Content Warning: alcohol, sexual references.

Bible Grove hasn’t changed in the absence of the two Stephens sisters. Sadie Stephens takes this in the way she takes in the decaying maple groves, the way she takes in the two churches on opposite sides of the town; the vending machines outside Duck’s Retail Store; the feathers littering the gravel road a sign of Mary Jane’s turkeys moved to the butcher in time for Thanksgiving.

On the highway’s horizon Bible’s Grove looks to be no more than a blip of starched yellows and the color of blood. It had felt as foreign to Sadie as another country. But now, as she pulls into the stretch of rural suburbia, her Kia Sorento panting beneath her, she relishes in the familiarity of the peeling paint of Josie Mae’s farmhouse, the way the high school shrinks against the backdrop of a dust colored sky. 

No, she thinks, her teeth digging into her bottom lip, Bible Grove hasn’t changed much at all since the sister still around to return has grown up and grown out. She had thought it’d be decades before she came back here, but here this town is, pulling her back on and back in, slapping her shoulders and shaking her down.

Her childhood home is slightly more weathered, and has adopted a groaning at night. Her parents are the same as the house: lined, aged. When she greets them, her mother’s eyes begin to water. It’s the tragedy of her face: something she has never been able to escape since even before Sylvie went missing. She pulls her mother into a hug so she doesn’t have to look; so neither of them have to see the devastation of the other. Her father’s welcome is gruff. He reminds her of an open wound, a leaking bed sore. His eyes are perpetually bloodshot, and he’s holding a beer even though she arrives before noon.

She wants to say, I thought you don’t drink, but she doesn’t think he could even hear her. He’s got that faraway look to him that unsettles a person. It unsettles her. Her mother helps her take her bags up to her room, wincing as she climbs the stairs.

“Bad hip,” she says by way of an explanation, and Sadie wonders how awful of a daughter she has to be to not know these things about her own parents.

“Thank you,” Sadie tells her mother when they reach her childhood bedroom. It looks the same as ever. Two twin beds, one with the sheets so neatly folded, so untouched, it looks like a relic. The other is unmade, messy, the covers thrown back haphazardly: Sylvie’s bed. Her parents haven’t touched it for six years.

“Don’t mind your father.” Her mother rubs her hands together nervously, “He, well,” her mother pauses in her sentence, suddenly flustered. It’s obvious she is looking for an explanation. She has none. Sadie takes pity on this woman, so frail she thinks an open window might settle her into the ground for good.

“Don’t worry about it, Mom.” She offers her a smile and her mother returns it weakly, close-lipped.

“I was thinking the Tavern for dinner tonight. I can order takeout. It will be just like when you were in high school.”

Neither comment on the obvious, though her mother’s expression falters. That they are down one obvious member: the one that made those dinners exciting-- her presence a livewire. Sadie looks toward the unmade bed once more, scratches the back of her hand. She wonders why she suddenly feels like she is about to cry.

“Well,” her mother says, rubbing at the nape of her neck. She looks around the room. “Let me know if you need anything. I washed the sheets.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Her mother smiles again, one of relief. The two linger for a moment in silence. Her mother seems to be drinking in her face, her expression for one brief second open and hungry. It quickly collapses though, back into that tired veneer Sadie can barely recognize. She feels they are playacting at people they once were but no longer remember how to be. Her mother brushes her hands against her skirt and sighs, interrupting her thoughts.

“I’ll let you settle in then. Let me know if you need anything.”

Sadie doesn’t remind her she’s already said that, only awkwardly wiggles her fingers goodbye as her mother turns and disappears through the doorway. She doesn’t sit down on the bed. She refuses such intimacy. Rather, she wanders over to Sylvie’s side of the room, examines the half-made friendship bracelet lying discarded on the nightstand. The beads are alternating between purple and blue, two beads in the center with the initials S+C. Sadie turns away, fingering her own bracelet, still clinging to her wrist like a bad memory. She wishes she hadn’t come back here, to this room forever preserved as if Sylvie had gone out for a jog and nothing more. She wishes for something more.

