“What?” Emily poked out her chin.
“He came over here to ask me out…”
“But he didn’t. He asked me instead.”
“You’re married.”
“It’s dinner. Don’t be a prude.”
Evie shook her head. “Why did you come, Em? You don’t seem to be here to see me.”
“Of course I am. I love you—you’re my sister. And there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun at the same time. You know me. I can’t stand to be boring.”
“There’s definitely nothing boring about you. I’ll have it engraved on your headstone — Emily Mair was self-centred and cruel, but she was never boring,” Evie said before slamming the door shut behind her and striding across the bookshop.
Brett looked up from his work measuring the space, surprised at the loud noise. “Everything okay?”
“Do you have siblings, Brett?”
“Two brothers,” he replied with a nod, his grey moustache twitching.
“Then you get it — they can push your buttons like no one else.”
He chuckled. “You’re right about that.”
Evie stopped in the small kitchen behind the shop and leaned against the bench, eyes shut. She groaned and rubbed both hands over her face. It didn’t matter to her who David dated. He was an adult—he could go out with anyone of his choosing. But the fact that Emily had once again gotten in the way of Evie’s life, her friendships and relationships, grated on her last nerve. She’d thought the pain of the past was well and truly behind her, but it stoked a fire of anger in her gut.
She’d walked away—no, she’drunwould be a more apt description. She’d run back home to Coral Island to get away from the wounds her sister had inflicted on her years earlier. And now that Emily was back, Evie felt as though she were thirty-eight years old all over again, having her heart torn from her chest. Perhaps she hadn’t put the past behind her so much as she’d hidden from it, and now the feelings she’d buried were working their way to the surface to haunt her all over again.
Nine
It’d beena rough day at work. The only redeeming feature was that Charmaine had hung two of her paintings in the florist shop and several customers had stopped to look at them. One had remarked on how lovely the painting was. No buyers yet, but she was happy with the initial response to her artwork, given that she hadn’t shown it off to anyone before.
Now, however, Charmaine wanted nothing more than to lie down on the couch and vegetate in front of the television set. But Sean would be there. He was always there. And he’d be waiting for her to cook dinner for the two of them so he could watch Friday night football. She’d have to watch with him or be relegated to reading on her bed.
She should stand up to him—it was her flat, after all. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Conflict was something she did her best to avoid. She didn’t like talking to strangers, avoided gatherings as much as possible, and hated to get into any kind of disagreement.
She’d once let her hair grow down past her waist because she didn’t want to argue with her hairdresser, who’d insisted she needed layers and a fringe when she didn’t want them. Instead, she’d simply avoided going to the hairdresser at all for five years until the woman had resigned and moved on. She could’ve found another hairdresser, but then she was afraid she’d have to explain if she ever ran into the lady at the grocery shop on the corner between her house and the hairdresser’s, and she didn’t want to change where she shopped.
It was exhausting being her at times. But she supposed there was nothing to be done about that.
She’d closed up the florist shop late because Betsy had left her filling an order that she said she’d come back and collect to deliver later that night. But she’d wanted to take Sam home to see her father, since he had car troubles of some kind and couldn’t pick her up. Charmaine had stayed behind, snipping stems and arranging flowers, tying them together into beautiful arrangements, for a wedding happening at theBlue Shoal Innthe next morning.
Weddings were her favourite event to decorate with flower arrangements. She used all her creative energy to make them as beautiful as possible. Betsy had spent hours training her over the months since she arrived. Charmaine became more confident with every job she undertook.
She’d also been hired to plan several weddings since Bea’s, and she seemed to be making a bit of a name for herself on the island as the only available wedding planner. She enjoyed every minute of it now that she’d figured out a few ways to streamline the process. The first weddings she’d planned had given her repeated panic attacks, but now she knew what she was doing — at least, much better than she had. And she was confident in helping her brides with their dream weddings.
In fact, she should go upstairs and finish the presentation she was preparing for her next meeting with a bride from Airlie Beach who was planning for her upcoming nuptials on the island. The theme was bikini chic, although Charmaine wasn’t sure you could ever call a bikini weddingchic.Still, she was doing her best to make the woman’s dreams come true and already had some great ideas on how to create a few special moments that would bring the whole thing together beautifully.
When she pushed her way into the flat, the first thing she noticed was the state of the small kitchen. The sink was full of dirty pots, pans and dishes. There was some kind of burned food smell hanging in the air, combined with the stench of a full litter box. The same litter box Sean had promised to empty that morning, but that Charmaine could clearly see was still just as full as it had been then.
She spun around slowly, taking in the disaster that was her previously neat and tidy flat.
Sean’s bedding lay crumpled on the couch, formed in the shape of his body from the last time he’d sat there, playing video games. There were chip crumbs surrounding the body-sized hole in the doona, along with a few splashes of salsa. There was some kind of stain on the coffee table, where something hadn’t been wiped up in time. And dirt from a large pair of boots was trekked across the floor from the back door.
Her nostrils flared as she scanned the room looking for her brother. It was time she let him know how she felt about his housekeeping efforts. She couldn’t kick him out—he was family. But the least he could do was show his gratitude by helping out around the tiny flat. It wasn’t as though there was a lot of work to do in such a small space, but he didn’t attempt any of it, and hadn’t from the moment he’d arrived. He’d always been a self-centred boy, but she’d expected he would grow out of that phase eventually, especially after their mother died three years earlier and the two of them had no one to take care of them. But apparently Sean had managed to avoid growing into maturity while living on his own.
He wasn’t in his usual places—in the kitchen, standing in the open door of the refrigerator eating her food, or hunched in front of the television set. Where was he?
