26. Delilah #2
His gaze slides to me. I ignore the dangerous little current that runs under my skin.
Vivian laughs like the villainess she’s always pretended not to be. “Oh my God. I get it. This is revenge. You found some handsome guy in a suit and you’re parading him around because you think it makes you look desirable.”
Let her jab. Let her hunt. Let her fish.
Do not take the bait.
“Think what you want and accuse me of anything that makes your little heart happy. But I’m not going to help you, Vivian,” I say in a cool voice.
“In fact, there’s no version of the rest of our lives where I help you again.
Not with an Instagram post, not with a cake, not with a ride to the airport.
Leave the key on the credenza downstairs and get out of my house. ”
Her jaw drops. Her face loses all its color. “You cannot be serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious.”
“After everything I’ve done for you?”
I almost admire it. The sheer athleticism required to vault over reality and stick the landing on that sentence should qualify her for the Olympics.
“You know what’s wrong with you?” she sneers.
“You’ve always been like this. Sulking around, taking pictures of everybody else, eating your feelings, and then acting like it’s a mystery why nobody looks at you.
” She jerks her chin at me. “There’s just more of you every year, Dee. That’s not my fault. Or Connor’s.”
We’re into last resort territory, it seems. Do as much damage as she can on her way out the door.
I’ve read that line. On the iPad, it was pixels. Nothing too harmful.
But hearing it out loud hurts a little more.
Kane uncrosses his arms. I lift one hand without looking at him.
He stops.
“You didn’t even want him,” she spits to finish her temper tantrum. “You just don’t like it when I win.”
For years, that would have worked. I would have pretended Connor didn’t matter. I would have laughed and agreed that our marriage was stale anyway. I might have handed her the victory pre-polished just so it didn’t hurt so bad when she snatched it away from me anyway.
But not today.
Not anymore.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Viv,” I say softly. “I did want him.”
She frowns in confusion.
“I thought I loved him,” I explain. “I wanted my husband to choose me. There’s nothing pathetic about that.”
I advance toward her, brandishing the photograph like a baton. “I wanted the Burberry coat, too. The one I saved four months for before Mom made me give it to you. I wanted the pastry program that I delayed so you could go skip class at Berkeley instead. I wanted Kellen Estrada.”
“Kellen Estrada? Are you fucking serious, Dee? Oh my God, that was literally high school—”
“I’m not finished.” I keep moving forward until I’m toe to toe with her. “I wanted all of it. Every single time. I just learned really early that if I said so out loud, it would stop being mine. So I got very good at pretending I didn’t want anything.”
I let out a breath I’ve been holding for almost twenty years.
“I’m done pretending now.”
My sister looks at me like she’s never seen me before. She’s shrunken in some weird, non-physical way I can’t explain. Like her aura has diminished. The halo over her head has lost all its luster.
She’s still beautiful, and skinny, and confident. All the things I always wanted to be.
They just no longer intimidate me quite so much.
Finally, she says, “You’ve gotten so weird.”
“Yeah,” I agree with a laugh. “I think it’s long overdue.”
She turns and walks to the door. In the doorway, she stops and looks back.
But it isn’t at me.
It’s at Kane. One more check. One more flip of the switch.
He’s looking at me, and grinning.
Vivian rushes down the stairs. I hear her heels on the wood. The front door slams hard enough to shake the window.
I stand until the sound fades.
Then my knees give out.
I crumple to a seat on the floor in the middle of the room, legs folding awkwardly beneath me. My hands shake.
Winning is supposed to feel better than this. I have imagined saying no to Vivian in countless shower arguments. In those fantasies, refusing her makes me powerful. There may have been applause. Once, Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared.
The real thing is awful.
I stare at the bare floor. “She’s never going to admit it,” I whisper. “Or say sorry.”
Kane comes away from the wall to stand over me.
“None of them will. Connor won’t. My mother won’t.” I press my palm to my sternum to calm my racing, aching heart. “I’m never getting anything from them that makes this make sense.”
“No. You aren’t.”
He lowers himself to the floor beside me. His suit pulls tight over his knees.
For a while, he says nothing. He just sits beside me on the stripped bedroom floor, one knee bent, his shoulder close enough that heat seeps through my sweater.
Kane looks at the doorway Vivian disappeared through. “‘There’s just more of you every year,’” he whispers. Then he shakes his head. “I want you to know that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
I flinch.
His head turns. “That was false when Connor typed it. It was false when she said it. It’s false now.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know.” His gaze moves over my face. “I’m not comforting you. I’m correcting the record.”
Right. Naturally. Comfort would be dangerously tender.
Correcting the record sounds like something he can do while still wearing a shoulder holster.
“It still hurt,” I admit.
“That’s what she wanted.”
I drag my sleeve across my damp cheek. “You know, for someone who hates explaining things, you have a lot of aggressively stated insights.”
His mouth quirks. “You prefer uncertainty?”
“No. I prefer being right.”
“Then you must be having a difficult life.”
A laugh escapes me. Kane glances at my mouth, and the air changes. Not completely. Grief still sits inside my ribs like badly poured concrete. But it’s less achy than it was before.
I look around the bare room. The fresh paint has reached that tacky stage where it smells less like chemicals and more like possibility. Downstairs, someone closes a toolbox. The house settles around us, unfamiliar in its newness.
“I’m sleeping here tonight,” I decide. “In my house.”
I wait for him to announce security arrangements or reveal that he’s installing himself in the Eames chair.
He doesn’t. He rises, then offers me his hand.
I take it.
We go downstairs, side by side. I watch him shrug on his coat and step toward the door.
“The next holiday is January seventh,” he says.
I turn. “What holiday is January seventh?”
“Russian Orthodox Christmas.” He cracks his neck to one side. “I’ll send Stepan to pick you up.”
“When? Where are we going? What am I supposed to—”
“Goodnight, Lilah. Get some sleep. You deserve it.”
He steps outside, closes the door, and leaves before I manage a single useful question.