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chapter 44

It felt likeIzzy worked on the app for an eternity, but it could only have been a couple of days. But she had to face the theater, and she owed Bella a call because she was finally going to take good advice. She couldn’t go to the wedding. Not after everything that had happened. It’d be too hard.

Rain hit Izzy as soon as she stepped outside. She hurried to her van and across the river to the Roosevelt Theater. She might as well face everything all at once. The air inside the theater felt colder than outside. She sat down on the stage and took out her phone. The show had given her Bella’s phone number. It was strange to get your sister’s number from an assistant producer’s contact list.

She half expected the call to go to voicemail as Bella rejected the unknown number, but maybe Bella had programmed her number in too. Bella answered on the second ring. Izzy had practiced what she was going to say, but saying it out loud made it final, like sending Lillian away was final. She’d been carrying hope around like a candle, the hope that someone could love her for her, the hope that someone would put her first. Now she was blowing that candle out.

“I really want you and Ace to be happy,” Izzy said. “But I can’t come to the wedding. It’s too hard. I’m not a part of your family. I didn’t even know we had cousins.”

Izzy liked Bella for not saying, Nooooo, you’re my sister.

“I wasn’t going to invite you.” Bella sounded sympathetic. “I mean, I don’t mind if you come. I just thought it’d be weird to invite you after not seeing you for years, like I just wanted a wedding gift. But Mom wants you there.” Izzy could hear Bella shush someone on the other end. “Ace and I didn’t want to be on TV with a fluffy wedding dress. We want our wedding on a beach with just a few friends.”

Izzy could picture Bella on the beach, hazy orange sunlight catching her hair like it did when she was a child running across the range. “But as soon as we told Mom we were getting married, she said we had to have the whole family together. Then we had to do the show. We don’t want all that.” Bella didn’t say anything for a moment. “I just couldn’t say no because she’s doing this for you.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“There are pictures of you all over our house.” Bella snorted. “She prints every Insta picture where you’re not naked. Our house is like a shrine to you.”

“I didn’t die or anything.” Izzy shivered in the cold theater. Why were the boards she sat on damp? Was that a leak from above or water seeping in from some yet-undiscovered disaster under the stage?

“She feels like you did,” Bella went on. “I used to be jealous of all those photos. There’re some of me, but not nearly as many. But Ace helped me see that she feels like she failed you. She heard you were on the show, and she saw the sponsors, and I don’t know how she pulled it off, but she got the producer to do the surprise bridal shower. She planned this whole thing because she thought it’d get you back in our lives. She’s using my wedding to try to get you back. Rude.” Izzy could hear the scowl in Bella’s voice. “Actually, it really hurt at first when we realized what she was thinking. Ace and I shouldn’t have to learn an official wedding dance because Mom didn’t take good care of you when you were a kid.”

Bella angry was like a kitten walking sideways with its hackles up. Harmless but foretelling the fierceness that would come as it grew up. Izzy could come to like this woman. Her sister.

“You can tell her from me: I’m not coming. Do your beach wedding if you want to.” Izzy felt a lump forming in her throat. It was time to say goodbye. “If I did reconnect with her, I’d want her to reconnect with me, not put on some big show. My Insta pictures aren’t who I am. If she wants pictures of me that mean something, we’ll have to build a relationship slowly, and then maybe we can take a real selfie.” She held the phone in her cupped hands. “I want you to be happy. I really do. Don’t let her make this about me. I’m not worth it.”

Bella’s voice drifted up to her.

“Yeah you are. That’s why Ace and I went along with it in the end. If you did come back… I’d love to have you as a sister. Would you like to reconnect? Without matching Sympathetic Gilded Rosy Terra-cotta napkins?”

“Who even knows what color that is?”

“I know!” Bella said. “She kept sending us paint chips because we didn’t know what Lucid Ecru was.”

Their laughter was tentative, but it felt like a first step to something real.

“I’ll stay in touch.”

It’d been good to talk to Bella again, but taking the first step toward that family made all the holes in her heart feel bigger. A hole for Megan. For Bella. For the theater. For the community that loved her as Blue but not Izzy. And a bigger, wider emptiness like a beloved house stripped of everything that made it home: the place where Lillian should be.

“But, Bella,” Izzy said before she hung up, “be sure to keep the dresses. They’ve got great resale value.”

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