The growing light of the day illuminates the chipped paint of the walls, the pencil marks where she and Sylvie used to measure each other. She was always slightly taller, even though they were identical. Sylvie used to accuse her of standing on her tiptoes. It used to piss her off, but now fills her with a near unbearable longing. She stands there now, surrounded by Sylvie, her memory everywhere, a stain against the pink wash of the walls, the dust covering the floorboards. Sadie takes it all in, inhaling, exhaling, breathing in the last vestiges of her sister. And then she sits down onto the made bed, eyes focused on the ceiling, remembering the last time she was in this bed, remembering the warm body that had lain next to her, the green of the eyes flashing in the dark. Her own eyes squeeze shut.

She wishes her mother would wash Sylvie’s sheets.

As luck would have it, her father passes out before five o'clock. Her mother is flowering with apologies, excuses from her lips pelting Sadie like rain. She says to her mother she doesn’t care. She says it’s fine. Her mother makes chicken broth soup for one, reminds her the funeral is tomorrow, asks if she wants to visit the morgue. Sadie says no thank you, but she thinks: I would rather die.

For whatever reason, before that moment, she did not think of the body. Now, however, it is all she sees: imprinted on the backs of her eyelids. She imagines seventeen-year-old Sylvie, hanging over a medical table, a sheet draped over her breasts, her stomach. She imagines her skin a tinted blue. Except it is not Sylvie under those towels moistened with embalming fluid: it is herself. Cold and empty, trapped in a metal drawer, her chest as still as glass. She attempts to sit down with her mother, but her mother wants to talk about it all. She wants to imagine Sylvie, wants to bring her back to their table, and Sadie can’t stand it so she makes excuses about visiting friends she no longer has and ducks out of the house, finally able to breathe again.

She isn’t sure where she wants to go. No one else will have her. Instead, her feet take her to the only worthwhile bar in Bible Grove. She shouldn’t be surprised that it looks the same in the thick of Indigo’s as it does everywhere else in this town she can’t seem to escape from. It’s crowded with flannel and mustaches and people she thought she might never see again. People she wishes she’d never see again because she’s trying to convince herself she’s outworn this town, and this bar and these leeches and yet here she is.

Here it all is: Jean Weaver, with the loud eyes and loudmouth and loud question that it can’t be Sadie Stephens in Indigo’s. Not here. Certainly not tonight. Here is Brucie Lionel who graduated in the class below her and who went out on one date with Sylvie in middle school, but who of course, feels a claim to her life anyways. He is staring at her from across the bar like the other sallow faced patrons, but the weight of his reptilian eyes feels distinctly hostile, like he knows that there’s something deeper than just her face and name that’s an anomaly. That she should’ve stayed here to fuck and rot and die like the rest of them. Here it is. And here she is. God, why is she here?

God answers with the appearance of Clover Ortiz through Indigo’s frosted door. Sadie turns her head toward the entrance and feels as though she has been picked up and dropped back down flat onto her chest. She can barely take in a breath as she takes in Clover. Her Clover. Some sickness deep within her unfurls, aches and pulses with need. She wasn’t expecting this. She needs a second to collect herself, collect her thoughts. Of course, Clover would return for the belated funeral. Perfect Clover. Good Clover. Sylvie’s best friend. But Sadie wasn’t prepared, not really. She had hoped to see her, perhaps, at a distance at the funeral. To look at her in person and not just on her sparse social media, drink in the sight of her without the risk of an interaction.

But not here. Not in Indigo’s with the rest of their graduating class who have come for the funeral. Despite knowing better, Sadie’s body begs her to get up. To talk to Clover. To ask how she is, what she thinks of this shit, this impromptu in-memoriam at a bar that Sylvie never even stepped foot into. There’s so much still left unsaid, so many questions yet to be answered, like do her lips still taste the same? Would she still laugh at her jokes, press her fingertips to her lips and then her cheek? Would she still call her ‘Sades’, pant her name, break into her body? As if feeling the weight of her gaze, the desperation that sours Sadie’s tongue like rancid wine, Clover turns her head.

