‘Yes but—’ began Indy.
‘You’re so holier than thou,’ Rory interrupted.
Indy opened her mouth to speak and then shut it.
How was it that she dealt with all manner of stress in work where women laboured in intense pain to bring babies into the world, where funding and administration made life tricky, where she had to cope with difficult relatives and even more difficult births, and she could do it. But two minutes with her sister, and Indy felt like shouting.
‘I don’t mean to be,’ Indy said, sucking in the irritation.
She wasn’t sure when things had gone wrong between her and Rory but, lately, they couldn’t be with each other alone without arguing. It had to stop and she, as the older sister, the peacemaker, dammit, had to stop it.
Rory glared at her and then seemed to subside.
‘You been working?’ she asked as they walked towards the hotel.
‘Yes,’ said Indy. ‘We had a difficult breech presentation and—’ She stopped.
Rory wouldn’t want to know. Rory had no interest in babies. She was a fabulous aunt but said, loudly, ‘Children only get interesting when they’re about three.’
Chantal, on the other hand, loved hearing about Indy’s work. Her beautifully expressive face lit up with any sort of baby talk.
‘How’s Chantal?’ Indy asked.
Rory shot her a look that said she knew precisely how Indy’s line of thought had gone: from baby to Chantal. ‘Fine. Steve and the girls?’
‘Fine. I hope there’s not too much to do today,’ Indy said.
Rory laughed. ‘It’s going to be Damp City in there. I don’t know who’s maddest – them for getting married or us for going along with it.’
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
Indy felt tired after her shift and relished the peace, even if Rory was stalking along beside her without speaking.
As for Rory, she was a mass of conflicting emotions.
Why did Indy always have to connect Chantal with having babies? Sure, Chantal wanted babies. But that was theirs to talk about, it was nobody else’s business. And as for this wedding, it was insane. It always came back to the past. Not one person in the Robicheaux family wanted to look at the past except for Rory and they’d kill her if she talked about it.
Well, tough. Because she was going to. Writing her book had been so cathartic – it had helped her understand who she was and what had shaped her. They’d have to live with it, wouldn’t they? Rory was going to own her truth.
Savannah
Timing was everything in Savannah’s life. Everything had to run like clockwork and if it didn’t, her whole day would fall apart. Sometimes, she felt like running away: leaving the car, running, barefoot, up to Clary’s school and collecting her, and then they’d run together … silly, wasn’t it?
Today, she’d gone to the Sorrento to see what needed to be done for Saturday’s wedding and she’d felt almost spaced out there, as if all the excess emotion in her had flooded to the surface and she couldn’t think straight.
She knew Eden had noticed but her twin had said nothing. Nobody ever did, Savannah thought miserably. She was locked in her own world, a world she’d willingly walked into and nobody was going to rescue her from it.
Rescue. The very words mocked her.
She’d loved films as a child where a hero rescued the heroine. Where love and valour made everything all right.
‘You’re my romantic girl,’ her mother used to say fondly when she found Savannah curled up on a couch watching an old black and white movie, hugging a cushion and watching the heroine getting saved. In movies, eventually, someone would notice the person needing saving. Cinderella was her favourite fairystory and her favourite film plot.
In real life, though, the painful truth was that nobody rescued you.
You had to rescue yourself and first, you had to believe you needed rescuing and weren’t just being overly emotional. Then, you had to actually change things.
Changing your life was like climbing the world’s highest peaks: it took guts and strength.
