For a few seconds, I let myself hope that Archie is reaching out. I just need a few drops of his sunshine spread in my direction to sustain me. Although would it be worse to hear from him or not hear from him? I haven’t worked that one out yet.
But it’s not Archie. It’s my sister Caitlin.
Hey Leo. Kimmy’s birthday is next Saturday. I know it’s last-minute, and I know you’re busy, but she keeps asking if Uncle Leo is coming this year. No pressure. But she drew you a card with you on it, which I am NOT sending a photo of because I’m using it as emotional blackmail to get you here. Love you x
I stare at the message.
Kimmy’s birthday. She’s turning eight. Last year, I sent an expensive gift that I’d ordered through a service that wraps and delivers, and I called to talk to her for five minutes. The year before that, I’d done the same. And the year before that.
Money instead of presence. Exactly the pattern Caitlin accused me of.
I know I’ve deliberately kept my family at arm’s length, sending money instead of showing up.
But hasn’t the whole thing with Archie and Vaughn reminded me how important it is not to let resentments simmer?
The silence between them widened the gap every day it wasn’t addressed. And somehow, they seem to be finding their way back to each other.
Families are complicated. Archie said that once. You can love people and still not be able to save them from themselves.
He’s right. I can’t save my family from themselves. I can’t fix Tommy’s addiction or undo Caitlin’s choices or make my parents into people they are never going to be.
But I can show up to my niece’s birthday party, even if I’m not quite sure how to behave.
Because showing up and not being perfect is still infinitely better than not showing up at all.
I type back.
I’ll be there. Tell Kimmy I’m going to make her the best balloon animals she’s ever seen.
Caitlin replies immediately.
OMG REALLY?? That’s amazing.
Then a follow-up one.
Since when do you know how to make balloon animals??
It’s a long story.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Archie
“So, let me get this straight,” Vaughn says, reading the information board outside the Bloody Tower. “Two young princes were locked up in here by their uncle, who probably had them killed so he could take the throne.”
“Richard III. Allegedly. There’s still debate. Family dynamics were complicated in the fifteenth century.”
“Apparently.” Vaughn looks up at the stone walls, then at me. “Makes our family look functional by comparison.”
“That’s a low bar, and you know it.”
He laughs. It still catches me off guard to hear it. For too long, my memory of Vaughn’s voice has been frozen at its coldest point, his clipped, dismissive tone. Hearing the warm version again is like finding a song you thought had been deleted from every playlist.
Vaughn’s been here for two weeks now.
He’s staying in a hotel close enough to my apartment that we’ve fallen into an easy rhythm. Coffee in the morning at the place on the corner. Walking the dogs together—Vaughn has a complicated relationship with Muffin, who sensed his wariness immediately and has been punishing him for it by peeing on hisshoes at every opportunity. Pub lunches. Evenings on my sofa, arguing about what to watch.
It started out tentative. Those first few days, we circled each other like people relearning a language they were once fluent in. Our conversations skirted around anything real, sticking to safe territory like his job, the dogs, and whether British weather is a form of psychological warfare.