Sadie thinks a punch to the stomach would be less jarring. Clover’s eyes are still light green. Realistically, she knows a person’s eyes don’t really change color with time. But it feels odd that this woman-- still so resplendent in her beauty-- could have ever been her Clover. She drinks in her features like she’s a Monet. She’s swallowing her, this poised woman and the tight leather of her pants, the off-the-shoulder top slinking down her arm. She waits. And Clover looks away. There’s not even the remnants of a flicker in her gaze. As if Sadie doesn’t affect her at all. 

No.

She must be wrong. She continues staring, now at the back of Clover who is engaged in conversation with some girl she’d been on the cheer team with. And she’s thinking there’s a possibility Clover just didn’t see her. That Clover will turn around and despite everything come over, a grin lighting her face, dimples winking at her. But someone is talking, someone is saying: “Did you see that Sadie Stephens is here?” And how could Clover not hear? How could Clover not react? All she does, however, is incline her head politely and a thousand moments or years they never spent together shatter between Sadie’s scraped fingers.

She looks down toward the wood on the table. She focuses on her nails. They are bitten, the paint chipped in places. She curls them toward her palms, and the alcohol spreads its fungus from her cheeks toward the tops of her breasts, warming her humiliation. She should call Clover over, make her acknowledge her. She’d bring up the kid Clover has. The kid she knows only from rare Instagram stories that she stalks from a dead account. Sadie would bring up her students, her job at Brown. She’d say: And what have you been up to Clover? Relish in seeing her on the defense. Relish in decomposing the too composed woman that still moves over her body in dreams like a ghost. Still distracts her from the matter at hand: Sylvie. It should be about Sylvie, shouldn’t it? Isn’t that why Sadie’s here? To be the fucking spectacle for a town that still wishes it’d been her body dragged from the soil?

She doesn’t end up saying a thing. Clover moves on and moves past and Sadie is biting her tongue to keep from screaming. Thick blood fills her mouth, the taste of rust sliding down her throat. Someone laughs toward her left. The lights are dim. Indigo’s doesn’t use overhead lighting. Indigo’s uses table lamps and string lights and the glowing amber eyes of Bible Grove’s absent fathers. Indigo’s is using her. And she hates them at this moment. These people who have written her off as the one who survived but shouldn’t have. She hates Clover. She hates the way shadows cling to the corners of this bar, to her collarbone and her breasts. She taps her nails on her beer can, looks around again.

No one has acknowledged her in a good fifteen minutes. She feels silly. Embarrassed. Wonders when she will become anything but a vessel for the life her sister didn’t get to have. There’s some indie-folk singer in the back of the bar that she doesn’t recognize. They look sixteen. They look so young. Clover has moved toward them, as if drawn by the picture of youth. At least, this is what she thinks to herself. Maybe Clover is just drawn to the music. Maybe Clover has relearned how to taste each day without the acrid flavor of grief and remembrance still clouding her papillae, her present. Maybe Clover’s moved on.

Just the thought has her stomach roiling. She takes a swig of her Pabst and then remembers why she absolutely hates Pabst. But she’s not drinking cocktails with her colleagues. She’s in her hometown at this shitty, informal high school reunion. She’s in her hometown to bury her sister. She’s drinking to get fucked. She hears laughter again and this time it is Clover’s intermingling with the voices. Her nails make indents into her skin, scarlet half-moons that bubble with her fury. She should just leave. Go back to the stark white of her parents’ home, the pall that hangs over the chimney, a smog that both beckons and turns away-- as if it cannot bear the sight of itself. She thinks of her father, and wonders if he’s awake yet, if he’s sipping on his third glass of bourbon. She thinks of her mother, laying out outfits for the funeral tomorrow; five different versions of black, asking: Which one would Sylvie prefer? Her mother loves to make a mockery of them both.

She should leave. No one has bothered to approach her since she first got here. No one really knows what to do with her presence. She’s starting to chug the last of her beer when, as if the dingy bar has read her thoughts, a shadow appears at her elbow. 

“Damn, Stephens, it’s like we’re in college all over again.”

Her head snaps up, the veins of her eyes bleeding into the hard chips of slate gray. She doesn’t really know who she’s expecting it to be. Even though she recognizes the voice. Even though she should know it’s him. Alec Bowman stands over her, his awkward frame unable to do anything but hover. He is giving her the gift of a smile, which she accepts weakly. Her relief is potent. She really did not want to go home.

