To have spent the service glancing toward the church door, hoping to see her walk through it—finding it empty, and knowing I’d just spent my mother’s funeral thinking about somebody else—makes me inconsolably mad. At Evie. At myself. At the world.
And being mad at your mother’s wake is a bad look. Everyone is throwing platitudes at me:At least she’s not suffering now, Drew. You’re lucky you had her into adulthood, given how sick she was. All I can think of is getting the hell out of here—preferably out of Sydney, or out of the country altogether—and starting fresh somewhere else.
I’m about through the refreshments after the service when theheavy wooden door at the back of the church hall swings open. When I turn around, Anderson is standing in it, framed by the archway, almost comically. Menacing by his pure presence.
I can’t believe his nerve.
I cross the room and move him outside into the portico. “You’re not welcome here,” I say sharply.
I think of the email Mum composed the day she died. After scanning through some of her other messages, I’m more convinced than ever that Anderson is the reason we’re all here. A cut-and-dried case of narcissistic personality disorder. Wanting to know she needed him. Offering to send her money to cover her treatment, late in the piece. Love-bombing, two decades after the first round. Going off on her when she refused his help. Retreating. Reappearing. She couldn’t take it after twenty-three-plus years of control. And I don’t care how we’re related, I’m throwing him out.
Anger storms across his face, the way I imagine it does when he’s about to discipline my brother.
“I’m not here about your mother,” he says. Somehow this makes it much worse. This is herwake. “I’m here about you.”
He’s lying. He’s here about himself. It’s always about him.
“I know who you are,” I tell him. “I’ve known for years.”
He stares at me, thrown off.
“Drew …”
“I don’t need you in my life,” I say firmly. “Or want you.”
He bristles. He’s on the back foot now. “Oliver doesn’t know about your mother and me.”
Of course it’s about Oliver.
“He doesn’t know about you, Drew.”
My muscles tingle, years of pent-up injustice coursing to the surface.
“Oliver might not know,” I explain. “But surely he’s felt it all these years? The rivalry you created between us, first in science class, and then fanning into every corner of our school lives.” He opens his mouth to argue, hands balling into fists. “You primed him to compete with me over everything, Anderson. Relentless jealousy, fueled by genetics and guilt.”
“You’re wrong,” he says, fuming.
But it makes total sense. “Oliver had to have it all. He had to win. Because you needed evidence you’d backed the right son.”
This man, who looks ready to explode, does not deserve another moment of my time. He did enough damage while Mum was alive. I shake my head at him, and at this—all of it—and turn to go back inside.
He grabs me by the arm. I almost pity Oliver, having to put up with this. We stare each other down, and I have so little regard for him I realize there’s nothing he could say to me now that could possibly hold any kind of power.
“I came here to ask you to stay away from Evelyn,” he mutters.
Except that.
“She and my son are working things out.”
What?
If there were ever a few words that could inflict more hurt, on multiple levels, I can’t imagine what they would be.
“Oliver’s in a tough space at the moment, Drew.”
Oliver is in a tough space? Has this man lost track of the fact that we are literally at my mother’s funeral?
“And he’s in love with that girl.”
