Page 117 of Unmanageable

The word has been sitting on my chest like a block of lead since we left the mountains.

I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter. There are three million people in this metro area. It’s a huge place. Hundreds of square miles of sprawling concrete, identical shopping centers, and pine trees.

There is absolutely no way she is going to be here.

She doesn’t even leave her neighborhood. She probably doesn’t even leave her living room anymore.

But my chest won’t loosen up.

All I can think about is one specific house. A house with three empty gin bottles under the kitchen sink, a layer of gray dust over the piano keys, and a woman who looks so much like me it makes my own reflection in the rearview mirror feel like a threat.

“We need food,” Cash says suddenly.

He hooks the steering wheel hard to the right, swinging the van into the entrance of a sprawling, brightly lit grocery store parking lot.

“We don’t have time for a grocery run,” I say, my voice rising. “The equipment manager needs those files, and—”

“The equipment manager can wait ten minutes,” Cash interrupts, his sneakers hitting the pavement before the engine has even fully died. He slams the door, the sound echoing through the rainy dark.

I let out a sharp breath. My heart is doing a fast, annoying rhythm against my ribs.

I can’t stay in the van. If I stay in the van alone with the engine off, the noise inside my own head is going to drown out the rain.

I open the door and step out into the drizzle, my flats sinking into a puddle of greasy water as I hurry after his long, broad-shouldered stride toward the automatic glass doors.

Cash is already three aisles deep, his massive frame crowding the produce section as he tosses four bunches of bananas and three plastic tubs of pre-cut fruit into a wire basket. He doesn’t look back at me when I catch up, his shoulders high and defensive under his shirt.

“Get some of those protein bars you like,” he mutters. “The ones that taste like cardboard and cost eight dollars. You haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.”

“I’m not hungry,” I say, my arms crossed tightly over my chest, my eyes darting toward the end of the aisle. Every shopper looks like a potential catastrophe.

“Excuse me.”

Fuck. This.

What are the fucking odds that she’s here?

I turn around.

She’s standing by the celery, wearing a beige trench coat, the hem dark with wet road spray, but it’s belted perfectly around her thin, skeletal waist.

Her red hair is exactly the same shade as mine, but hers is thin, dry, and pinned back with a tortoiseshell clip that’s missing two teeth. Her skin is translucent, pale as lard, with the same cluster of small, orange-brown freckles across the bridge of her nose that I have.

Her eyes are clear, wide, and glassy with that brilliant, terrible brightness that only comes after three highballs before four in the afternoon.

She is holding a small plastic basket containing three lemons and a single, large bottle of gin.

She looks at me. Then she looks at Cash.

“Well,” she says, her mouth curving into a slow, elegant smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “I thought I recognized the posture from the window. You always did stand like you were expecting someone to hand you a subpoena, Elise.”

Cash stops. He looks from the woman to me, his dark eyes instantly tracking the red hair, the pale skin, the green eyes, and the uncanny physical symmetry between the two of us.

“Mother,” I say, the word feeling like ash in my mouth.

I haven’t seen her in over two years, but the script doesn’t change.

The immediate twist of embarrassment in my gut is familiar—a dull, tired ache rather than a sharp shock.