"Frankie?"
"Oh yeah, sorry," Frank said suddenly joining the conversation again. She had a tendency to let her mind wander during her sessions. It was her way of avoiding the things that were too painful to talk about with her therapist.
"I know this is hard but I think it's time we talk about your sister," her therapist urged as she sipped at her coffee. She stared down her nose through dark framed glasses int he brunette's direction waiting for a response.
"Can we not?"
"Frankie, you're coming up on the four year anniversary of her death. I think it's important that you talk about what happened." She repositioned herself in her chair and readied her pen to take notes. Frankie shifted on the couch across from her and frowned, knowing her therapist was not going to let up on this line of questioning.
Frankie took a deep breath and shrugged half heartedly, "What do you want to know?"
"Start from the beginning."
"Well, I don't know. Growing up was a bit sporadic seeing as we were constantly moving around. It was hard to make friends when you're young and you're in a foreign country. But we always had each other. We were close, she and I. We were always playing pranks on our parents and trying to confuse them on which of us was which. Twin stuff, you know?" Frankie stared at the window as she remembered that time so very long ago when she was happy. It had been years since she felt so free and whimsy.
"Go on," the therapist urged, grateful Frankie finally seemed to be opening up about her dark past. Frankie had been seeing Leigh Dolore for two months since her arrival in the small town of Greendale, Colorado. Frankie had left her home in Los Angeles after her father passed away and moved to the small town to get a fresh start. Despite her best efforts the demons of her past seemed to follow her to her new home and she had started having vivid night terrors almost immediately after settling her new roots. She had sought professional help at the suggestion of her friend and now found herself in therapy once a week. So far therapy hadn't seemed to be helping but Frankie was aware she would only get out of it as much as she put in, which to date was not very much. She usually spent the hour going on about work or talking about things that were seemingly unimportant, however her therapist was getting tired of small talk and was now demanding they talk about the real reason Frankie had sought help to begin with.
"We were close, until Italy," Frankie stated flatly as if the statement would explain everything.
"What happened in Italy?" Dolore pried.
"We were fifteen we both had a crush on the same boy. He was so handsome and was two years older than us, Demetri. Well, he chose my sister. And I got jealous. Our parents wouldn't allow us to date so I kept their secret, even though I wasn't happy about their relationship. Things got out of hand though. She got pregnant," Frankie paused to brush a tear away. She thought back to the time when she was young and was forced to be her sister's keeper.
"You knew? But you couldn't tell anyone?" Leigh asked for clarification.
"Yes. I told her she should tell our parents but she was too scared. We were raised strict Catholic and she knew our parents would have made her keep the baby, they would have made her marry Demetri. That was the only option in our faith. I was disgusted that she had given herself away so easily to this boy she barely knew and i was sworn to protect her secret."
"What happened then?"
"Demetri broke up with her when she told him. She was all alone and scared. I should have been there for her but I was young and confused. I told her she was a whore and she had brought shame to our whole family. She sought an abortion and made me swear to never tell our parents."
"And did you?"
"I was fifteen. She was a murderer in the eyes of our faith and I was loyal to my parents. I told them everything. My father wanted to kick her out, outcast her from the family, but my mother couldn't do it. Despite her faith she couldn't just abandon her child like that. I thought she should be thrown out, I never wanted to talk to her again, and I told her so. I called her unforgivable names and told her she would burn in hell. It was sin, she had sinned and I outcast my own sister," Frankie spat the last words out between loud sobs. Leigh handed her a box of tissue and she accepted it as she shook from crying.
"This is good, Frankie. It's good to get it all out. You're not going to heal until you face your demons," Leigh suggested. "Just take your time."
Frankie finally calmed down enough to continue, "The whole ordeal caused my parents to fight. They moved us back to the states and things got even worse. My father never forgave her for getting an abortion and my mother just tried to pretend the whole thing hadn't happened. Eventually, my mother filed for divorce which was against our religion. My father filed for custody out of spite but he had been so emotionally abusive to my sister she begged to go with my mother. In the end she did. The last time I saw her was our high school graduation. My mother took off in the night and they moved to DC. They changed their name to my mother's maiden name and started a new life. I went to college and became independent, free of my father's religious persecution. I realized how horrible I had been and I sought to make amends. I wrote her letters throughout college but she never replied, so I finally stopped trying. I guess I don't blame her."
"It wasn't your fault. You were a child, a child who did something incredibly brave to save her sister."
"Save her?!" Frankie scoffed. "I'm the reason our family fell apart! When my father died she didn't even come to the funeral. Years went by and I wanted so desperately to tell her how sorry I was. I longed to fix the damage I had caused, to maybe repair our relationship. But then it was over and she was gone and it's too late now," Frankie buried her face in her hands as she broke down once more. She shook from the force of the sobs. After she had cried herself out she looked out the window with empty eyes and whispered, "Do you know how I found out?"
"Found out about what?"
"I found out my sister had died from a friend who lived in DC. She sent me the obituary in an email a month later. She said "Doesn't she look like you? Creepy!" I found out my sister had died through an email. My mother didn't even have the courtesy to contact me about the funeral. I missed her fucking funeral and I found out from a friend who didn't even know I had a twin. If she hadn't sent he obituary as a joke, a fucking joke, I wouldn't have even known she was dead."
"No one should ever have to find out a loved one like that. I'm sorry, Frankie."
"A fucking email," Frankie chuckled at the unfairness of it all. "Seventeen years. That's how long I went without talking to her. My own twin. Seventeen years..."
"Frankie, what was her name?"
"What?" Frankie looked at Leigh in confusion, as if she hadn't properly understood the question.
