My only focus was my phone.
I’d taken lemon juice to burn away the nasty tang on my tongue. It didn’t work.
My mouth was dry; no matter what I did, I wanted to tear it out. Slather it in bleach.
Whiskey might help.
The bar in my living room was enticing, but I knew the second I poured a drink and smelt those honey fumes, I’d chase one drink with another until there was nothing left.
And I had to be sober for when Fia called.
Mum thanked the nurse at my front door, waved her off, and shoved it closed with a roll of her hip. “At least it’s just the twoof us now.”
A nurse.What had she been doing here?I pressed the crease of my elbow and felt a dull ache from the cannula I was all too familiar with.
I’d had my drip today?
I nodded, taking another sip of my fizzy drink. I’d had my drip today.
A silence fell that even the dogs respected.
Just the two of us.
Imre wasn’t coming.
She smiled weakly and came to me with open arms. They wrapped around my middle as I kept sipping, feeling my phone in the pocket of my shorts. Still there. Still on loud.
“Test results will be with us in three days,” she said. “I’ve expedited the blood tests and anything else money can buy. If there were any really concerning results, we’d already know.”
“So, I’m not dying,” I grumbled and placed my glass down on the kitchen side, wriggling out of her hold. I wasn’t truly seeing. My body — for all its flaws — knew my home so well it worked on autopilot.
“No, my darling, of course not!” Her voice rose three octaves, shrill with well-placed worry.
Because I didn’t exactly feel alive.
“I’d like to think he’d tell me if that were the case.”
“He would have,”Mum said, her sympathetic voice sharpening. It could be with anger at Benedek or me. I didn’t care.
“It’s just—something’s missing. I—he… there’s something we don’t understand.”
There she went again, being Mum.
The reality of the situation was all too clear. My brother wasn’t ready for us to lose our family name. So, instead, he risked it — as well as my life.
The dogs went on alert, ears perked, bodies tense, then Vincent let out a little puppy howl as Brodrick barked.
My phone chimed.
I scrambled to pull it out, only to see a notification from the doorbell.
The crack of a knock.
More doctors.Joy.
Another notification. Not Fia. Just a bird congratulating me on my hourly English lessons.
If Fia wouldn’t listen to my apology, maybe she would read it.
