Older Sister

By the beginning of her second year in college, Alex had learned that she did not like what happened when she drank, nor did she like to be around people who were drinking competitively. Something else she learned was that she had an older sister—technically, a half sister. It was her mother who told her that she and her younger brother, Chris, had a second sibling, even though Mrs. Fiore was not the woman who’d given birth to her. The girl’s mother was an ex-girlfriend of Alex and Chris’s father, a woman named Michelle who, twenty-one years earlier, had punished him for his decision to marry someone else a year after their daughter Penelope was born by moving to France, where she’d found work as an English teacher at a boarding school a few miles outside of Paris.

When Mrs. Fiore told Alex that she had a sister, they were having lunch at a large and noisy deli on the southern fringe of the Washington, DC, college where Alex was about to begin her sophomore year. It was the last day of move-in week, which had been very hot and humid, and now it was raining hard. People kept entering the deli with dramatic exclamations, stomping their feet on the waterlogged mats, and shaking out their umbrellas, some of the drops landing on Alex’s bare legs.

Alex stared at her mother after hearing her embarrassed revelation. Mrs. Fiore’s arms were crossed over her lap, hands clenching her elbows as if she had caught a chill. She was small and dark-haired, a high-strung, smiling woman whose laughter was timorous but frequent. Finally Alex asked, “Does Chris already know? Why are you the one telling me this? Why not Dad?”

Her mother wiped under her eyes with the napkin she’d been using while they ate turkey sandwiches and the sweet potato fries the deli was known for. She had trouble meeting Alex’s gaze, something that made Alex feel both impatient and sorry.

“Your brother doesn’t know yet,” her mother said. “But Dad’s supposed to talk to him this afternoon. I’m finally telling you because for years, your father and I went back and forth over when and how to tell you, but he could never make up his mind, and now Penelope is insisting on meeting you, so there’s no more stalling.”

Alex blinked. “Why did they name her Penelope? Why does she want to meet me?” She could feel her heart racing and tried to take deep breaths. She would grow lightheaded if she breathed too shallowly; she might even faint, something that had happened twice in the past year, both times at parties with classmates who had drained a keg before moving on to a cabinet filled with hard liquor.

“She wants to meet both you and Chris, but it doesn’t have to be at the same time. I think she’s coming to Washington next month, which is why I’m telling you now. You have a little time to prepare yourself before she arrives.”

“What if I don’t want to meet her?”

Her mother hesitated. “Well, think about it for a little while. But I do think you should see her. At least once.”

“Has Dad seen her since she and her mom moved to France?”

“Yes.”

“He has?” said Alex, taken aback. “When?” She had no idea when her father might have seen this other daughter. His moods were so steady that behind his back, she and Chris sometimes called him Mr. Sunshine. To his credit (or else, she thought, maybe to his discredit), she could not remember any prolonged periods of moroseness or bad temper on his part.

“He saw her a few times when Michelle brought Penelope over from France to visit with her relatives in Madison. But he can talk to you about that. Penelope lives in New York now. She graduated from NYU last year.”

“She’s still there?” Alex paused. “What does she look like?”

“I think she’s working at a...