Chapter 19 #2
She holds her tight. Both arms, full pressure, her cheek pressed to the side of Darcy's head, the way she's been holding Darcy since they were small enough to share a twin bed in the LeBlanc guest room.
Darcy makes a soft noise into Evie's hair and squeezes back hard enough that they both rock a half-step sideways.
They stay like that for a beat. Two beats.
When Evie pulls back, her eyes are wet. She wipes the corner of one with the heel of her hand, fast, and turns to me.
I open my arms.
She crosses the space and presses her face into my chest. My arms close around her before the thought finishes forming.
One hand flat between her shoulder blades, the other curving around the back of her head, fingers sliding into damp hair.
She fits against me without adjustment. The soft press of her forehead against my chest, her hands fisting the front of my shirt, her whole body leaning into mine with the kind of trust that makes my chest ache.
First time I've held her where someone can see.
My pulse picks up. Not a lot. Enough that I feel it in my throat, in my wrists, in the places where her body touches mine. A knot loosens behind my ribs that I didn't know was tied, and the loosening feels like relief and terror in equal measure because there's no taking this back.
Darcy has seen it. Darcy knows. The building just collapsed and I'm standing in the rubble with Evie's cheek against my chest and I'm not reaching for the packed bag.
And underneath the relief, underneath the terror, there's a third thing I don't want to name.
A satisfaction that runs deeper than comfort.
Darcy is watching me hold this woman against my body, and the part of me that should feel exposed feels closer to good.
Evie pressed against me in my kitchen, in my shirt, wearing my scent, and my sister seeing all of it. Mine, and someone knows it now.
I'm grinning. Can't help it.
"Grams was right." The drawl is thick and I don't correct it. Don't want to. "That woman is a menace."
"She's a GENIUS," Darcy says, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"Oh my God, this is, okay, this is the best morning of my entire life, and I'm including the morning I met Lizzo at that brunch in the Quarter.
Evie, look at me, stop hiding in my brother's chest, oh my God, you two are going to be so beautiful at the wed—, at, I mean, at whatever, at brunch, I meant brunch—"
My eyebrow lifts. "Were you about to say wedding?"
"NO. Absolutely not. I said brunch. I very clearly said brunch."
"You did not say brunch."
"I am saying it NOW and that's what counts." Darcy crosses her arms with the dignity of someone who has absolutely lost this argument. "Brunch. Final answer."
Evie's shoulders are shaking against my chest. Laughing, and I can feel it through the cotton, small tremors that vibrate against my ribs.
"One more word about a wedding and I'm changin' the locks, Darce."
"You wouldn't."
"Try me."
"You literally just got a girlfriend, you're not kicking out the sister who manifested this."
"You didn't manifest anything. You burned toast and Grams made a phone call."
Darcy gasps, hand to her chest, theatrical and enormous. "I manifested it ENERGETICALLY, Tripp, and I will not have my contributions diminished."
Evie lifts her head from my chest. The flush is still there, pink across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, but she's smiling. The one with the dimples, the one I've only seen a handful of times and never once in front of someone else.
I don't let go of her.
Darcy is already pulling her phone out, muttering about Grams and time zones and whether FaceTime counts as calling, and the kitchen smells like eggs and coffee, and has the warmth of a room with three people in it who all want to be there.
Darcy commandeers the eggs I made for Evie. Neither of us stops her.
Evie just reaches for the carton and cracks two more into the pan herself, one-handed, clean breaks, and I watch her adjust the flame lower without checking the dial. Six weeks of mornings I wasn't supposed to be counting.
"Okay but I'm NOT telling Grams on FaceTime because she'll do the face.
" Darcy is sitting cross-legged on the island stool, eating my eggs with her fingers because she hasn't gotten a fork and doesn't seem to consider that a problem.
"The one where her mouth doesn't move but her eyes say I told you so in like four languages. "
"Five." I lean against the counter. "She's got an Italian one she saves for special occasions."
"I'm texting her. Text is safer because she can't do that through text. She can only deploy through, like, spiritual warfare, and I'm pretty sure that has limited range."
Evie slides the eggs onto a plate and sets it in front of me.
