The Sometime Sister by Katherine Nichols (ebook reader for comics .txt) 📕

I suspected he made Ben’s ahead of time. He served me first. I thanked him, and he responded with a shy smile and the briefest of eye contact. As he was delivering the gin and tonic, Ben knocked his hand and some of the drink sloshed onto the floor.

“Goddammit, boy! Watch what you’re doing.”

He apologized and scurried from the room. I double-checked the location of the vase before asking Ben to explain what Stella’s irrational behavior entailed.

“Well, she would disappear for hours and hours without telling me where she was or when she was coming home. When I asked her about it, she’d give me one of her killer smiles and tell me she was reading at the beach or having lunch with a friend or surfing or some other shit, and lost track of time. Then she accused me of bullying her. She flew into uncontrollable rages. I was a little afraid of her, Grace.”

He stood up and opened his arms to the panoramic view of sand and sea.

“She had all this. And still couldn’t be happy. I was really worried, so I called a doctor friend of mine, a psychiatrist. He suggested she suffered from a dissociative disorder.” He slurred so badly through the diagnosis, I wondered just how much he had to drink before I arrived. “That’s when it became clear to me. Stella was a true sociopath. I know it’s hard to hear, but it’s the only thing that explains her behavior.” He stumbled back into his seat.

“A sociopath, huh?” I gulped my vodka and tonic. “Elaborate, please. What about Stella screams sociopath?”

He bobbed his head in an enthusiastic nod. “Everything, Grace. I mean, I never wanted to tell you, but your sister was the one who came on to me. She waited for me in my car after our dates. Scared the shit out of me, sitting there like a statue. Then she was all over me. I resisted for as long as I could. Our relationship meant everything to me. You know that, right?” He gave me his best sad smile.

“Yeah, sure. Everything.”

“I knew you’d understand. I told her to lay off. I didn’t want to crush her spirit, so I was very gentle. But that girl wouldn’t listen. Kept telling me how much better suited we were for each other. I still said no, but then you started planning the wedding. And, well, to be perfectly honest, you got so wrapped up in choosing flowers and dresses and caterers you neglected me.”

I remembered those months. Days where I was constantly pulled between Mom and the bossy planner and the rest of my life. Ben never offered to help. That was the bride’s responsibility, the price for snagging her man, he said. He also never complained that I was neglecting him.

“I neglected you?” I repeated.

“Right.” He nodded. “And Stella, well, she was there. And like the typical sociopath, she showed no guilt, no remorse. Blamed it all on you, Grace. Had me convinced you’d be better off without me, that you didn’t need me the way she did. She said all she wanted was to make me happy. She was very convincing.”

If he hadn’t been so serious, I would have sworn he was being intentionally ironic. But he lacked the depth to appreciate irony. It was obvious he considered himself the wronged party. Then I remembered Stella’s words about seeing herself through someone else’s eyes. When she thought she lost me, she sought out my one true love—a man who actually was the perfect sociopath. When she looked in his eyes, she became a shallow, manipulative creature with the ability to lie and cheat to get whatever she wanted.

But his mirror was different. It was like the House of Mirrors at the State Fair when Stella was eight and I was thirteen. She begged to go in, but I insisted on saving my ticket for something more exciting. The truth was I hated being trapped, surrounded by images of myself: some real, some distorted. I was terrified of being unable to find the way out, doomed to forever run into multiple versions of myself.

Stella, however, had never been in a house of mirrors and was hell-bent on going even if it meant she had to go alone. When I heard her screaming, the carnival operator refused to let me in until I paid, but I brushed by him and raced to where she lay cowering in front of a monster-like image of herself. I guided her outside where the ticket-taker was muttering threats about calling the police. I ignored him and took her to buy cotton candy.

Later, Stella told me she hadn’t been afraid of not being able to find her way out. She’d been frightened by the sight of her own face glowering at her, contorted into a mask of horror. She thought she was the monster in the mirror. It was only when I found her that she realized it was an illusion.

If I’d come to visit her, I could have helped her see this luxurious home was her house of mirrors. And Ben was the monster.

He interrupted my reverie. “It’s okay, Grace. You were young and in love. And Stella knew how to get her way.” He must have taken my lengthy silence as recognition and remorse over my callous behavior. “It must be true that everything happens for a reason. I hate Stella’s gone, but you’re here now, and we’re together just like old times. Sounds like fate to me.”

I dug my nails into my palms to keep from leaping from the chair and scratching Ben’s eyes out. Then I took a deep breath in through my nose, out through my mouth. So far, it had been just like old times. Ben told me beautiful lies, and I smiled and listened while he manipulated me into compliance. The difference was I no longer pretended I believed they were true. Now, I would use them to get him to do what