Chapter 21. Ophelia #2
She drags me into the kitchen, where I see Evie—who looks exactly like her twin sister but with lighter hair—éléanor, who is twelve and the shiest of them all, and Charlotte, who, at ten years old, gave me the most efficient, businesslike handshake I’ve ever received.
Ingrid is here, too, and a gray-haired man I’m assuming is her husband.
There’s another man, too, in a white chef’s jacket.
It really is chaos. Several versions of my name are cheered, each of the sisters enveloping me in a warm hug.
Evie holds on to me an extra second. “I feel like I know you already; we’ve heard so much about you. ”
“Oh no. I don’t want to know.”
She laughs, placing a drink in my hand. “All good things!”
Everyone is in good spirits, but they all look so tired. I don’t know how they’re all doing it.
But as the evening rolls on, I start to understand it a little more. They all lean on each other. Everyone is involved, everyone is included. When someone seems down, everyone rallies around them, even Ingrid, who seems to love Elise as if she were a sister.
And even though Alex isn’t here to guide me through it, I feel totally okay. Welcome.
But one absence is nibbling away at my conscience. I nudge Mia as we start pulling pasta bowls and glasses out of cupboards for dinner. “Where’s Fleur?”
“I’m not sure. Probably in her room.”
“Is that because of me?”
“No. She never really hangs out with us anymore. She didn’t eat with us last night. It’s not you, I promise.”
I hate that I’m off on such a bad foot with her. I wish everything had played out differently.
The chef leaves a huge casserole dish full of risotto on the center of the table in the dining room, as well as a mountain of grated parmesan and some salad. I pull out a chair and sit down for my first family meal in years.
Laura flashes in my mind, as guilt-inducing as it is jarring. The coldness, quietness in her Inverness house no different to my own.
This right here is all she really wanted.
God, Laura. I am so sorry. I feel like I used her as a stepping stone to get here.
What Alex thinks about me is true: I am disgusted by the wealth they all have. It’s more than anyone needs. But if I happened to discover my dad was actually a millionaire and was just keeping me humble, hiring someone who can cook would be my first order of business.
I tried to make Alex a chicken salad last year and we both got a stomach bug, as he assures me it was.
It was food poisoning.
But this risotto? Nothing short of incredible.
I’m sad Alex isn’t here, but it’s right that his mom has company.
“Are you still here over the weekend, Ophelia?” Mia asks, taking a second helping of the food.
“Yes, if you guys don’t mind?”
Josie’s voice is loud and clear beside me, her hand landing on mine. “We don’t mind!”
“We can bake a birthday cake for Alex!”
Shit. Alex’s birthday. He’s impossible to buy for. He has enough money to buy a small island, but the things he really wants are things money can’t buy.
“Sounds great. Red velvet, maybe.”
“Soooo …” says Charlotte, in a terrible effort to seem casual. “You guys are all made up?”
I snort into my lemonade. “Yes, we’re all made up.”
“Are you gonna break up again?”
“Josie!” Mia pinches the bridge of her nose, glaring at her sister.
“What? We were gonna ask her.”
“We were going to interrogate her in a more subtle manner,” says Mia, through her laughter.
“We’ve been waiting for Alex to get a serious girlfriend for ages,” adds Evie, a solemn expression on her face.
“We were worried it’d never happen. And then he left you, and like …
obviously we love him, because he’s our brother, but we wanted to strangle him.
We never thought it was you who leaked the file. Well, none of us except …”
Another voice joins the fray, soft and lyrical just like Elise’s, but the accent American, rather than French. “Wow, E. Thanks a lot.”
The table quiets. I hope they don’t notice the way my shoulders stiffen with tension. I know who it is before I turn. Should I stand? No, she’s not a fucking earl. Go for a hug? She doesn’t want to hug me. Handshake?
I turn to face Fleur. I’ve seen her in pictures, billboards, and magazines, but she’s a lot more intimidating in the flesh.
Her hair is dark like her brother’s, long enough that it kisses the top of her belt.
She’s in an outfit that makes me realize that it’s not low-waisted jeans that are the problem, it’s me.
She has familiar piercing green eyes, and that sets me at ease. It’s hard to feel any hostility to anyone who has Alex’s eyes.
Still, anyone who can pull off low-waisted jeans makes my palms sweaty.
“Hey, Fleur,” I say, quietly. “How are you?”
Dumb question. Despite the happy atmosphere in the house, it’s pretty obvious all of these girls are struggling.
