Chapter Twenty-Six. Rory
Rory
“You know, this apartment is yours, too,” Wynne said, voice cracking through the hushed clink of cutlery and the faint sounds of traffic outside.
Rory looked up, uncomprehending, from the noodle he was chasing around the bottom of the bowl. “What’dyoumean?” he said around the meatball in his mouth.
Wynne’s mouth curled in a mix of disgust and amusement. “For God’s sake, Rory, inhale. I swear, you eat like the food is about to run away from your plate.”
Rory made a show of chewing and swallowing. “Sorry.” He grinned. “It feels like the food is running away. I’m hungry all the time.”
“I noticed,” she said dryly, casting a rueful look at the kitchen cabinets.
“Sorry,” Rory said again.
“It’s okay.” She shrugged, twirling noodles around her fork. Her bowl, unlike Rory’s, was still half full. “You’re growing so much I don’t think you can help it. What are you now, five-nine?”
“I think so. I didn’t check.” Rory finished scraping the last of the sauce from his bowl. “What did you mean, about the apartment?”
“You know this apartment belongs to Mom, right? Which means that you have just as much right to live here as I do.”
Rory stared at her, nonplussed. He’d never precisely thought about how his sister’s apartment came to be. It just was.
Wynne shot him a derisive look. Then her face softened a little. “I forget how young you are, sometimes. Here”—she pushed her bowl, still a third of the way full, his way—“so you’ll stop making puppy eyes at my plate. But I need you to listen for a minute while you eat, okay?”
“Mm-hm.” Wary now, Rory hooked his finger into the bowl and dragged it across the table.
“I don’t know if Mr. Benson already talked to you about this, but the early entrance exams for the university are in October, three months from now, and you’re sixteen, just the right age for admission.” She paused. “Okay, from the look on your face, I guess he hasn’t brought it up yet.”
“Um, Mr. Benson quit in April. He said Dad would hire someone else, but …” He shrugged, the movement encapsulating the months stretching between April and now, tutorless.
Wynne stared at him, a pained expression on her face. “And you’re only telling me this now?”
Rory chased a meatball around the bowl. “At first, I thought a new tutor would come, like he said.” The meatball twirled round and round.
“And then I figured it doesn’t matter much anyway.
I was missing half the days with Mr. Benson already, to come here.
And it wasn’t like he was teaching me anything I couldn’t learn here by myself. ”
Wynne worked her jaw like she was pulverizing words between her teeth. Rory busied himself with dividing the last meatball into two, then three, then five, until nothing but small pieces of ground beef remained.
Wynne exhaled noisily. “Fine. Whatever. I can help you study for the entrance exams. Or better yet, get you a tutor to help prepare you—you can ask your friends if they know someone around here, or I can ask around—”
“Um.” Rory cut her off. “I’m not going.”
“What?”
“To the university. I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? You’re the right age.
You spend half the month here anyway, and you obviously enjoy the studying part.
” Wynne gestured at the stack of Rory’s books and papers, shoved messily to the end of the table.
“And you’re good at it. I don’t think you realize it, but trust me—you are.
You have a talent for this stuff, and you have knowledge that people years ahead of you usually don’t have.
Though you wouldn’t have to focus on construction work, or even engineering at all. You could study anything, do anything.”
Rory stared at her, placing the fork back in the bowl. He knew he’d been delving into some pretty advanced stuff lately, but he never thought about it in terms of talent.
His sister reached out and touched his arm.
“You could live here, with me, when you start studying. That’s what I was meaning to say.
” Her voice turned teasing. “At least, as long as you promise to go grocery shopping every once in a while. You’re not that terrible to live with, other than the food thing. ”
“But,” Rory said, “what about Daye?”
“What about her?” His sister blinked back like she didn’t see the problem.
“I can’t just leave her there. She—”
“I’m not saying abandon her and never go back,” Wynne cut him off. “You could still go back for weekends and holidays, if you want.”
“But it’s Daye. She’s the reason I’m here to begin with. I can’t just go away.”
“Why not? Look, I get that Daye is important to you. I can even get why you’re trying to do what you’re doing.
But there’s no reason for you to be joined at the hip.
You shouldn’t have to give up your future just to spend more time with her.
Trying to make her independent—as doomed as it is—shouldn’t come at the expense of your life.
” She got up and started to clear the dishes from the table.
“I get that this is a lot to take in. And you can always take the February exams, so we don’t have to decide anything right now.
But seriously, Rory, you need to start thinking about what you’re going to do, okay? ”
“Okay,” Rory said quietly, the word almost lost in the clang of china and the splash of water in the sink.