Chapter Two

Happy New Year

When I was born on New Year's day, at 12:02 in the morning, my mom claims to have been given a glass of champagne and her new baby at the same moment.

I pray that's not true.

We have one hospital in Pine Place, and it's not top-tier healthcare, so there's a high chance I ingested alcohol in the first hours of my existence. My parents had something to celebrate after all: a third and final baby girl. Only one other booze-drinking mother in town could relate.

On my birthday, another child was being born, two minutes earlier than me. A true New Year baby. Tucker always threw that in my face, being two whole minutes older than me, like it gave him some authority.

As my mother tells the story, Lori was wheeled into my mother's delivery room in the early morning hours because my apparently half-drunk mother demanded to meet her new best friend, the only other new mother in the hospital. Apparently, Lori Tucker didn't find this to be an odd request because she arrived in my mother's hospital room with her caramel-colored hairline sweaty, her left hand ring-less. They had ten years between them.

In her corner, my mother had a five-year-old and a three-year-old, a husband, parents, in-laws, a brother and grandmother.

Eighteen-year-old Lori Tucker had her new baby and a GED.

They have a picture from that morning. It's framed on my mom's bathroom vanity, right beside her makeup, depicting my mother in her bed and Lori in a wheelchair beside her. They're holding their babies and there's a blur on the right edge, someone walking out of view. You can't see anyone but these mothers and their new babies. There's nothing to highlight how alone Lori must have felt, giving birth with no one by her side, no one to come see how she was doing.

I asked my mother once if she felt bad for her and if that's what prompted Lori into our lives.

"No," she answered. "Well… yes . But that's not why I became her friend. I wanted to protect her like a big sister and be there for her because it felt like kismet. Turns out, she was my best friend. Is . My soulmate. I knew it the minute she came into the room. Everybody did. We all loved her. She wasn't intruding on our happy moment by coming into my room because it was like she had been missing and she finally made it to the party."

I asked my mother what she thought of Lori's baby.

"I think your dad fell in love with that boy before Lori did. That poor child didn't have a father or a brother or a grandfather. It was heartbreaking. Hal picked him up and he couldn't stop talking about his hair. I've never seen so much hair on a newborn! He was like a troll doll. Thank God he grew into it…anyway, your father was immediately in love with the son he'd never have. Then, he asked Lori his name - we didn't give you one for five hours.

"She said, Elijah Francis Tucker. Eli . Well, you could have knocked us both over. The nurse who delivered you was named Ella. The book I was reading at the time had a main character named Ella. The newscaster on the tv was named Ella. The last thing I said before Lori entered the room was, Maybe we should call her Ella ."

I was quick to point out that Ella and Eli are not the same name.

"Close enough for it to feel like a sign," she argued. "Our Ella and her Eli. We just knew you two were supposed to be great friends."

She made a face after she said that word and clarified, "Or whatever it is you two are."

Not friends, that's for damn sure, because I hated being forced into friendship with Elijah. It never took off. I didn't want to be someone's friend because of proximity. He, likewise, did not appreciate having to spend playdates with a girl he said "cried too much" and "bossed him around." We were not Ella and Eli, the greatest of friends, because we became something else entirely.

I became my next-door neighbor Johnny Wagner's best friend.

Johnny and I walked into kindergarten hand-in-hand. We rode the bus together. I carpooled to dance class with his sisters, and our parents had them over for Friday night dinners with Lori and her new husband. Once Johnny and Eli became school friends, Johnny complained that our names were too similar, and it was too complicated. Ella, Eli. Eli, Ella. He started calling him Tucker , like Eli's three new stepbrothers did.

In the twenty-nine years that I've known Elijah Tucker, he's only ever really yelled at me once . We were seven. His mom had just gotten remarried, and our two families were at my grandmother's beach house in Charleston. He cornered me in the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth, shutting the door behind him. He had been crying.

"You stole my name!" he shouted.

I spit toothpaste in the sink.

"No one ever calls me my name anymore because of you ."

I didn't understand the problem because he liked being called Tucker. Tuck. It suited him. I realized years later what he meant, and it was two-fold: he had been singled out by his last name. He was a single Tucker in a family of Harrisons. He didn't even share his mother's name anymore. He felt isolated.

He also didn't have much that he didn't share with me. It was bad enough to celebrate our birthdays together every year, but he also had to share his best friend and now he'd lost his name because it sounded too much like mine. And, if the stories are true, I only have my name because of him.

We stood in the bathroom, staring at each other.

I remember feeling mad because he was mad, frustrated because he was frustrated, and embarrassed because he was blaming me. I didn't know what I did wrong. My name wasn't my fault. I didn't know what to say. I felt defensive. I wanted to hurt him for making me feel uncomfortable.

"I hate you!" I screamed.

Tucker's mouth curled into a mean smile. "And I love you , Ella."

It made no sense for him to say that. No more sense than me saying I hated him, which I guess was the point. He'd always been smarter than me, quicker to pick up on energy and meaning. Smarter than most people. He knew I didn't hate him, and he knew I would hate being told I love you . He should have said I hate you back. We should have just argued like we normally did, but he wanted to get under my skin.

He always got under my skin.

At that moment we decided to be at war. I hated Tucker every day, except for the moments I didn't, and he relished every opportunity possible to humiliate me and fight over Johnny's attention.

We were enemies with a shared best friend. A shared birthday. A shared family.

We even shared secrets.