The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [13]
“Oh,” Rose said. “Why?”
“Why does anyone quit a job? I didn’t want to work there anymore.” Bean pushed herself off the counter and strode over to the door. “I’m going upstairs to change. Where are Mom and Dad?”
“Dad’s at school, and Mom went out somewhere. They’ll be back later.”
“Great. Then I’m going to take a shower,” Bean said, and clopped off down the hall. The excitement over, Rose followed Bean up the bare wooden stairs and went back to her book. If we had been sisters of a different sort, Bean’s reticence might have been cause for curiosity. As it was, it was simply another secret we held from each other, one of a thousand we were sure we would never share.
Our parents, more out of atrophy than intent, had not changed our bedrooms in any way since we had officially moved out. This often led to curious paths of discovery, as it preserved objects and memorabilia we did not want to have with us in our new lives, but were still valuable enough that we couldn’t bear to throw them away.
Bean threw her bags on her bed—the heavy, tulle-crowned four-poster that she had swapped Cordy for years ago. Cordy now had the heavy, wrought-iron white bedstead Bean had deemed not sophisticated enough. To her, at fifteen, the heavy wood posts at the corners of this bed had seemed the height of elegance. Now it looked sad, the tulle grown dark with dust, the wood dull and unpolished, the bedspread faded where the sun had fallen, leaching out the color. She kicked off her shoes and walked over to the window, restlessly drumming her fingers against her stomach. The taut, trembling sensation in her belly would not release, even now, even five hundred miles from the city.
Pulling the curtain across the dormer, Bean walked back toward her bed, peeling off her clothes. The torn, sticky nylons went into the wastebasket, her suit she laid out on the bed. There was a grease stain on the skirt from a hamburger she had eaten on the road. She’d have to see if Barney had managed to get itself a dry cleaner while she was gone. When she took off her jewelry, a silver bangle watch and tiny diamond earrings, the tight feeling in her stomach welled up again.
She pulled off her underwear and wrapped a towel around her chest before she walked across the hallway to the bathroom the three of us had always shared. The heavy claw-foot tub still stood there, but with a new shower curtain wrapped around it in a circle. The shampoo she had left here the last time she visited—Thanksgiving? Last summer? Longer?—sat on the windowsill, thank heavens, because she hadn’t had time (or, let’s face it, money) to stop at the salon before she left. She turned the water on, icy cold to take away the sticky heat of the journey, and stepped under its punishing blast, baptismal, praying for the stone inside her to slip down the drain, to disappear.
Bean hadn’t thought of what she would do now. She’d been so focused on getting out of the city, sure that putting miles between that life and this one would grant her some kind of pardon. Annoyingly, this had proved untrue. In the car were boxes and boxes of clothes—for heaven’s sake, what had she needed all those clothes for?—each one a reminder of what she had done. Thief, she thought as she scrubbed her face. Thou art a robber, a lawbreaker, a villain. What was left of her makeup disappeared into the soap and water, but she kept pushing the washcloth over her face, her skin going raw and red.
No plan. No past. No future. She was at home, and of course Rose had to be here, too. She who might have been voted Most Likely to Judge You Harshly. Even Cordy, flaky as she was, might have been better. But Rose. Jeez.
Bean leaned down and shut off the water. She was going to have to solve this, somehow. Find a job. One that wouldn’t require a reference, of course.
If she could do that, could pay