My Sister's Keeper

CAMPBELL

WE SLEEP IN THE TINY CABIN, moored to its slip. Tight quarters, but that hardly seems to matter: all night long, she fits herself around me. She snores, just a little. Her front tooth is crooked. Her eyelashes are as long as the nail of my thumb.

These are the minutiae that prove, more than anything else, the difference between us now that fifteen years have passed. When you're seventeen, you don't think about whose apartment you want to sleep in. When you're seventeen, you don't even see the pearl-pink of her bra, the lace that arrows between her legs. When you're seventeen it's all about the now, not the after.

What I had loved about Julia—there, I've said it now—was that she didn't need anyone. At Wheeler, even when she stood out with her pink hair and quilted army-surplus jacket and combat boots, she did this without apology. It was a great irony that the very fact of a relationship with her would diminish her appeal, that the moment she came to love me back and depend on me as much as I depended on her, she would no longer be a truly independent spirit.

No way in hell was I going to be the one to take that quality away from her.

After Julia, there weren't all that many women. None whose names I took the time to remember, anyway. It was far too complicated to maintain the facade; instead, I chose the coward's rocky route of one-night stands. Out of necessity—medical and emotional—I have gotten rather skilled at being an escape artist.

But there are a half-dozen times this past night when I had the opportunity to leave. While Julia was sleeping, I even considered how to do it: a note pi

From the spot where he's curled up on the galley table tight as a ci

I swear, it makes me hard again.

But instead of doing what comes naturally—that is, calling in sick with some latent strain of smallpox and making the clerk of the court reschedule the hearing so that I can spend the day getting laid—I pull on my pants and go above-deck. I want to make sure I'm at the courthouse before A

I wonder if this was an oversight. Or if I have been waiting all this time for her to come back, so that I can grow up.

When Judge and I arrive at the Garrahy building for the hearing, we have to fight our way through the reporters who have lined up for the Main Event. They thrust microphones in my face, and inadvertently step on Judge's paws. A

Inside the front door, I flag down Vern. "Get us some security out here, will you?" I tell him. "They're going to eat the witnesses alive." Then I see Sara Fitzgerald, already waiting. She is wearing a suit that most likely hasn't seen the outside of the plastic dry cleaner's bag for a decade, and her hair is pulled back severely into a barrette. She doesn't carry a briefcase, but a knapsack instead. "Good morning," I say evenly.

The door blows open and Brian enters, looking from Sara to me.

"Where's A

Sara takes a step forward. "Didn't she come here with you?"

"She was already gone when I got back from a call at five A.M. She left a note and said she'd meet me here." He glances at the door, at the jackals on the other side. "I bet she took off."

Again, there is the sound of a seal being breached, and then Julia surfs into the courthouse on a crest of shouts and questions. She smoothes back her hair, gets her bearings, then looks at me and loses them again.

"I'll find her," I say. Sara bristles. "No, I will." Julia looks at each of us. "Find who?"

"A

"Not at all." This isn't a lie, either. For A

I realize that I even know where I am headed—at the same moment that Sara understands it, too. In that moment she lets me take the lead. Julia grabs my arm as I am walking toward the door. She shoves my car keys into my hand. "Now you do understand why this isn't going to work?"

I turn to her. "Julia, listen. I want to talk about what's going on between us, too. But this isn't the right time."

"I was talking about A