What Remains of Me by Alison Gaylin

tell me what the sun feels like on the back of your neck, Shane? I really want to know what that feels like because today I’m not allowed out.
    What is it like to have a sister?
    He wasn’t sure whether it was Kelly’s questions that had made him fall in love with her or her obvious joy at receiving his answers. But either way, she made Shane feel needed, which, as the youngest, weakest link in one of Hollywood’s most shimmering families, was not something he felt very often.
    I feel a connection with you, Shane. Do you feel it too? Sometimes, when I ask you questions, I already know what you’re going to say. I can picture your response in my mind—the same words, even—and then you write those exact words and it’s like we share one brain. Like we’re two parts of something huge.
    â€œAnswer the detective, Shane,” Bellamy said as Shane remembered his reply: I feel it too. But what if this huge thing that the two of us are together is a bad thing—like Godzilla?
    Godzilla is good, Shane. He’s just misunderstood because of the way he looks. (And by the way, I knew you would say that!)
    Shane’s gaze shifted to Braddock. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Can you please repeat the question?”
    She nodded. A lock of gunmetal hair fell across her eye. She pushed it behind an ear with a gesture that seemed half angry, as though her own hair were interfering with her investigation. “I had asked,” Braddock said, “if there’s anyone you know of who your wife does confide in.”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œShe isn’t seeing a therapist?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œFriends?”
    â€œThe only friend I can think of . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence without laughing, so he stopped.
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œBellamy,” he said. “Can you please go check on Mom?”
    â€œI want to hear your answer.”
    â€œMom’s a mess. I’m worried about her. We can’t just leave her out there with Flora.”
    â€œI’ll check on her,” she said, “after you say who Kelly’s friend is.”
    â€œFine.” Shane exhaled. “It’s you.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIt’s you,” he repeated. “You’re the only friend of Kelly’s that I know of and you know what? I think that even after all these years and everything you’ve done to her . . . I think there’s a part of her that still thinks of you that way. As her friend.”
    Bellamy, for once in her life, was at a loss for words. And for that, and that alone, Shane felt grateful.
    He stood up, gazing down at his sister with a sense of power he knew was only temporary. “Pathetic, isn’t it?” Shane said between his teeth, muscles tensing. He headed out of the room. “I’m going to go check on Mom.” He said it without so much as turning around.
    ROCKY’S SHEETS WERE CRISP AND COLD—SO UNLIKE KELLY’S OWN, which were made of a very thin, soft flannel. She didn’t like thinking of home when she lay here, in his bed—and there really was no reason to. Her troubles with Shane—what the shrink at Carpentia had called intimacy issues —had been going on long before she’d ever laid eyes on Rocky Three. She told herself it was Sterling Marshall’s threats, the fears they inspired, that kept her from getting physical with Shane. But in those very rare moments when she was honest with herself, she knewshe could have gotten an IUD, knew she could have gotten her tubes tied if she’d wanted it that badly. It was something else . . .
    She liked to think of Rocky, of this, as a recurring dream—something that existed on a different plane than her day-to-day life, something she couldn’t be blamed for. A drawer that stayed shut.
    Rocky seemed to feel the same way. He called them “meetings,” their times together. He