“Having kind of a shitty week, actually,” she says, sinking into the vacant chair at the head of the table.
She fills her plate with salad, the mood around the table a little grayer.
Alex has given me a heads up about Fleur’s feelings toward me, so I’m not really sure what to say. “How did my mom seem?”
“She seemed quite cheerful, I think.”
She takes a mouthful, nude-colored nails tapping at her phone screen. Her skin is glowing, hair glossy, but the dark circles under her eyes are just as bad as Alex’s. “Because Alex has finally found someone willing to put up with his shit.”
Mia laughs. “I think we were worried you were a robot.”
Evie nods in agreement. “He’s always had a creative imagination.”
“But he builds the best pillow forts.”
I grin down at Josie. Based on the way he kitted out the rental car on Boxing Day, I can believe that.
I always knew how much he’s done for his sisters, how hard he works to keep some semblance of normality in their lives, but seeing it here now, I have this sudden urge to reach beneath his skin and cradle his soft heart in both my hands.
But I can’t do that, so I settle for a quick text.
Ophelia
I love you.
Ophelia
So much.
The rest of the dinner passes in quiet conversation. Fleur doesn’t say another word, and she’s first to leave the table. Still, I feel like our first meeting could’ve gone a lot worse, considering the fact that a month ago, she wanted to remove my head from my shoulders.
The rest of us are all eating Mia’s homemade ice cream when my phone buzzes in my lap.
Alex
My love for you keeps my heart beating.
I feel my cheeks turning pink. I never know what to say back to these things, just like I don’t know how I got so lucky. I send him a thumbs-up emoji, only because I know it’ll make him laugh. He thinks I’m a bad texter.
I probably am a bad texter.
I SPEND THE first few hours of the night wide awake, staring at my terrible piece of artwork on the ceiling. A thick blanket of silence settles over the house, the hum of the outside world barely audible.
I pad down to the kitchen in my new—brown, of course—pajamas for a glass of water, whispering a quiet hello to the security guys in the foyer.
I take a sip and turn to take in my surroundings.
The dishwasher churns quietly, full to the brim from a busy evening of home-cooked food.
More children’s drawings decorate the wall, and there’s a folder filled to the brim of handwritten recipes.
In the still darkness of the kitchen, I spot a shadowed form outside, sat on the garden bench with his forehead resting in his hand.
I fill up a second glass of water and slide open one of the double doors. The stone path is cold on my bare feet, my pajamas a thin barrier against the chill. The wind whispers through the bushes, tousling my hair as I walk toward the defeated form on the bench.
Alex exhales a long stream of smoke, eyes on the starless sky above us. “I’m bad company tonight, Twist.”
He’s trying to get me to leave, but it isn’t working. It won’t work. We’ve done that once, and it was a mistake.
“Not for me. Never for me.” I sit down on the bench beside him, watching the cigarette glow on his next inhale. “You came back early.”
“The next nurse on shift was a bit stricter with visiting hours.”
I run my hand over his back, feeling the heat of his skin even through his hoodie. His head drops again. I wish I could take some of the weight off his shoulders. “She’s okay, though?”
“Mentally, she’s surprisingly upbeat. Her heart and liver are just giving up.”
I lean my head on his shoulder, which softly rises and falls with his slow breaths. It’s peaceful out here. The chaos of the city is a muted hum. The air is crisp, but not cold. I can see why Elise likes to spend her days on this bench.
“I will quit,” he says, putting a second cigarette between his lips. The lighter battles the breeze, illuminating the hand Alex cups around it. He looks so tired. “I will. Just not this week.”
I take the box off him, because two is enough, and slip it into my pocket. He offers me the one between his fingers.
“No, thanks. I like normal-flavored air. Just plain, original, vanilla air.”
He laughs. “Fuck me, then.”
I grin back at him in the soft orange glow cast by the porch light. “Fuck you, then.”
“Evie texted me to say that you’re cool.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. If I could pick one adjective that I’m not, it’d be cool.
When I was twelve, my mom asked my grandma to say something nice about me and the best word she could come up with was sturdy.
She slapped me on the thigh like a retired man slaps his old car and said, She wouldn’t blow away in a strong wind, that one.
Nothing like a female family member to humble you at an early age.
I miss them all now, though.
“Your sisters are great. I like them all, Fleur included.”
“They are. I don’t know how they’ve not turned out terrible.”
I swing my legs where I sit, the garden quiet save for the sporadic noise of my feet catching the tile beneath us.
“I might never get better, Ophelia.”