for a visit, he showed up at my parents’ to pick up Nicky. As it turned out, no one who went to Jefferson High School got into Harvard, but Adam did get a full ride to the University of Michigan. And he was the guy my sister had been talking about ever since she’d gone to her ten-year high school reunion that summer. I remember how different she looked that weekend, opting for natural makeup, a loose blowout, and simple, tasteful clothes instead of her usual hippie-dippie woo-woo outfits. Nicky never looked that good—ever. I remember feeling sorry for her, like she was pretending to be someone else to impress her former classmates.

But it must have worked—at least on Adam, who had finished his first year of law school at Case Western and was nothing like the usual guys who were sniffing around in Nicky’s direction. Even in the few weeks I spent in Cleveland before starting my assistant job atCity Woman, I could see the roles they were playing. He was the local boy done good, crushing the grading curve and landing the plum positions on the law review board. And Nicky duped him into thinking she was exactly what he needed—a fun, loyal girlfriend whose number one priority would be helping him achieve his every goal.

And then, much to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, Nicky actually got her act together. Being Adam’s girlfriend gave her an identity that helped guide her conduct and decisions. I wouldn’t usually want to see a woman make a man her sole purpose in life, but for her, it worked. Instead of sleeping all day until her shift at the restaurant, she’d drive Adam to and from campus so he didn’t need to hassle with parking. In between, she’d run not only her errands but his, so he’d have more time to study at night—often in the back booth at the restaurant where she waitressed, so he could spend time with her when it was slow. Most restaurant owners might have resented a regular lingerer, but with Adam in the picture, Nicky didn’t miss work and even showed up on time. And I assumed my parents and I weren’t the only ones who didn’t miss the parade of horribles that would often drop in to see my sister.

Nicky held it together for more than three years—mostly. I’d learn later that there had been a couple of episodes where she got wasted at his law school parties, but it didn’t stand out that much compared to other students. In her most serious early transgression, Adam threatened to break up with her when she got stopped for a DUI and then insisted the police officer call her boyfriend because he was “your boss.” At the time, Adam had just finished an internship at the DA’s office and had accepted an offer to work there after graduation. The episode could have derailed his career before it had even started, but the officer offered to release Nicky to a family member if she promised she’d never drive after drinking again. Then, instead of breaking up, they moved in together. Adam would tell me years later that Nicky convinced him that the only reason she’d been drinking so much was that she was worried he was going to leave her once he was a lawyer because she wasn’t as educated as he was.

No one in the auditorium cheered louder at the graduation ceremony than Nicky did when Adam walked across the stage, magna cum laude. “We did it, babe!” she screamed, earning applause from the rest of the audience. For Nicky, the accomplishment was as much hers as his.

Adam started working at the DA’s office, and Nicky stopped waitressing. Amid talk about her going back to college, he bought her a big stack of SAT prep books and even made flash cards so he could help her study at night. By my count with the calendar, it was probably right around then that Nicky got pregnant. She said she forgot to take her birth control pills a couple of times, but I had my suspicions.

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