Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

“You never liked her,” I said, before I even knew I was thinking it.

“Oh,” she said softly, joining me at the window. “Is that what this is about?”

“This what?” I peered over at her.

“The way you’ve been acting. The way you keep putting Joanna between us, like a ghost challengin’ my every step alongside you. Like she’s still alive.”

If only you knew, I thought, turning away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do,” she said, too softly. Her gaze was uncomfortably hard upon mine. “Now I don’t expect you to get over something like this in a minute, but you’re holding onto Jo like she’s the only person you ever lost. And while she always was a strong pillar for you to lean on, she was by no stretch of the imagination perfect.”

“I never said I was!”

Shit.

Cher blinked once, then again. “Well, no sugar, you’re not either. But at least you don’t pretend nothing’s ever touched you. That no one ever will again.”

My jaw clenched. “Neither did Jo.”

“The fuck if she didn’t,” Cher said, surprising me. “She was like a clock, dropped the day she was attacked. Outside she looked normal, but inside she no longer worked.”

I sucked in a breath so deep and quick that it was as if I’d been punched. “You bitch.”

Cher’s chin shot up, pointed and perfect. It made me wonder if she and Olivia practiced that look in the mirror together. “I’m going to ignore that comment because I know you’re under severe mental stress, but I need you to keep going, Olivia. Don’t stop working . Find a reason, a purpose, to get up in the morning. Don’t you remember how good that feels? To have a goal? It used to be your computer work, or the semiannual sale at Saks, but you have nothing motivating you now. And do you want to know why?”

“No.”

She told me anyway. “Because you think you are nothing. You feel guilty because she died and you didn’t.”

“That’s not true! I have nothing to feel guilty about. I tried to save her,” I said, not knowing if I was saying this as Olivia or myself. “I tried but I couldn’t!”

“So stop kickin’ yourself over it!” she said, and forced me to look at her. “It’s like you died that day too, right along with Joanna, who never did learn how to live again—”

I gasped.

“—after the attack.” She drew away, as if just realizing what she’d said. Shaking her head, she said, “I’m sorry, sugar, but I have to say this. We swore we’d always be honest with one another.”

“Honesty doesn’t mean being hurtful,” I shot back, knowing even as I said it that sometimes it did.

“It means being truthful, the way you wanted to be truthful with Jo. You were just too afraid she’d tune you out, or turn you off, or do whatever it was she was doing to the rest of the world.”

“She’d never do that to me!” Would I have? If Olivia had pushed me? If she’d tried to get me to be more open and exposed…more like her? And Cher?

“How do you know? You never tried! And now that it’s too late, now that you’ve been gravely hurt, you’re wondering—”

“What are you, a psychoanalyst?”

“—if she was right,” she continued, ignoring the acidity of my words. “If it’s just easier to shut everyone and everything off. To feel nothing—”

“I’ve been isolated at the hospital if you haven’t noticed!”

“—and so you’re becoming just like her. An empty shell. A broken clock. Pretty soon, you’ll be just another ghost walkin’ around, haunting the world with your empty presence.”

It was too close. Too close to what I’d felt like. Too close to what I’d believed.

“Get out,” I said through clenched teeth. “Get out of my apartment.”

She offered up a small, bitter smile, as if I’d just confirmed all she’d said. “That’s just fine, Livvy-girl. I’ll give you the space you think you want, but at least I won’t regret not speakin’ my mind. And there’s one more thing…”

I heaved an impatient sigh.

“No, don’t turn away. I want this to be like crystal between you and I. Your sister did not like me, she did not respect me, and she did not treat me well. I want to help you, Liv, but I’m not…” She pursed her lips, fighting for control. “I mean, I refuse to be your punching bag too.”

I thought she might break there, even hoped for it a little, but she didn’t. She took a deep breath and finished what she had to say.

“If you keep comparing me to Joanna, you’re not going to like what you see. I’m just me, same as always. And I’m not going to change. Not even for you.”

“And what would you know about change?” I said, my voice gravelly and low. “What could you change if you really had to, Cher? Your nail polish? Your hair color? Your wardrobe?”

She whitened at that. “Well, congratulations.” She swallowed hard. “Looks like one of us has Joanna down to a T.”

And she whirled away, heading for the door in a blur of color and scent and indignation.

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth together so hard my jaw ached. “I don’t understand what you want from me!” What anyone wanted from me. “I watched my sister die, Cher! I almost died!”

“Well, we’re all gonna die, darlin’. Until then—” Cher flung the door open and threw me a hard look over her shoulder. “—you’d better learn to fuckin’ live.” And the door slammed behind her.

The bitch.

Though no sooner had Cher left than I wanted to call her back. Isolation crowded in around me, silently shaping itself to my body, Olivia’s frame. I turned one way and then the other, sniffing, before I relaxed. There was nothing and no one there. I was quite simply alone. Just as I wanted to be. Right?

“Paranoid,” I muttered, zeroing in on the bedroom. It was the one room Cher and I hadn’t gotten to yet. I kicked the wall as I headed toward it. “Let’s get this over with.”

The room was shadowed, but pleasantly so, and there were flowers, as well as one of those spider plants even I couldn’t kill. Now that I thought of it, Olivia had given me mine, and I wondered if this was its sister plant, if they’d both taken root at the same time, and if the other still lived among those things that used to be mine.

The carpeting was new. Butter cream and berber, it gave stiffly beneath my feet as I crossed to the bed and looked beneath it. Not a dust bunny to be found, never mind a scimitar or severed hand. The sheets were new too, I could smell that, and the glue that held the full-length windows in their oblong frames had only just lost that overtly pungent smell. I suppose I should have been uneasy in a room where I’d witnessed so much violence and carnage. A room, I thought, where I’d committed even more. But it was too tidy, too pink, and too benign.

I was just about to leave when I saw the closet door slightly ajar. Nothing strange in that…except that the rest of the house was obsessively ordered. I frowned, took a step toward it, another, and realized my heart was outpacing my feet five to one. I found myself wishing for my weapons, any weapon, before shoving the thought impatiently aside. Silly, I thought, reaching for the handle. It’s just an empty closet.

She leapt the moment I opened the door. There was a growl—hers, mine?—then a blur of white fur streaked through the open door and out into the living room. Cursing, I put a hand to my chest. Luna, my new feline roommate.

“Luna-tic, is more like it.” I sighed, sagging against the doorjamb. “I need a drink.”

In the kitchen, I grabbed the vodka I knew lived in the deep freeze and poured it straight over ice. Leaning against the counter, I closed my eyes and sipped, but my mind kept seeing the still-wrapped present sitting on the coffee tray. I leaned against the granite counter, fighting the urge to go to it. I both wanted to open the gift and I didn’t. To know what Olivia had gotten me, yet keep not knowing. Opening it would not only reveal the object inside, but it would cement it too. No more silly surprises in my future, I thought, sipping again. No more present tense. Only Olivia, dead in the past.