Andi laughs, and it’s loud and warm in the dark kitchen. My eyes are still closed but the sound feels bright behind my eyelids, like the rosy glow of dawn. She always feels like that.
“I love you,” I say, and I didn’t quite mean to but it’s true. I say it too fast, too urgently, but I need to say it before she finds out what kind of person I really am, someone not even my parents can love. Before I tell her. Which I will, soon, just not tonight.
“I know,” she says, and places a gentle kiss to my neck, right below my beard, the part of me closest to her mouth. The tiniest shiver slides down my spine. “I love you too.”
“Thank you,” I say, and shovewould you ifandmaybe you shouldn’taway, wrap an arm around her waist, pull myself closer. The glass door behind her radiates cold and she radiates warmth, her face buried in my neck, the dark settling like a blanket around us. It’s so quiet. It’s so still.
Here, in the dead of night, it’s so simple.
* * *
The next dayI go over to Beth’s house to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that if she’s ever rude to Andi again we’ll no longer be on speaking terms. It feels easier than I thought it would when I tell her that, and maybe that’s the trick: family is like a rope, and once you cut a little the whole thing frays.
She looks tired and harried while she stands in the front door and listens to me. I can’t stop thinking about the little girl who had to stay behind and make jam, her perfectly righteous fury. I wonder if I could have talked my parents into letting her join us, but it’s decades too late for that.
But she doesn’t back down. She calls Andi a harlot again, to my face, and I’ve never itched so badly to hit a woman. I don’t let her finish talking, I just turn and walk away. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that to a sibling.
It feels much better than I wish it did.
* * *
I’mat work a few days later, on a conference call about isopods, when Elliott texts.
Elliott:Hey, did you get my note?
Elliott:I specifically told Reid to make sure you saw it, don’t tell me he forgot
“Shit,” I mutter out loud, alone in the office I share with the outreach coordinator, then immediately check that I’m still on mute.
I am. I’ve been on mute for fifty-three minutes. We’re not even talking about isopods in my district, but the higher-ups in my department wanted to make sure we had “a seat at the table,” so here I am, not quite paying attention.
I stare at my phone. I think about the note he left, the way he addressed the cardMr. Gideon Bell and Mr. Reid Bell, and I hate how much of a relief that was even though Elliott has always been one of the good ones. I think: if anyone understands why I can’t talk to our parents, it’ll be him. Even if Reid still doesn’t know.
I decide it’s a great time for a bathroom break.
“Hey,” Elliott answers the phone, half a minute later. “Finally.”
“Sorry,” I say, shoving my other hand into my pocket. I stepped outside for the phone call, into the grassy little picnic area the Forest Service offices have out back. It’s cool but not too cool, the sunlight weakening with the afternoon. “Thanks for the invitation.”
There’s a noise that might be static or might be Elliott in Boston, snorting.
“Yeah, sure, you’re welcome,” he says, blustery and almost sarcastic. I miss him. “I basically had to invite you two, right?”
“I didn’t say I was coming,” I tell him. “Maybe I’m busy that weekend.”
“Too busy to be a groomsman?”
“Oh,” I say, because that somehow hadn’t occurred to me. I didn’t think he’d want me to be, not after I abandoned him for years. “No. I mean, yes? Fuck.”
That gets a real, honest-to-God laugh, the same one he’s always had.
“Perfect,” he says, and I sigh. “Reid didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That I was asking you two to be groomsmen.”
“He didn’t.”