“Hey, Alec,” she says, like she’s greeting an old friend rather than someone she hasn’t seen in close to a year. He’s one of the few who left Bible Grove after graduation, like her. Not just like her. With her. The two had made it to Brown together-- unheard of for Bible Grove graduates. He’s still staring at her beer, however, equal parts amused and questioning, one of his thick eyebrows quirked up. She sets the can down, the nape of her neck prickling. Both she and Sylvie had taken after their mother in appearance, but right now she feels the spirit of her father like the devil on her shoulder. She scratches her clavicle.

“What’s the occasion?” Alec jokes, and it probably would have been ill-received if anyone else had made it. But it’s Alec. Alec who, with the exception of her and Clover, has arguably the most pairs of eyes on him in Indigo’s. Alec who hasn’t dated since they were in high school. It’s one of the reasons he’s been hailed as a monk around Indigo’s: his bachelor status being well known. However, she knows better, having seen him in college, the bodies slipping in and out of his dorm room-- all poor variations of her sister. And maybe that’s why she doesn’t say no when he slides into the booth opposite of her, grabbing the can with an air of familiarity she feels she should dismiss but doesn’t. He finishes it. Quickly. The only sign-- besides the deep bruise of purple under his eyes-- that he’s affected by their current situation.

“Isn’t this weird?” She asks, picking at the skin beside her nail. Her voice is low. She doesn’t want to run the risk of anyone overhearing and damaging her reputation that’s already been sent to hell. She doesn’t know why she cares when it’s becoming obvious no one else does. When Clover’s doing the rounds in the way Sadie should with her arms outstretched, her shining eyes. She should’ve been Sylvie’s sister.

“Yeah.” Alec interrupts the loathsome thought, pushes a hand through his hair, dark waves falling over a tall forehead. Everything about him is long. Sylvie had always liked that. “Doesn’t much feel like an in-memoriam for a seventeen-year-old, does it?”

“No,” Sadie agrees, “but I suppose Sylvie’s not really seventeen anymore. We’re twenty-three now.” Someone drops a glass behind the bar. The sound of scattering shards steals both of their attention for a long moment.

“I guess,” Alec considers this, then shrugs, “well, she’ll always be seventeen to me. Now that we know.” His tone is vacant of emotion, dripping with apathy. Sadie finds that it stings regardless. She wishes he hadn’t finished her beer. She signals for the waitress. Orders another drink. She rubs at her wrists and Alec’s gaze follows the movement, catching on the raised scars there. The corners of his mouth deepen and his gaze shutters. Right. On instinct, she drops her hands below the table. The obvious pity in his gaze causes the hairs on her arms to stand on edge. She’s had so much pity. He looks like he might say something, but she gets there first.

“I’m fine,” she says, a slight bite to her words. His eyes widen and his features smooth out, before quickly crumpling. He lifts his hands.

“I’m sorry.”

She moves to respond but he stops her.

“Sorry that I was looking.” He gestures to where her hands had just rested and she shrugs. She’s over it, really. If she tells herself that enough one day she swears it will be true.

“It’s fine,” she repeats, even though it’s not. They sit in silence for a moment, and her eyes wander back toward Clover who has steadfastly managed to avoid the corner of the bar Sadie is tucked into.

“Wild, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Clover.” Alec motions with the point of his chin to where she stands, engaged in an animated conversation. Sadie has no doubt what they are talking about, knows Clover’s regaling her audience with stories of her and Sylvie. Clover was always the best of all of them, and she’s proving it again with her charm, accepting condolences, doling out hugs.

“She’s a mom now and all that,” Alec pauses, “she seems to be doing well for herself.”

They both know what he means. She seems healthy. Healed. And it’s all too obvious to any person who knows them that she and Alec are anything but that. The resentment threatens to choke.

“I haven’t talked to her in a long time.”

