My Sister, Myself

Driven from her quaint little house by an energy she didn’t understand, Phyllis stood out by the curb, watching for headlights. Something was wrong.

Her heart twisted as she thought of her friend, and the tortured life she’d led. Shelter Valley was supposed to be Christine’s new beginning. A life where good was possible—and where evil was left far behind. A time for healing. A time for Christine and her younger sister, Tory, to nurture each other.

With a doctorate in psychology, Phyllis fully understood the steps the sisters would have to take, the stages they’d pass through on their way to emotional freedom from their abusive past. But it was as a friend that she intended to be with them, to accompany them on that journey.

Back in her house, Phyllis rechecked the room that Christine and Tory would be sharing. The twin beds were made. The closet full of hangers. The new dressers empty and waiting.

School was due to start on Monday. As the newest psychology professor at Montford University, Phyllis had been ready for the semester to begin weeks ago. Christine, the new English professor, hadn’t had the same time to prepare. She had her lessons planned; she’d shipped them—and all her books and research materials—ahead of her. But still, she’d left herself too little time to acclimate to her new home in Arizona—a far cry from the New England city they’d left—and to Montford’s campus, the small town, the people here.

Not to mention the new climate, Phyllis thought, going in to change the short-sleeved knit shirt she’d pulled on over knee-length shorts earlier that afternoon. Even with the air conditioner running, she couldn’t seem to stop sweating. Arizona’s heat might be dry, but Phyllis certainly wasn’t.

Maybe when Christine got settled in, she could help Phyllis lose some weight. She’d offered to help back when they’d lived next door to each other in Boston, but at that time Phyllis had still been punishing herself because of a husband who’d preferred another woman’s body to her own. Her plumpness had been what she’d deserved.

Then.

Christine and Tory weren’t the only ones reinventing themselves. In the weeks since she’d arrived in Shelter Valley, Phyllis had changed, too. Already she’d made some friends. Close friends. Becca and Will Parsons and their darling new daughter, Bethany. Becca’s sister, Sari. Martha Moore and John Strickland. Linda Morgan, the associate dean at Montford. Will’s energetic youngest sister, Randi. Most of them friends she knew would still be in her life thirty years from now.

Because of their big hearts and their willingness to accept a stranger as one of them, Phyllis had begun to value herself again.

And she knew that if Christine was ever going to find peace on this earth, Shelter Valley was the place.

Having waited so long for the doorbell to ring, Phyllis felt her heart jump alarmingly when it finally did. She flew to the door, flung it open and pulled the young woman standing on the front step into her arms.

“I’m so glad you guys are finally here,” she said, tearing up with relief.

“Yeah.” Tory was crying, too.

“Where’s Christine?” Phyllis asked, urging Tory into the house as she looked past her.

There was a new Mustang in her driveway. An empty Mustang.

Dread crawled over her as she turned slowly back. But there was no reason to think the worst.

“Where’s Christine?” she asked again. Back in Boston there’d been reason to worry, but Christine would be fine now.

“She’s…” Tory seemed to be having trouble breathing. “He…Bruce…”

Taking the younger woman’s trembling hands, Phyllis led her to the couch. Phyllis responded to Tory’s desperation, and her own emotions began to shut down, preparing her for the bad news she sensed was coming.

“Bruce…” Tory tried again.

But Phyllis didn’t need to hear. Tory’s sobs were so filled with anguish Phyllis was choking, too.

“He found you,” she said, trying to keep her own panic at bay. “He’s got Christine.”

Tory’s ex-husband was the reason Christine had accepted the job at Montford—to get Tory as far away from the man as she could.

Tory shook her head. “He…killed her…” The last word trailed off into a tormented whisper.

Numb with shock, Phyllis sat with Tory, held her, comforted her, but she had no idea what she was saying. Had a feeling it didn’t much matter, that Tory had no idea what she was saying, either. A solitary tear stole down Phyllis’s cheek.

Damn.

She’d known something was wrong. She’d known it.

“How did it happen?” she asked softly, more because the only part of her mind currently working, the analytical part, knew Tory needed to get everything out.

Christine’s life was over. Her struggle was over. Phyllis just couldn’t believe it.

“Somehow he discovered that we were heading out here,” Tory said, her voice weak from crying. Her slim, perfectly sculpted frame and beautiful face were sagging with strain. Watching her, Phyllis was taken aback at how much she resembled her sister. She’d thought so when she’d first met Tory earlier in the summer.

Not many months ago, Christine had sat on this same couch back in Boston, her body bent in defeat, her big blue eyes—exact replicas of Tory’s—dark with shadows as she recounted for Phyllis the horrors of her childhood.

As Phyllis had then, she sat quietly now, allowing the other sister to do her telling in her own time.

“He caught up with us at the New Mexico border.”

Oh, God. The landscape was so barren there. Hot. Unyielding.

“He kept motioning for us to pull over, but Christine wouldn’t.”

Tory’s eyes filled with helpless tears again as she looked at Phyllis. “I told her to stop,” she said. “He wanted me, not her.”

“Unless he was angry with her for taking you away from him,” Phyllis offered, already seeing the blame and guilt Tory was heaping on herself.

Tory shook her head, her short blond hair bouncing with the vigorous movement. “He only ever wanted me,” she said, her voice bitter. “Other people don’t matter enough to make him angry.” She paused, her eyes dead-looking. “In his mind, there’s no one alive who can beat him. People are merely ants he occasionally has to step on.”

Though she’d heard such things before—in clinical settings—Phyllis was sickened by the description. And by young Tory’s far-too-mature account of the man who’d made her life a living hell.

“So what happened when Christine finally stopped?” Phyllis coaxed softly when it appeared she’d lost Tory to places Phyllis had never been—places she probably couldn’t even imagine.

Tory shook her head, hands trembling. “She didn’t stop,” Tory whispered, her eyes wide with horror.

“She told me I was the only good thing in her life, the only thing worth living for, and she wouldn’t stop.”

“You sound like that surprises you,” Phyllis said.

“If it hadn’t been for me, Christine’s life would have been perfect once she left home,” she said sincerely. “I let her down so many times. I didn’t go to college. I married Bruce. I ran from everything.”

Remembering that she knew things Tory didn’t, Phyllis chose her words carefully. “Christine chose Bruce for you, Tory,” she said, revealing the part she could.

“What?” the young woman asked, shocked.

“How? She couldn’t have. I met him at a party.”

“And when you brought him home, when she met him, knew that he came from a good family, a wealthy family, she did everything she could to throw the two of you together.” Phyllis repeated what Christine herself had confessed all those months ago. “She thought he was your ticket out.”

Silently Tory listened, her gaze turned inward, as though she was remembering back to the unreal days of her courtship.