“Do you think your sister would come here for Freya?”
My eyes shot open. “What?”
Dex shifted toward me. “For the birth. I think she could use a friend—especially since I’ve pretty much stolen her Vermont connection for my own nefarious purposes. I know it’s an expensive flight, but I’m happy to take care of it and get her a hotel room, or whatever she needs. It might be a nice surprise for Freya.”
Surprise. That was one way of putting it.
I stilled my hand in his hair, and I might have even held mybreath. Just as well. My mouth was suddenly dry as dust, and my eyes were burning.
Dex glanced up at me, head tilted quizzically, patiently waiting for a reply.
“I don’t—she’s not?—”
“What’s wrong?”
Silence.
More silence.
I swallowed hard and uttered words I hadn’t said aloud in years. “Anni’s dead, Dex.”
He just stared, dumbfounded. “I—oh, fuck. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“I know.” I sat up, feeling very much at a loss. This wasn’t something I discussed with anyone. I didn’t know how to do it.
“Can I ask…when?”
I scratched my nape. “Eight years ago.”
“She was young,” he said softly. “Twenty-one?”
“Ja.”
Dex probably expected or hoped that I’d fill in the blanks, though the lingering silence indicated otherwise. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What happened? Can I ask? If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I understand.”
At any other time and with anyone else, I would have changed the subject and established a clear boundary. Some topics weren’t up for discussion, and Anni was one of them.
But this was Dexter. It seemed wrong that he didn’t know about my sister.
“She died in her sleep,” I replied after a minute. “Anni had a rare heart condition. An electric rhythm disorder, they said. Cardiac arrhythmia. Her heart would beat too fast and she’d faint, pass out. She had a few episodes in the months before she…was gone, but she was never diagnosed.”
Dex frowned. “Why? Fainting and passing out isn’t normal behavior in a young woman.”
“No, it’s not. She saw a specialist who did tests and prescribedmedication, but no one thought she was in serious danger. The doctors suggested that with some lifestyle modifications she’d be fine.”
“What do you mean?”
A vision of Anni sprang to mind, dancing at a cousin’s wedding, spinning and spinning in the middle of a dance floor like a witch or a goddess…and everyone watching to see what she’d do next.
“Anni was a fireball whirlwind who lived every day as if it were her last—as if she knew something the rest of us didn’t. Our parents never knew how to deal with her. Anni was the youngest, a surprise, and they were focused on their careers. Lars and I were much older, and in some ways, we raised her. She followed us everywhere. We called her our shadow, but she was noisier than a shadow.” My lips curled in reminiscence. “She’d pop up everywhere. A little pig-tailed girl with shoelaces undone who’d drop fake spiders from the stairwell to frighten our friends.”
“I think I like her.”
“Everyone did. Anni was a pest—the lovable kind. I left for the US when she was nine, and I missed her, I missed home, but I was so”—I paused to search for the right word in English—“enchanted with a new life. I didn’t worry about her, and I should have.”
“Oh, Viggo.” Dex set his hand on my knee. “I hope you don’t blame yourself.”
“Of course I do. We all do. I shouldn’t have left the country, Lars should have taken a job closer to home, our parents should have paid more attention. So many ways to cast blame, but we just didn’t know. In a lot of ways, Anni was a typical high-strung teenager—popular, pretty, and prone to act first and think later. She packed a lot of living into her twenty-one years. Anni liked bright lights, wild parties, drugs, alcohol, and bad ideas. She did as she pleased—asked for forgiveness after the fact, never permission. A trip to Milan for the weekend with a man she met at a bar, no problem. Skiing in the Alps on someoneelse’s credit card, no problem. She was fun, carefree, the girl everyone wants to be seen with. You’d never know we were related.”
