“I went home,” Annie said, “and I told my mom what Lily said. I thought she’d say Lily was crazy.” She looked at her mother. “She didn’t say anything. She just sat down at the kitchen table and started crying. And then she told me everything.”
“At two in the morning,” Teresa said quietly. “When I got home from my shift. I couldn’t lie to her anymore. Not after that girl put her whole savings in a box.”
“I kept the sweater,” Annie said, touching the cardigan. “I don’t know why. I threw the dress, but I kept the sweater on. I didn’t even think about it.”
I looked at the cardigan. The little hole near the left cuff.
“He bought that,” I said. “For Lily. The last Christmas.”
Annie looked down at it. Her face went white.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, no.” She started to take it off. “I’m sorry. I’ll give it back. I didn’t know…”
“Don’t,” I said.
I don’t know why I said it. It just came out.
She stopped with one arm half out of the sleeve.
“Lily wanted you to have it,” I said. “Keep it on.”
That’s when I heard the stairs creak.
Lily was standing at the top of the staircase in her pajamas. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were still swollen. She was holding the railing.
I don’t know how long she’d been there. Long enough. I could see it in her face.
Annie stood up. Then sat back down. Then stood up again.
For a long moment, nobody said anything.
Then Annie said, “I’m sorry.”
Her voice broke on it.
Lily came down the stairs slowly. She stopped on the bottom step, right next to me. She didn’t look at me. She looked at Annie.
“I’m sorry,” Annie said again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know, Lily.”
“I know you didn’t,” Lily said quietly. “I should’ve told you a different way. I’m bad at stuff like that. I thought if I made you something nice first, you’d… I don’t know. Like me first. Before you found out.”
“I already liked you,” Annie said. “I thought you were weird. But I liked you.”
Lily laughed. It was a wet, broken little laugh.
Then Annie crossed the living room, and Lily stepped off the bottom stair, and they hugged. Two sixteen-year-old girls in the middle of my living room at six-thirty in the morning, one in pajamas, one in a dead man’s cardigan, holding each other and crying.
Teresa covered her mouth with both hands.
And I sat on the bottom step and watched my daughter hold a sister I never knew she had, and I felt like the floor was tipping out from under me.
They left about an hour later. Annie had to get ready for school. Teresa had to sleep before her next shift.
At the door, Teresa tried to hand me the watch box.
“Lily should have this back,” she said. “And the money. It’s too much. We can’t take it.”
Lily stepped forward. “It’s not mine. It’s Annie’s.”
“Honey…”
“It’s his watch,” Lily said firmly. “And I had him for thirteen years. She had him for one ice cream a year.” She pushed the box back into Teresa’s hands. “Please.”