Her hand trails across my forearm as she passes, fingertips light, and the touch settles into my skin like a burner that's been turned off but hasn't cooled.
I pick up the fork. Eat. The eggs are better than mine because she added the cream I forget about every time.
"You could just call her, Darce."
"I could, but then she wins IMMEDIATELY, and I need at least a twenty-minute head start to emotionally prepare for how smug she's going to be.
" Darcy types with her thumbs at a speed that shouldn't be possible, her tongue poking out between her teeth.
"Okay I'm opening with, and I quote, GRAMS YOU ABSOLUTE WITCH, and then I'm following up with seven exclamation points and the crystal ball emoji. "
"She doesn't know what emojis are."
"She does TOO. I taught her. She sent me a cat emoji last week."
"That was an accident. She told me she was tryin' to send a period."
Evie laughs, and the sound fills the kitchen like cooking smells do, gradual and settling into corners.
She's leaning against the counter beside me now, close enough that her shoulder rests against my ribs.
Her hand finds my arm again, fingers curling loosely around my wrist, and she leaves it there. Casual.
Darcy glances up from her phone, and her grin softens. Lower gear, her voice a half-register quieter than her usual volume.
"She's gonna cry, you know. Grams. When I tell her."
"She planned this, Darce. She doesn't get to cry about it."
"She absolutely gets to cry about it. Architects cry at ribbon cuttings, Tripp. That's the whole point."
I eat the eggs. Drink the coffee Evie poured. Listen to my sister type a novel-length text to the woman who put all of this in motion, and the thought unfolds slowly, without urgency, like a diagnosis building when you're reading labs and the numbers start telling a story you didn't order.
Odette didn't just fake the illness to get me home.
She knew Darcy would follow. Not immediately, but soon, because Darcy has never been able to leave a situation alone when someone she loves is at the center of it.
And Darcy wouldn't go alone, because Darcy never goes anywhere without her best friend, and her best friend was already in the house.
Already cooking for Odette, already managing the medication chart, already embedded in the LeBlanc kitchen with her shoes off and her hair down and her careful, quiet competence on full display for the grandson who might walk through the door.
The realization doesn't land like anger. It lands closer to awe, the grudging kind a field operative feels when he realizes he's been outmaneuvered by someone who never held a weapon in her life.
My eighty-three-year-old grandmother ran an operation with better long-term positioning than half the missions I've planned, and she did it from a bed she didn't need to be in, with nothing but a phone and fifty years of knowing how her family moves.
Damn, Grams.
"Tell her I said bien joué."
Darcy looks up from her phone. "What does that mean?"
"Well played."
"Okay how do you spell the second one?"
"J-O-U-é. Accent on the E."
"How do I do an accent on a— never mind, I'll just put an apostrophe. She'll know."
She won't know. Odette will read it and call Darcy to correct her French, and then Darcy will blame me for not teaching her how to use the accent menu on her phone, and a whole cycle will start. I let it go.
Evie tips her temple against my arm. "He told me my étouffée was 'not bad' and I almost cried."
"That IS crying-level praise from him. That's basically a marriage proposal in Tripp language."
"We're back to weddings already?"
"We never LEFT weddings, I just took a detour through brunch for legal reasons."
The kitchen is full. The eggs are gone. Evie's damp hair leaves a cool spot on my shirt where her head rests.
I'm in a room with my sister and this woman, and I'm not thinking about the files or the name on the donor list. I'm just here, in a version of a life I stopped believing I'd get to have.
Content. The word fits like a diagnosis I've been circling for weeks without naming. I can't remember the last time I felt that way.
My phone buzzes on the counter. I glance at the screen without picking it up. Vanessa. Just a text, not a call. Two words and a file attachment.
You free?
I turn the phone face down and reach for my coffee.
"Tripp, okay, I have to text her, but if I text her she's gonna call, and if she calls she's gonna do the voice, and I am not emotionally prepared for the voice before coffee.
" Darcy's thumbs hover over the screen. "Is there a version of this where I tell her and she doesn't immediately call me to gloat? "
"No," I say.
"That's what I thought." She starts typing anyway. "Worth it. Some things are worth the gloat."
Darcy is still typing, and my phone sits screen down on the counter, the message waiting.
I don't pick it up.