‘I didn’tknow, Jonah!’ she exclaimed. ‘This was going on for years. Years! And I had no idea! What kind of moron misses something this massive?’
‘There’s nothing stupid,’ I insisted, ‘about believing someone when they tell you that they love you.’
Fiona looked at me for a long moment, searchingly, before her forehead fell forward onto my shoulder again. ‘Sometimes it all just… hits me, you know?’ she said, voice muffled in my shirt. ‘How much I cared about Matt. How little he cared about me.’
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I just held her tighter instead.
She let me hug her for a few moments, then she drew back, extricating herself from my grip and scraping her wrist roughly over her eyes. ‘If it was just me, then maybe that would be okay,’ she said.‘Maybe I could live with that. But he’s got those other kids in Melbourne, and he cares about them more than our kids – he won’t even pay child support, for fuck’s sake, and he’s shown no interest in seeing them since he left, and… how am I supposed to explain that to them?’
‘I don’t know.’ Shit, what was I supposed to say? My first real test at being a good brother, and I wasn’t going to pass. ‘I’m sorry. But—’
‘You don’t need to explain it to them,’ Sadie said.
Fiona and I both looked at her.
‘My dad was a piece of shit.’ Sadie shrugged as she leant back against the kitchen bench, but her fingers were folded around the edge so hard her knuckles were white. ‘No one ever needed to explain that to me. It’s a cliché, but actions speak louder than words. Your kids are going to be able to read Matt’s actions just fine.’
She paused for a second, biting her lip.
‘But they’re going to be able to read yours too, Fiona. And Jonah’s, and everyone else in their lives who shows up for them, and who keeps showing up for them. They’re never going to have a single doubt that they’re’ – her voice cracked – ‘loved.’
‘Oh God, Sadie,’ Fiona said, the tears starting again.
And then the two most important women in my life stood there, in the middle of our new kitchen, hugging, for a long time, while I desperately hoped I could do something – anything – to make sure neither of them felt like this ever again.
I offered to go with Fiona when she had to leave for school pickup – leaving her alone after she’d broken down like that seemed like a terrible idea – but she refused. ‘This is not the first time I’ve cried over Matt, and it won’t be the last,’ she said. ‘Trust me, I’m going tomake you both come around to my place all the time – like,allthe time – but there’s no way I’m taking your first night in your new home away from you. Especially not on Valentine’s Day.’
She hugged me goodbye. ‘Enjoy the wine and cheese. And whichever bed you pick.’
‘Fiona!’
She grinned at me. ‘And thankyou,’ she said, hugging Sadie again. ‘For being here. For bringing him with you. For everything.’
‘You don’t need to thank me,’ Sadie said. ‘Really.’
Her eyes met mine over Fi’s shoulder. It made me feel so many things that I almost had to turn away.
Almost.
In the fifteen years of our gruelling education, I had never quite learned how to look away from Sadie Shaw.
What was slightly more unusual was the fact that this time, she hadn’t looked away from me.
By the time Fiona left, we were still looking at each other. There was a long, extended, agonising silence.
Sadie bit her lip.
And I nearly broke. I nearly broke like a first-year student in a lecture who couldn’t handle the quiet after a question. I nearly flung myself at her feet and wrapped my arms around her waist and saidI love you, I love you, I love you, the words are too citational to express how I feel about you but maybe if I say them enough times that’ll get the meaning across, and maybe if I keep saying them you won’t be able to get the words ‘that isn’t why I married you, Fisher, get off your knees, you pathetic fool’ in edgewise.
Then Sadie covered her face with her hands. ‘I can’t believe the first thing that jumped into my mind when she asked us about why we have two beds wasAirbnb. What the fuck was I thinking?’
‘I’ll admit,’ I said, just barely managing an appropriately jokey tone, ‘that I’ve heard you make slicker arguments.’
‘Just laugh at me and be done with it.’ She groaned into her hands. ‘I might as well have said that the second bedroom was for our good friend Bunbury.’
‘I’m sure we’ll find some people for you to try that line on. Maybe we can make a game of it, see how long it takes before someone goes, “Hang on, isn’t that Algernon’s fake friend fromThe Importance of Being Earnest?”?’
She glared at me from between her fingers. ‘Don’t patronise me.’
