Other tables in the casino were overcrowded, but the redhead and her diminutive husband were the only two people at Vera's. Still, she put on a good show for them, snapping the cards out with an easy dexterity that made the work look e ortless. Luce could see an elegant side of Vera that she hadn't noticed before. A air for the dramatic.
"So," Miles said, shifting his weight next to Luce. "Are we gonna ... or ..."
Shelby's hands were suddenly on Luce's shoulders, practically wedging her into one of the empty leather seats at the table.
Though she was dying to stare, Luce avoided eye contact at rst. She was nervous that Vera might recognize her before she even had a chance. But Vera's eyes passed over each of them with only the mildest of interest, and Luce remembered how di erent she looked now that she'd bleached her hair. She tugged at it nervously, not sure what to do next.
Then Miles plunked down a twenty-dollar bill in front of Luce, and she remembered the game she was supposed to be playing. She slid the money across the table.
Vera raised a penciled-in eyebrow. "Got ID?"
Luce shook her head. "Maybe we could just watch?"
Across the table, the redhead was nodding o , her head falling onto Shelby's sti shoulder. Vera rolled her eyes at the whole scene and pushed Luce's money back, pointing at the neon billboard advertising Cirque du Soleil. "Circus is that way, kids."
Luce sighed. They were going to have to wait until Vera got o work. And by then she'd probably be even less interested in talking to them. Feeling defeated, Luce reached out to take Miles's money back. Vera's ngers were drawing away just as Luce's swept over the money, and their
ngertips kissed. Both of them snapped up their heads. The weird shock brie y blinded Luce. She sucked in her breath. She looked deep into Vera's wide hazel eyes.
And she saw everything:
A two-story cabin in a snowy Canadian town. Webs of ice on the windows, wind soughing at the panes. A ten-year-old girl watching TV in the living room, rocking a baby on her lap. It was Vera, pale and pretty in acid-washed jeans and Doc Martens, a thick navy turtleneck rising to her chin, a cheap wool blanket bunched up between her and the back of the couch. A bowl of popcorn on the co ee table, reduced to a handful of cold, unpopped kernels. A fat orange cat prowling the mantel, hissing at the radiator. And Luce--Luce was her sister, the baby sister in her arms.
Luce felt herself rocking in her seat at the casino, aching to remember all of this. Just as quickly, the impression faded, replaced by another.
Luce as a toddler chasing Vera, up the stairs, down the stairs, the worn wide steps beneath her thumping feet, her chest tight from breathless laughter, when the doorbell sounded and a fair, slick-haired boy arrived to pick Vera up for a date, and she stopped and straightened her clothes and turned her back, turned away ....
A heartbeat later and Luce was a teenager herself, with a mess of curly shoulder-length black hair. Sprawled on Vera's denim bedspread, the coarse fabric somehow a comfort, ipping through Vera's secret diary. He loves me, Vera had scrawled again and again and again, her handwriting getting loopier and loopier. And then the pages pulled away, her sister's angry face looming, the tracks of her tears clear. ...
And then again, a di erent scene, Luce older still, maybe seventeen. She braced herself for what was coming.
Snow pouring from the sky like soft white static. Vera and a few friends ice-skating on the frozen pond behind their house, gliding in swift circles, happy and laughing, and at the frayed icy edge of the pond, Luce crouched down, the cold seeping through her thin clothes while she laced up her skates, in a hurry, as usual, to catch up with her sister. And beside her, a warmth she didn't have to look at to identify, Daniel, who was silent, moody, his skates already tightly laced. She could feel the urge to kiss him--and yet no shadows were visible. The evening and everything about it were star-dotted and glittering, endlessly clear and full of possibility.
Luce searched for the shadows, then realized that their absence made sense. These were Vera's memories. And the snow made everything harder to see. Still, Daniel must know, as he had known when he dove into that lake. He must have sensed it every single time. Did he ever care what became of people like Vera after Luce was killed?
There came a bursting sound from Luce's side of the lake, like the letting out of a parachute. And then: A blooming shot of red-hot re in the middle of a blizzard. A huge column of bright orange ames shooting into the sky at the edge of the pond. Where Luce had been. The other skaters middle of a blizzard. A huge column of bright orange ames shooting into the sky at the edge of the pond. Where Luce had been. The other skaters rushed senselessly toward it, barreling across the pond. But the ice was melting, rapidly, catastrophically, sending their skates plunging through to the frigid water underneath. Vera's scream echoed through the blue night, her frozen look of agony all that Luce could see.
In the casino, Vera yanked her hand back, shaking it as if she'd been burned. Her lips quivered a few times before they formed the words: "It's you." She shook her head. "But it can't be."
"Vera," Luce whispered, reaching her hand out again to her sister. She wanted to hold her, to take all the pain Vera had ever been caused and transfer it to herself.
"No." Vera shook her head, backing away and wagging a nger at Luce. "No, no, no." She backed into the dealer at the table behind her, tripping over him and sending a giant stack of poker chips cascading o the table. The colored disks slid across the oor, causing a ripple of oohs and aahs from gamblers who leaped from their seats to scoop them up.
"Dammit, Vera!" a squat man bellowed over the din. As he waddled to their table in a cheap gray polyester suit and scu ed black shoes, Luce shared a worried glance with Miles and Shelby. Three underage kids wanted nothing to do with the pit boss. But he was still chewing Vera out, his lip curled up in disgust. "How many times--"
Vera had found her feet again but kept staring, terri ed, at Luce, as if Luce were the devil instead of her sister a lifetime removed. Vera's kohl- lined eyes were white with terror as she stammered, "She c-c-can't be here."
"Christ," the pit boss muttered, checking out Luce and her friends, then speaking into a walkie-talkie. "Get me security. Got a coupla hoodlum kids."