"You've finally opened up about your sister but you still haven't told me her name."
"Her name?" Frankie paused and in that moment her entire relationship with her sister flashed through her mind. Years of growing up happy and carefree, making up secret languages, sharing clothes, taking care of each other while their parents were busy with work. Years of happiness stripped away because of one decision. The perfect family ripped apart by a fifteen year old with a big mouth. Frankie had spent her entire adult life running from her past and not talking about her sister was one of her best coping mechanisms. It was entirely too painful but she was spiraling out of control and the guilt was eating her alive. She knew she had to finally come clean about everything if she ever wanted to to come to terms with her past. She knew she finally had to say the name that she kept locked inside iron walls, buried deep within her mind. She took a deep breath and whispered, "Emily. Her name was Emily."
"Good, very good." Leigh wrote the name down in her notes as it was the very first time Frankie had divulged the information. She felt like she was finally getting somewhere. "Now let's talk about you."
"Me? What about me?"
"You have had this burden weighing on you for over two decades. I know you've been having night terrors but how else have you dealt with this?"
"Ha, that's implying I've dealt with it at all," Frankie laughed at the idea. Truth was she had gone through a long period of drug and alcohol abuse after college but had sobered up in her late twenties due to spending most of her time in and out of rehab before her father passed away. "Well I had my fair share of a destructive streak."
"And now? How do you deal with these emotions daily? How are you dealing with this loss?"
"I don't," Frankly admitted flatly.
"You have to mourn your loss, Frankie. You have to mourn the loss of your father and your sister. Hell, you should even mourn the loss of your mother."
"But the bitch isn't dead," Frankie corrected.
"Maybe not, but she abandoned you and that's something you've never faced. You went through far too much as a young child and you were never given the proper tools to grieve, I think that's why you have such bad anxiety now. You are wound up so tightly and just constantly waiting for the bottom to fall out. It's no way to live. You need to grieve your past so you can move on to the future."
"How am I supposed to move on? I see her face everyday when I look in the mirror. I had to take every mirror out of my house except the bathroom, she haunts me from my own reflection. I look into my eyes and I see hers staring back at me. Those eyes that were so full of hate and anger and disappointment. Those eyes that were so empty and now mine are just as void if not more. I've lost thirty pounds since she died. I've bounced around from job to job. I've been single nearly all that time because I can't stand to have to explain to a partner why I'm crying myself to sleep every night. I keep her obituary in a notebook in my nightstand and I have it memorized at this point. 'Emily Elaine Prentiss, died in the line of duty on March 7, 2011. She is survived by her mother Elizabeth Prentiss. She was a intricate part of an elite task force of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Quantico, Virginia. She will be deeply missed by all who knew her' ... it didn't even mention me. Do you know what that feels like? To know she had an entire life, a world of people who loved her and cared about her and they don't even know I exist? Was it so easy for her to write me out of her life completely?"
"I think you are asking valid questions. But I think you're going to have to forgive yourself before you are able to forgive Emily."
"Forgive myself? How could I possibly? I will never get to see my sister again. I never got to tell her how sorry I am, about everything. She's gone and she never knew," Frankie covered her face as tears welled at her eyes. "She'll never know."
"Maybe not directly, but have you tried journaling?"
"I write her emails sometimes," Frankie admitted.
"Good, that's good. And what do you say in these emails?"
"I tell her I'm sorry for everything and I tell her about my life now. My new job and the people I work with. I like to write emails because I can send them and not have them lying around to make me upset all over again. I can write down how I feel and release it into the abyss."
"That's a wonderful exercise. I encourage you to keep doing that when you start to feel depressed or guilty. It is good to release those negative emotions."
Frankie shrugged, "I don't feel wonderful about it. It's been nearly four years since she died and I feel worse than ever. This guilt has been eating away at me and I feel like I have nothing left to give. I'm so exhausted. I'm tired of living each day with these demons, I just want to give up."
"Give up how?"
"I mean, I'm not suicidal. I've been there, tried that. Two years ago I overdosed and was in a coma for a week but i managed to survive. Do you know what that's like? To be so tired of fighting that you try to kill yourself and you fail? It takes a part of you that you never recover from. I was in and out of the hospital for a while after that but then I just stopped caring. I stopped caring if I lived or died. I think I'm just apathetic to everything really. I'm tried of living this way but I'm too apathetic to kill myself so I'm just stuck in this in between."
"That's a dangerous place to be," Leigh looked down and jotted something down. She glanced up from her notepad, realized the time and frowned, "It looks like we're nearly out of time. Are you going to be safe when you leave here?"
"Like I said, I'm too apathetic to do anything."
"I need a yes or no, Frankie."
"Yes, I'll be safe," Frankie replied as she rolled her eyes.
"Thank you. Now, I want you to consider visiting Emily's grave next month for the anniversary. I think it's time you did. Just think about it and we'll talk about it next week."
Frankie gathered her things and made her way out of the office and into her car. Once alone she broke down and let twenty years on anguish wash over her. She sobbed loudly all the way home. She only found a moment of peace when she arrived home and curled up on the couch with her favorite feline companion, Murphy. He was the only one who had never abandoned her and after seven years she had come to trust the little mustached cat with all of her secrets, he wouldn't judge her for having a breakdown. He simply kneaded his paws into her sweater and purred against her chest.
Frankie spent the afternoon in and out of sleep on the couch, waking here and there from nightmares. She finally drug herself to bed around midnight. She pulled the obituary from her nightstand and stared into familiar eyes. Tears streamed down her face as she looked at her sister and whispered over and over again, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." before finally falling asleep.