‘She didn’t tell me.’ I took my mug from her and put it back down on the kitchen table, almost collapsing into my chair. ‘This is how I found out what happened. From my dad making some offhand comment about money. Fi hasn’t said a fucking thing to me.’
I had never seen Sadie Shaw lost for words before. Anything I had ever said to her – anythinganyonehad ever said to her – she had a response to. This, though, her brilliant mind couldn’t seem to even remotely compute.
‘I tried to call Fi as soon as I got home, but she didn’t answer,’ I said. ‘Which isn’t surprising, I guess. She’s got three kids, and they can be a handful. She’d probably already collapsed in exhaustion.’
That was what I was telling myself, anyway. What if Fiona was staring at my name on her phone screen, worrying that I was calling to rub it in? To tell her that she deserved this somehow?
‘What about your brother?’ Sadie sat back down across from me. ‘Did she tell him?’
‘I haven’t been able to get hold of him yet – he’s on a fellowship in Germany – but I don’t think so.’
Elias, at least, would have told me if he knew. Wouldn’t he?
Sadie let out a long breath. ‘If anything like this ever happened to me, I would go running to Chess so fast there would be scorch marks on the ground. Why hasn’t she told you?’
‘Because my family is absolutely fuckingfucked, Shaw.’
I rubbed my hand over my beard, hoping that the room was dark enough, and my glasses were disguise enough, that she wouldn’t see the tears beading in the corners of my eyes. ‘Elias and Fiona and I aren’t like you and your sister. We don’t—We aren’t—Sometimes I’m so fucking jealous of you, did you know that?’
Sadie raised an eyebrow.
‘I know, I know. I sound exactly like a poor little rich kid. Fuck, Iama poor little rich kid. But… you remember our first graduation? When your sister got into it with my dad?’
‘Of course I remember. I was so embarrassed I didn’t think I’d be able to look you in the eye ever again.’
She’d beenembarrassed? That was new information – and a concept I wasn’t even remotely in the right headspace to process.
‘Well, I was jealous,’ I said. ‘Because my siblings and I were raised to fight each other, not fightforeach other. There’s not a person on this planet who would fight for me the way Chess did for you.’
I wrapped my fingers around my mug. ‘The very first thing I ever learned was how to argue,’ I said. ‘Dad drilled it into all three of us. There was this game he used to play at dinner – if one of us expressed some kind of opinion, he’d point at another one of us and say ‘devil’s advocate!’ and we wouldn’t be allowed to leave the table until we’d debated it out. Fighting each other was like our family sport.’
I took a long sip of tea, but it didn’t help the lump growing in my throat. ‘Fiona was the only one who ever resisted. Sometimes, when Dad pointed at her, she’d just say no and walk away. And sometimes she tried to protect me, too. She’s three years older than me, and…’
I swallowed reflexively. I’d only been seven when my dad took my teddy bear away and told me I could have it back when I’d constructed a persuasive enough argument as to why I needed it.I’d been completely distraught, but he’d been unmoved (tears, Jonah,he’d said,do not constitute a thesis statement).
Then two days later, Fiona had materialised in my bedroom in the dead of night.Here,she’d whispered, handing me my bear.I stole him back for you. Find a better hiding place for him than Dad did, okay?
‘She tried to protect me,’ I repeated, ‘but when she needed me to support her, I turned my back on her instead.’
‘How?’ Sadie asked. ‘What did you do?’
‘Let’s just say that I was really,reallyunsupportive of her decision to get married.’
I remembered vividly what it had been like when Fiona announced she was dropping out of uni, moving to Tasmania, and marrying an older man. My mother – who was normally quiet and deferential – had snapped, calling her decision stupid and shortsighted. My father had agreed, saying that a choice this foolish made her worse than a failure. Elias had just shaken his head and said,come on, Fi, don’t be an idiot.
Then Fiona had looked at me.
She was making a terrible decision. I, eighteen years old and newly enamoured of university life, was very confident in that. But she’d just had three other people tell her that exact thing. She didn’t need to hear it again.
Yet instead of having her back, I’d cocked my chin, looked her in the eye, and said,can you explain why thisisn’tthe worst choice anyone has ever made in the history of the world?
Fiona had looked back at me for a long moment, and then turned on her heel and walked out the door.
It wasn’t like we’d been on bad terms in the fourteen years since. I’d been a groomsman at her wedding. I sent presents to her kids on their birthdays and chatted to them on Zoom sometimes.We’d spent some perfectly acceptable family Christmases together. I loved my sister.
But something had broken between me and Fiona that day, something that had never, ever been repaired.
‘Sounds like you were right about that,’ Sadie remarked, ‘given how her marriage ended.’
