Ellie, cover for me.
Ellie, give me your sweater.
Ellie, Mom’s going to kill me.
I pressed one hand against the brick wall.
“Who is this?”
The woman breathed shakily.
“It’s Becky.”
I hung up.
I was thirty-eight years old when my dead sister called me.
Rebecca had supposedly died at twenty-four.
I was twenty-six then, newly married, seven months pregnant, and furious with her.
That last part mattered.
People prefer grief stories where the dead leave behind beautiful final memories.
Rebecca didn’t.
Three nights before the motel fire, she’d called me asking for money.
Again.
She’d spent most of her early twenties bouncing between jobs, apartments, boyfriends, and grand plans that lasted three months at best.
She wasn’t an addict.
She wasn’t reckless in the cinematic sense.
She was simply restless.
Rebecca experienced ordinary life as if it were a sweater two sizes too small.
