Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares

was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn’t get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn’t escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison.

    Kostos walked out the door of her grandparents’ house, explaining about needing to pick up a few things. Lena closed the door behind him and promptly presumed she had hallucinated the entire episode.
    But a short time later he returned, carrying a leather satchel and two bags of groceries. Within minutes he was fielding phone calls, one from somebody connected to the U.S. consulate and one from the local police precinct. He seemed to know everything and everyone without her having to say a word. She wondered if she was still hallucinating.
    He hung up the phone, unpacked his groceries, and made her a plate of scrambled eggs and toast with sweet tea. She sat across the little kitchen table from him and ate. It had been so long since she’d put food in her mouth it felt strange, as though her tongue had forgotten how to taste and her teeth how to chew. She took a break in the middle and rested her chin on her hand. It was oddly exhausting, eating.
    She considered his face, more in pieces than as a whole. She couldn’t take it all together. There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn’t quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren’t under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you’d have to land eventually.
    His cheekbones, his nose, and his jaw were more prominent than she remembered. His principal expressions had become etched into his face—the eye crinkles from laughter, concern, and maybe near-sightedness, the subtle lines around his mouth. She watched the lines shift and move when he talked.
    He had yesterday’s whiskers, lightened by sparkles of silver. You are older , she thought. But this was her Kostos, the man she remembered, not the man from the magazines. Could there be two of him? She had the remote idea of looking at his hand for a ring. He didn’t have one on the marriage finger, but he did have a silver one on the middle finger. She didn’t know what signified what in Greece or in London, and she couldn’t follow her own thoughts.
    “How strange this is,” she said quietly, to him, her eggs, herself.

                             I figure I basically am a
                                          ghost.
I think we all are.
                   —John Astin

 
Dear Dad,
I appreciate you calling all those times and I’m sorry I haven’t called back. That was a really nice note you sent. I know you want to be there for the burial, but Alice says please wait and come to the memorial service in the spring. I know you want to help, and I really appreciate it. I’ll call you when I get back to New York, or maybe I can come down to Charleston for a visit sometime. So, anyway, thanks a lot, Dad, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Love,
Carmen
    Carmen stared at the email for a long time without pressing send. She lay in her old bed, her old bed in her mother’s big new house, and in a strange way she felt like she and her dad were slowly switching places.
    She remembered how frustrated she used to be with him for avoiding her sadness, blandly saying things like suffering made you stronger and hard knocks were for the best. In the old days she’d wanted most of all to share something important with him, to be brought closer to him by it. Now he was ready to acknowledge hergrief, to show her the way, and she didn’t want any of it. Who was the avoider now? She couldn’t take his grief and she couldn’t take her own.
    She glanced down at the email icon on her phone. It showed there were five new messages, and