Page 75 of The Better Sister

“You’re the one with the epic recipe. We’re cool with takeout.”

“Fine. I’ll do everything. Butyou,” she said to me, “better be back fast. Andyou,”she said to Ethan, “are gonna DJ while I prep.”

My storage unit was by Hudson Yards. On the side of the brick building, the gigantic banner that carried the pithy ad of the month read “You’ll finally have enough space to pretend to do yoga at home.”

The movers had followed my instructions and left the desk so that the drawers were directly next to the unit’s entrance and could be opened without rearranging anything. I opened the pencil drawer and felt around until I found what I was looking for—Ethan’s burner phone. I tried powering it up, but the battery was dead.

I was halfway to the elevator when I turned around. I opened my desk file drawer and pulled out Adam’s file on Rives & Braddock while I was at it.

By the time I got home, the pine of the Christmas tree had been replaced by the smell of butter and garlic. I found Nicky and Ethan in the kitchen. She was pulling stems from a pile of peppers while he read off songs from his iPad, asking what she wanted to hear next.

“Oh god, I’m scared,” I said, eyeing her handiwork. I did not share Nicky’s tolerance for spicy foods.

“Don’t worry. They’re shishitos. Not hot at all, I promise. Wait, where are you going?”

“Just changing into chill clothes. I’ll be right back. I’ll even chop something.”

I closed my door, threw my briefcase on the bed, and opened my nightstand drawer. I still had the charging cord for the burner phone Jake had given me. I plugged it into the phone I had found in Ethan’s backpack. It fit.

I already knew what number I was going to find, but I needed to be sure. The screen lit up. It wouldn’t be long.

39

I waited until the following day, after Ethan left for a bowling party one of the kids from Casden was having for his birthday. I was surprised Ethan was on the invitation list, and even more surprised that he had accepted.

I unplugged the burner phone that was still charging in my bedroom, pulled the envelope from the Cuyahoga County Clerk of Courts, and made my way down the hall to Nicky’s room. She told me to come in after a quick tap on the door. She was carrying a bundle of clothes from the window bench. “Sorry, I was just straightening up.”

“Nicky, you don’t need to clean your room for me. It’s your room.”

“I’m cleaning for myself. I’ll never be as OCD as you, but I’m not atotalpig.” She dropped the items on top of her dresser. “What’s up?” she said, gesturing to the envelope in my hand as she took a seat on the edge of her bed. She must have sensed from my expression that I wanted to talk to her about something.

I flipped open the phone and read the number I had already pulled up on the screen. It was stored under “N.” A 440 area code. I thought nothing of it when I first found the burner in Ethan’s backpack—just another one of Ethan’s friends he didn’t want us to know about, I assumed. Cleveland had been 216 when I lived there. Apparently 440 had been added after I left.

I had already tried calling the number the night before. The woman who answered told me she’d only had the number for a month.

Nicky’s brow furrowed, and she bit her lip.

“He was calling you a lot,” I said. “For months.” He had started to tell me when he finally opened up about what happened the night Adam was killed, but I had cut him off, assuring him that the tensions between Nicky and me were in the past.

I had expected her to lie, because in my mind, Nicky always lied when backed into a corner. Instead, she admitted it. “He started reaching out to me about a year ago, saying he wanted to know me better. I’m the one who told him to get a burner phone, and I did the same. I was terrified that you and Adam would see he was calling me, and find a way to cut me out even more than you already had.”

It wasn’t an irrational fear. Adam had had their custody agreement written with ironclad provisions that punished Nicky for any type of unauthorized contact with Ethan.

I remembered Ethan coming into the living room and showing us thePostarticle about his bringing a gun to Casden. “A gun?” Nicky had said. “You never told me about this.”

Her comment seemed strange at the time. I never told her anything about Ethan, because we hardly ever spoke. But the comment hadn’t been directed at me. It was for Ethan. Whatever information he was sharing with her, he hadn’t told her everything.

“He talked to you about us?” I asked, sitting next to her on the bed.

“Not initially. Honestly, I don’t think he knew at first what to say to me, but I could tell he wanted a connection. So I’d just talk about my life instead. The jewelry I make. The tomatoes I was trying to grow, even though it was obvious I was never going to make it work. I told him funny memories of you growing up. Old Tessa next door became a bit of a character in the stories—the way I’d always find her going through neighborhood trash, searching for hidden treasure.” My parents’ neighbor Tessa had been the local crazy old lady even when I was little. She had probably only been my age at the time. “Over time, he opened up. It was clear he was having problems with Adam.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me.”

“And I didn’t understand why you weren’t tellingme. We’re obviously in a different place now. I figured Ethan was almost an adult and could start making his own choices about what role I’d play in his life. He slowly started sharing more about what was going on—Adam struggling for power, trying to control everyone and everything. It brought back all those old memories. He said ever since Adam found out about the pot, he’d been spot-checking Ethan’s room. Treating him like a criminal. I believe him about not selling, by the way, but he was smoking—a lot. Too much. It sounded so much like me before I got sober. He swore he wasn’t addicted, but said it made him feel better. And then Adam would try to tell Ethan that he’d done all these bad things when he was high.”

“What do you mean, ‘bad things’?”

“So I guess if he smokes too much, he crashes. Like a sleep you can’t wake up from.” I thought of all the times Ethan had come up and fallen into a coma on the sofa. I didn’t even realize he was high. “Adam would go yell at him and try to wake him up, and Ethan would be out cold. And then Adam would tell him later that Ethan had screamed at him for coming into his room. And then he told him that he had nearly hurt Panda, throwing him off his bed.”

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