He nods and stands. “See you tomorrow.”

The moment he leaves the room, I swipe my finger across the screen of my phone. My eyebrows shoot up when I see that the text is from my mother, asking for me to call her. Something must be wrong because I rarely hear from her. She’s either too busy donating her time to one of her multiple charities, or caught up in planning some over-the-top affair at the country club she and my father are members of.

I press the green phone symbol and wait as two rings pass before Mother answers. “Frannie, darling, thank you for returning my call so quickly. What are you doing this weekend?”

My lips pull into a tight line. Has she forgotten so quickly that I’ve recently moved? “I’m in Kentucky.”

She sighs heavily into the phone. “What are you doing in that god-awful state?”

It’s with that one sentence she confirms that, once again, she has paid no attention to what’s going on in my life. “I took a job here, remember?”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.” I can tell by her exasperated tone that she still doesn’t understand why I felt the need to go into a career field that doesn’t exactly meet her standards. “Your weekends are still free though, yes?”

“Yes, but—”

“Perfect!” she exclaims, completely cutting me off. “I need you to housesit this weekend. Your father is flying to London on business, and I’ve decided to go with him. You know how I love that city, and I simply can’t resist going even if it’s only for a couple days.”

I furrow my brow. “That sounds great, but I don’t understand why you’re calling me.”

“Penelope already requested the weekend off, and there’s just no one else I trust to take care of Spencer and Ruby.”

I roll my eyes as I think about my mother’s obsession with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dogs. She treats those dogs better than she ever treated Annie and me. My sister would always laugh when I would complain that those stupid animals weren’t my siblings like Mother would refer to them as. Even if they are undeniably cute. “Give mother a break, Frannie,” Annie would say. “They’ve actually softened her up.” Annie would only laugh harder when I would mumble that her twin daughters should’ve been the ones to unfreeze that icy heart of hers.

Needless to say, I’m not a fan of how much Mother loves those dogs.

“Can’t one of the other staff take care of them since Penelope is off?” I ask.

“Frannie, you know I don’t just trust my babies to anyone. I’ll need you to come home for the weekend and take care of your brother and sister.”

Ugh. There it is again. I swear to God the woman is delusional.

“I can’t,” I tell her simply. “That’s a long train ride and—”

“Oh, Frannie, don’t be silly. We’ll send the jet to pick you up and take you back,” she says in a nonchalant tone.

“Mother, you know I don’t do planes since...” I feel the emotion pique in my voice, and I choke it back.

“Pish-posh. You can’t let what happened to Annie stop you from living your life. It’s been four years, Francine. It’s time to move on.” My mouth gapes open at her words.

Am I the only one who loved my sister? How can she act like being up in the air, helpless, under some random pilot’s control, isn’t a big deal after her own daughter died in a plane that went down somewhere over the Atlantic. The search went on for a couple of weeks, but all they found was part of the wing. The rest was never recovered.

There’s so much I want to say to her—no, to scream at her—about how I don’t understand how she’s not broken by Annie’s death like me. Unlike Arnold, I can say with the utmost certainty that the moment I knew my sister wasn’t coming back—that her body was likely deep in the dark water abyss, never to be seen again—I lost it. Things that mattered once before—parties, finding a husband, having a family—no longer registered. Zero attachment to anything became my new motto, one that led to me having numerous, purely physical relationships with men. I never want to feel the kind of pain I felt from her loss ever again.

But there’s no way I can explain all that to my mother. We might as well be from different planets when it comes to understanding one another’s feelings about what happened to my sister. There’s no use talking to her about it because she’ll never understand what I’ve lost.

“Frannie? Hello? Did you hear me?” Mother’s voice cuts through the haze of my thoughts.

“I’m here.”

“Well? What time would you like the jet there Friday to pick you up?” she asks, and I detect a hint of impatience in her voice as she waits on my answer.

“I’m sorry, Mother, but I won’t be able to make it this weekend. You’ll simply have to find someone else.”

“Francine—”

“No time to chat, my next appointment is due any time now. Goodbye, Mother.”

With that, I simply end the call, allowing no time for her to make me feel guilty for telling her no.

My finger slides over the phone, hunting for the one picture of Annie that I keep close. I stare at her vibrant smile, so full of life, and my eyes begin to burn as tears well up in them. There are so many things we planned to do together that will never happen now. How can I go on pretending life is fucking perfect when the one person in this world who felt like my other half is gone? The one person I shared everything with.