I didn’t tell her.
‘We’re getting married in a week, Sadie,’ Jonah told me exasperatedly. ‘You have to tell her. Let me help you.’
‘No. I’m having dinner with her tomorrow. I’ll tell her then.’
I didn’t tell her.
FEBRUARY
Chapter EightSadie
‘I can’t believe you’re leaving me in two days!’ Chess exclaimed. ‘God, Sadie. This has all gone so fast.’
The movers had come that morning. Almost all the worldly goods Jonah and I owned were now somewhere in a shipping container en route to a storage facility in Hobart, ready for us to unpack once we found a rental. The rest of my stuff was in a carry-on suitcase, sitting in Chess’s spare room. I was going to spend tonight and tomorrow at her place before our flight.
Tonight, I’d be spending the night as an unmarried woman. Tomorrow, though…
My left thumb went instinctively to my ring finger, looking for the spikes of my ring. It had become a tic over the last month, a grounding technique, jamming the pad of my thumb into them.
But this time I found nothing. My engagement ring was in the inside pocket of my handbag with the three-for-$12 packet of wedding rings, one of which I was due to slip onto Jonah Fisher’s finger at 4pm the next day.
And I still hadn’t told Chess.
One of the things you had to do all the time as an academic scrounging for jobs and fellowships and grants was craft thenarrative of your research career. It was usually called ROPE – Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence – and you had to talk about how much you’d achieved relative to the opportunities you’d had.
I’d taken that concept a step further and crafted a narrative for myself, one that I’d told to myself, sold to myself, over and over again.
It was the story of the ultimate underdog. Sadie Shaw had come from nothing and been excellent despite it. Sadie Shaw had created opportunities where there were none and made much more than the most of them. Sadie Shaw had kicked down the doors of the ivory tower and made everyone who told her she couldn’t do it rue the day they’d crossed her. Sadie Shaw was a badass.
But she was a badass who was very, very scared of what her big sister was going to say when she found out about the wedding.
‘How soon is too soon for me to come and visit?’ Chess asked. She’d pulled an especially fancy bottle of wine out of the cupboard she liked to refer to as her ‘cellar’ and was rummaging around for a corkscrew. ‘I don’t want to be clingy – I know you’re going to need time to find a place and get settled and everything – but I’m genuinely worried I’m going to fall apart without you nearby.’
‘Um…’ I lectured to hundreds of people regularly, and yet my voice sounded like a scared eight-year-old’s. ‘When were you thinking?’
‘I’ve got a ton of leave saved up.’ Chess deftly levered the cork out. ‘I could come whenever you want. I could even fly down next week and help you house-hunt, if that would be helpful.’
I had a sudden, horrifying vision of what that would look like. Chess, crashing on the couch of the serviced apartment the university was temporarily putting Jonah and me up in. Her, me and him, in the same space.
‘The next few weeks will be a bit chaotic,’ I said. ‘Starting work and all.’
‘You just let me know when you want me to come and I’ll be there.’ She sniffed her wine, then took a long sip before making a sound of satisfaction. ‘God, that’s so good.’
‘What is it?’ I asked, because I was the world’s biggest coward, taking the easy way out of a difficult conversation as soon as it presented itself.
‘This is the Bibliophile Noriko, their reserve pinot noir.’ Chess turned the bottle around and showed me the label, which had an artfully drawn picture of a messy stack of books on it. ‘I first picked up a bottle of theirs a few years ago because the label reminded me of you, but their wine is so good that I joined their wine club. I get a half-dozen sent to me every three months.’
I took a sip. It might have been the best wine in the world or the worst. I couldn’t tell. My whole mouth was numb.
‘Bibliophile is Tasmanian, actually.’ Chess smiled at me over the rim of her glass. ‘Based in the Coal River Valley. Super close to Hobart. Maybe I’ll surprise you one day. Turn up on your doorstep and kidnap you so we can go wine-tasting.’
It was the smile that broke me.
She’d smiled that smile at me a million times before.Don’t worry, sweetie. Everything will be okay. I’ll make sure of it.
And she would.
She’d cleared the way for me. She’d swept all the debris out of the path between me and the ivory tower, fought all the monsters, cheered when I finally kicked down the door like she hadn’t done anything at all.
