ing him not to disturb the neighbors. Meg honked at
him and peeled out of the driveway. Her pulse was
thrumming in her ears, and she felt alive, alive, alive
with adrenaline and anger. That night she went to a
party with her friends, drank too much alcohol, and
kissed a girl.
A few weeks later, Meg got a call from Sam-
my.
“When are you going to come home?” her
sister asked. “Mom and Dad are worried about you.”
Meg snorted, wrapping the ends of her
choppy hair around her fingers. “Sure, they are,”
she drawled. “And what about you? Are you wor-
ried about me?” She closed her eyes, hoping Sam-
my couldn’t hear the undercurrent of anxiety in her
voice.
“Of course,” Sammy replied, quickly and
without hesitation. Meg withheld a sigh of relief.
“But—”
Meg’s eyes snapped open. Her fingers stilled.
“This . . . bisexual thing. It’s only a joke, right?
To freak out Mom and Dad? Like the tattoos?”
Meg promptly hung up.
Margaret opened her eyes. Nothing had
worked out the way it was supposed to, had it? She’d
wanted to prove to her parents that she could look
the way she did, love whomever she wanted, and
still have a happy, fulfilled life. But look at her now.
She had no family, no friends, and no spouse, just a
crummy apartment and an exhausting, meaningless
job.
At a much slower pace than before, she
trudged back to the apartment building. For so many
years it had been a fixture on her horizon: even when
she walked away from it, her absence was only ever
temporary. That infernal building had never reced-
104
ed from her vision the way she’d thought it would.
With a sense of finality.
The graffiti artist had gone, leaving swathes
of color on the chipped brick wall. Margaret looked
at the painting for one, long moment, then abruptly
turned away.
This time, the elevator was empty, though
the memory of the toddler she’d last shared it with
made her think of Sammy. She’d given birth to two
kids, and Margaret hadn’t been there. She twisted
her cold fingers together, hard.
Predictably, Margaret’s apartment was still
in the same state of disarray as she’d left it.
She walked over to the fridge and removed
the jar of applesauce. She couldn’t help but scowl at
the offending purée before tossing it into the trash
can. It hit the bottom with a satisfying thump, and
Margaret exhaled in release.
Slowly, almost gently, she returned to the
kitchen counter to pick up the card. It had been
years since she’d gotten a Christmas card: Miranda
had stopped sending them long ago. She smoothed
out the crumpled corner and did what she hadn’t
done before—she flipped the card over.
Written on the back in blue ink was her
sister’s familiar scrawl, so different from her own
handwriting. Growing up, they had always thought
it funny that though identical twins, their handwrit-
ing was anything but alike. Now, Margaret read the
loopy letters, over and over again, and imagined
Sammy bending over this piece of paper, writing her
this message. Had she been nervous? Excited? Hesi-
tant?
The message, the first in seventeen years,
contained five words and a string of numbers.
Call me. I miss you.