When she got close enough, she decided silence was probably best, sliding up next to Astrid and looking up at her own face in black and white. She still loved this photograph, probably more than any other self-portrait she’d ever taken. Self-portraits were tricky; they took forever, as you had to set up the shot without its subject, then do it again and again until you got it right. Double the complications if water was usually a centerpiece of one’s work. This one was no different, and it had paid off.
Alex was right.
It was powerful.
In the image, Delilah was in the water up to her waist, dressed in a thin white blouse that was completely soaked, and no bra. Her hair was drenched, slicked straight back as she leaned one arm on a rocky crag. Her body was turned to the side, her head resting in the crook of her elbow, while the falls pounded down upon her back. Water droplets flew into the air. The sliver of sky above was clouded, the trees thick and wiry. The pool rippled out around her, around the press of water from the falls. The entire setting was chaos. Nature, loud and lovely and powerful.
But the woman herself.
Delilah.
Her face was . . . serene. A third of her expression was hidden in her arm, but both eyes were visible, just off center of the viewer. Water beaded on her slightly parted mouth, her cheeks, the end of her nose. Even with all of that, she looked at peace. There was no smile on her lips, no ecstatic glimmer in her eyes. There was just . . . a quiet there. She hadn’t meant for it to happen. She’d simply been wasting time, trying not to think about how much she wanted to see Claire, experimenting with the water depths and if she could pull off a self-portrait using a timer and a tripod set up in the middle of a three-foot deep river pool in Bright Falls.
The result had been this. A shocking calm in the midst of natural cacophony.
“Interesting title,” Astrid said, motioning her glass toward the white placard below the piece identifying the artist and other pertinent information.
Delilah sighed. She couldn’t explain the title—Found. Or maybe she could, and that’s why she’d convinced herself, over and over in the past week, that the title had been arbitrary, something to fill the mandatory space.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Astrid didn’t answer right away, and when she did, her voice was soft. “I’m not sure.”
She turned then, her eyes finding Delilah’s, and the two women stared at each other. It occurred to Delilah that this was probably the longest she’d ever really looked at her stepsister. She’d spent years perfecting the art of avoidance, of protection, of never letting Astrid see how much Delilah was hurting. If eyes were the window into the soul, Delilah’s had long been shuttered.
Now, though, she made herself look, all those entries about Delilah in Astrid’s journal fluttering through her mind. She wanted to say something about them, to understand, but she’d never been forthcoming with Astrid Parker.
Not once.
The fact struck her suddenly, something regretful and sad pulling down her shoulders. It was a weight, this burden of hurt and resentment, of misunderstanding. She was tired and sore, and she wanted to be done with it. The realization was almost a relief, even if Astrid laughed in her face—she was ready for this part of her life to be over, or, at the very least, to change. Maybe that meant she and Astrid were done for good. Maybe they just needed to say goodbye, wish each other well, and walk away.
She turned and looked at her own face again, an expression she barely recognized but wanted to see in the mirror every morning. She wanted the Delilah hanging up there on the wall to be the real Delilah. Strong and resilient. Battered by the world and circumstances beyond her control, sure, but instead of resentful and angry, that woman was calm. Peaceful. Serene. Grateful. She belonged somewhere, despite years and years of emotional displacement. She’d found something. She’d been found by someone.
Or maybe, by many someones.
“Astrid—”
“You know what I realized?” Astrid asked.
Delilah looked at her, relieved to have to hold off the words she wanted to say, because she wasn’t sure how to say any of them.
“What?” she said.
Astrid took a breath. “I realized, in twelve years of you living in New York, I’ve never once come to see you until now.”
Delilah blinked at her.
“I’d bitch and moan about you coming back to Bright Falls.”
“Astrid—”
“Then I’d bitch and moan even more when you didn’t show up, but I never planned a trip out here. I never even tried to bridge that gap, did I?”
She looked at Delilah, her bangs just touching her lashes. She looked tired, her outfit pristine and her makeup natural and minimal, but nothing hid the shadow of purple under her eyes. As they looked at each other, really looked, Delilah felt something inside her release.
“It was a pretty big gap to bridge,” she said.
Astrid nodded. “Yeah.”
“And I . . .” Delilah sighed, forcing herself to keep eye contact. It was intense, that welling feeling was back, but this also felt right. Hard and horrible and right. “I did my level best to make it as wide as possible.”
Something flickered in Astrid’s expression. Something like . . . pain. Like sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” Delilah said before she could talk herself out of it. Two words of apology didn’t fix it all; she knew that. But maybe it was a start. Because, no matter how hard her childhood was, how lonely, Astrid Parker was her family. Her sister. Delilah finally got that, twenty years after her father died and left her alone. She didn’t have to be alone. Not unless she just wanted to be, and goddammit, she didn’t. She was tired of trying to forget she even had a sister, tired of pretending like she didn’t want to understand Astrid because caring about her might lead to pain or rejection.
But it might also lead to so much more.
“I’m sorry too,” Astrid said. “I didn’t make it easy either. I know that. You’d lost a lot. So had I, and we were just kids. I guess . . . well, I guess neither of us knew how to handle the other. How to handle the hurt.”
“No, I don’t think we did.”
Then they both seemed to . . . let go. Literally. They exhaled, releasing what sounded like four lungfuls of air, tiny laughs filtering out on the ends.
“Good god,” Astrid said. “That only took us twelve years to say.”
Delilah smiled and shook her head, her shoulders suddenly releasing their hold on her neck. “Longer than that probably.”
Astrid nodded and held up her glass.
Delilah clinked it with her own, and they both sipped, the air between them a little clearer, a little more buoyant. They stood there like that for a while before Astrid moved on to Delilah’s next piece . . . then the next and the next. Delilah followed her, watching Astrid take in her work. She found she actually cared what her sister thought. Maybe she always had, which was why she’d never shared any of this with her before today. Not on purpose anyway, as she knew Astrid had been checking out her Instagram for years now.