The statement is an obvious dismissal and Alec nods in understanding. He doesn’t know what she and Clover were half a decade ago. That secret died with Sylvie. But most know by now that something happened. Why else did she leave all those years ago? Why else did Clover stay? She spots the waitress heading towards the table and meets Alec’s gaze for the first time that night. She is immediately struck by the despair there. Something empty in those endless pupils. It’s the same look he’s had since she first called and told him about Sylvie. It never seemed to leave. She understands. At that moment, she couldn't help it. She feels seen. And she knows she should go home, answer her mother’s stilted questions, pour over photo albums of baby Sylvie, toddler Sylvie, child Sylvie. If she was a better daughter she’d go now. Bid Alec goodbye, swing her coat over her shoulders. Suck it up. As it is, she settles back into the unforgiving wooden bench.

“Let’s do shots.”

“Really?”

She wants to laugh at the way he perks up like a puppy dog.

“Sure.”

“How many?”

She pretends to consider. She pretends like this is the most important thing in both of their lives. Like she isn’t going to bury her sister tomorrow. Like he isn’t going to bury the only girl he’s ever loved.

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Three.”

“Five.”

“Four.”

“Deal,” he says with a grin, shaking her hand with mock enthusiasm. The waitress, too young to recognize either of them, drops the drink back down onto the table.

“Anything else?” She tosses a look between them, at Alec’s dilated pupils, at their hands: still intertwined. Sadie doesn’t know why neither of them have let go.

“Four shots of your house tequila,” Alec sends a wink her way, “each.” The waitress pauses, contemplates a sigh, then nods and leaves the table.

“This really is college nostalgia,” she says, laughing. Alec rubs his thumb over the back of her hand before dropping it.

“I know. We’re gonna need it.” He casts a look around the bar. Someone makes a toast to Sylvie among the ruckus. His eyes narrow.

“I wonder if any of them even remember her. I doubt half of them could recall what she looks like,” she murmurs, half to herself. Alec raises an eyebrow.

“All they have to do is look at you.”

Right. She blushes. How is it possible to forget that they’d equate her face with Sylvie’s, still?

“It’s ok, though.” Alec rakes a hand through his hair again. “It doesn’t matter how they see you. You know, I still see you as Sadie-- the fireball from freshman year who could drink me under the table. Sylvie would’ve been proud.”

Sadie should be embarrassed by the sudden tears that spring to her eyes, but she can’t be. Not with half of a third drink sinking deep into her belly. Not with Alec who knew them. Who knew Sylvie and then knew her. Knew a version of her that even her parents didn’t. Even Clover didn’t. That Sylvie never got the chance to. But she’s not going to think of Sylvie. She’s already thinking of her too much as it is. And she’s certainly not going to think about Clover. Fuck Clover. The waitress balances four shots between her fingers and sets them down.

“The first two,” she says, and glances between them, “each.” It sounds like a warning. Alec and Sadie grin at each other. He takes the small glass between slender fingers, stares into the clear liquid for a second before raising it. She follows suit. The laughter has left his gaze. There’s something new there, something dark and oily that slithers down into the bottom of her stomach. His expression is deeply somber, in sharp contrast to the light levity before.

“To Sylvie,” he says, and her name hangs between them, heavy as a bullet. She swallows.

“To Sylvie.”

The glasses clink together on meeting, hit the edge of the splintered wood, and then there is nothing but fire down her throat, and a pleasant heat, spreading and spreading and spreading. The second shot goes down even smoother. And she’s thinking:

To Sylvie, To Sylvie, To Sylvie.

About the Author

I knew I wanted to be an author in the second grade, which was exceedingly lucky considering before that my number one goal in life had been to be a horse breeder (to this day I have no clue where that came from). From that moment on, writing has been with me. As a result, I've had the privilege of exploring many different genres, from creative nonfiction to short stories, to poetry, to longer pieces like novel chapters. For the past year, I've been honed in on refining my short story process, however, for a workshop class I felt compelled to write a piece that turned into this chapter. I've always had a fascination with twins and their relationship (which may or may not be because I, myself, am a twin) and wanted to toy with the idea of a novel that took the grand concept of a missing sibling and used it as a front to explore the interpersonal relationships between my narrator and their family and friends. This chapter is very much just the beginning to what I have in mind, but I hope it captures the essence of the deep chasm this loss has created within my narrator and leaves the reader wondering what happened to Sadie's sister and what has happened in the years between her disappearance and her being found.

Website

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Cover design made using Canva design tools.