The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [103]
“Are you going to tell them about you?” Cordy asked. Her eyes remained fixed on the road, unreadable to Bean.
“No!” Bean said, scandalized at the thought. “Christ, can you imagine?”
“It’d take the pressure off me. I’ll do it for you,” Cordy said, a weak joke that made us sick to our stomachs. Other sisters did that kind of thing, probably, but despite our petty conflicts and discomforts, we were not that kind of sisters.
“Cordy, seriously. You can’t tell anyone. Ever.”
“You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Pretending? You don’t even know. I think about it all the time, Cord. It’s the first thing I think of when I get up in the morning and it makes me so sick I just want to vomit.” It makes me so sick I have to spend the night in another woman’s bed, using her husband’s midlife crisis to make me forget myself.
“I know that feeling,” Cordy said, and she didn’t mean just morning sickness, but Bean wasn’t listening.
“I hate myself. I hate what I let myself turn into, what I let myself do. It’s like the person who did all that didn’t even . . . It’s like someone I don’t even know. Because I wasn’t raised like that. I don’t have some excuse, like some troubled childhood with a hole I’ve got to fill. I just did it because I thought I needed it. I thought I deserved it. It’s sick.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Father Aidan,” Cordy said. She looked over her shoulder, reflex despite the cardboard blocking her view, moved toward the exit off the highway into the city limits. “You like him like him.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything I was just saying?”
“Everything,” Cordy intoned.
“Look, he’s hot,” Bean said. “For a priest. But do you think a priest would have me?”
“I don’t think priests are supposed to have anybody,” Cordy pointed out. She pulled to a stop at the light. Beside us, a man gone ragged from wear held a sign drawn on cardboard. Cordy smiled and shook her head, and he rattled his way down the exit ramp.
“I just like him. As a friend. I think he can help me.”
“Just for the record, fucking is not helping,” Cordy said.
“Shut up,” Bean replied.
“If you want him, you’re going to have to break it off with Dr. Manning,” Cordy said.
Bean froze. Cordy looked over at her and shook her head. “Bean, you can’t think we wouldn’t notice.”
“I didn’t . . . It’s not . . .” Bean began, but there was nothing to say. Caught, again.
“I don’t think you’re a bad person, you know. You’ve done worse things, I’m sure. Hell, I’ve done worse. But that isn’t seriously what you want, is it?”
“No,” Bean whispered, and her throat was thick with tears and guilt. “I mean, when I’m with him I’m happy, but . . .” She trailed off. She wasn’t, of course. Forgetting wasn’t the same as being happy. Being drunk wasn’t the same as forgetting, and as often as she was literally drunk when she was with him, she was just as much intoxicated by the effort of forgetting everything she had to face.
“No, you’re not,” Cordy said cheerfully. “You’re obviously miserable, Bean. We’re at our most miserable when we’re doing it to ourselves. Sad, but true.”
“Like you’re so happy,” Bean said.
“They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”
“Don’t martyr yourself on my account,” Bean snorted, but Cordy’s words had the sting of truth.
“I never claimed to be happy. Fortunately, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. And how you’re going to break it off with him. Whether you want Aidan or not.”
“I can’t,” Bean said, retreating again.
“You must,” Cordy said. “It doesn’t make you feel the way you want it to make you feel. It doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make anyone’s life any better. It just keeps you from moving on.”
“Moving on to what?” As if there was anything in Barnwell worth moving on to.
“Whoever you’re going to become,” Cordy said, as though that solved anything. “The