Chapter 15
Fifteen
CALLIE
The day after Lewis dropped his bombshell, Mum and I arrived home from the bakery at the same time Harry returned from school.
The end of term was quickly approaching, and after the summer holidays, Harry and his friends would be going into first year at high school.
He was twelve in July. And I realized that I’d missed a huge chunk of his childhood.
It was never clearer than when we pulled into the driveway as he walked up the stoop.
“Look how tall he is.” I sighed, sad that he’d grown up while I was gone and that it had affected my relationship with him.
When Harry was little, he could be deliberately annoying, like any wee brother, but because of our age gap, we mostly had a good relationship. He was just as likely to come running to me for a hug and reassurance as he was to Mum or Dad.
“Your dad says Harry has to get paired up with the older teens at jujitsu.”
I nodded, because that made sense. While I’d gotten into tae kwon do with Lewis when we were kids, Harry had decided he wanted to learn jujitsu because that’s the martial art Dad studied.
He now led a class in Thurso. And if Dad did it, Harry wanted to do it.
While he had Mum’s coloring—blond hair, brown eyes—he looked like Dad.
When we were younger, there was a part of me that envied Harry.
And I worried that Dad would love him more than he loved me because Harry was his blood, and I wasn’t.
But it was like Dad knew and when Harry came along, he made certain that I never felt left out or like I was loved less.
If anything, in a slightly sexist way he didn’t intend, he was more protective of me than he was of Harry.
Yet, I knew that came from Dad’s own trauma.
He didn’t mean anything by it. His sister was killed, and he couldn’t save her, and now Dad was overprotective of the women in his life. I could understand that.
Harry turned and gave us a wave before heading into the house.
“I’d say that’s an improvement, but he was probably waving at you.”
“What are you talking about?” Mum asked, unclipping her belt.
I gave her a look. “Harry is avoiding me.”
Mum scoffed. “Callie, he’s a preteen boy whose only interests are martial arts, video games, and soccer.”
“Football,” I corrected her, getting out of the car. “You’ve been here fifteen years, so that’s inexcusable.”
She chuckled at my teasing as she followed me out. “Fine, fine, football. My point remains. Your brother isn’t avoiding you—he’s just being a boy.”
I harrumphed at that because I wasn’t so sure.
Inside, we found Harry at the dining table with his backpack open.
Our parents had a rule that our homework had to be completed as soon as we got home, so it was done and out of the way.
It seemed Dad was still at work. He tended to do early-morning to early-afternoon shifts at Ardnoch Castle where he worked security, so I could only guess he was running late or on overtime.
Mum bent down to kiss Harry’s head. “Hi, baby boy. How was school?”
“It was fine. I wish they’d stop giving us homework now. School’s nearly ending and then we’re not even going back there after summer. Why do we still have homework?” Harry complained.
“Just humor your teacher and do it. Like you said, it’ll be vacation time soon. Do you want a snack?”
“Aye, please.” He tapped on his iPad to start whatever exercise his teacher had given.
I did think it a bit cruel he was still getting homework this close to the end of term.
I couldn’t remember our teacher doing that at the end of primary school.
Truthfully, I couldn’t remember much about primary seven.
I’d gone from anticipating the jump to middle school back in the US to suddenly still being in primary school here in the UK and then immediately going into high school at twelve, per the way the Scottish school system worked.
“Got any grand plans for the holidays?” I asked, leaning on an empty dining table chair, attempting conversation.
Harry looked up at me. Except for his eyes and hair, he really was the spitting image of Dad. He could pass for fourteen, he was so tall and broad for his age. “This is Ardnoch, not Paris,” he said with attitude. “Not much to do around here.”
Mum turned from making Harry a sandwich in the kitchen and met my gaze. She frowned, having heard his tone. “I told you so,” my expression said. Sighing inwardly, I tried again. “Maybe we could go for a run in the car this summer. Just you and me.”
“You don’t have a car,” he said to his iPad.
“I’m getting one.”
“Mum and Dad buying that for you too?”
“Harry,” Mum scolded. “That’s unfair.”
He shrugged. “It’s the truth. Everyone says it.”
My stomach dropped. “Says what?”
“That you’re mooching off Mum and Dad. That they paid for Paris only so you could come back and take the bakery from Mum because you’re too lazy to build something for yourself.
That you think you’re something special because you stayed in Paris, even though you’re mooching off Mum and Dad again by moving back in with us. Everyone thinks you’re pathetic.”
I gaped at him, stunned, not only by his words but the contempt with which he said it. So much contempt for an eleven-year-old. Was that really what he thought? What everyone apparently thought? I mean, they had to be saying it a lot for it to get back to a kid.
“Harry Ironside, don’t you ever speak to your sister like that again,” Mum warned, approaching the dining table. “Apologize, now.”
He shoved away from the table, grabbing his things. “I’ll do this in my room.”
“Harry—”
“And she’s not my sister. She’s my half sister. Her dad is a psychopath, which is probably why everyone hates her. You should go back to Paris. No one wants you here.” He marched out of the room, ignoring Mum calling his name in fury.
I knew he was only a kid and probably unaware of how deeply his words cut, but I felt shattered by them. Not merely the words themselves—hitting right at my greatest fear about myself—but that Harry seemed to hate me so much. Maybe going to Paris really had been a mistake.
“Callie …”
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Callie, he didn’t mean it.”
“No, he meant it. And people are clearly gossiping about me.”
“Your brother should not be one of them. And there will be consequences for what he said to you.”
“What did he say?”
We turned to find Dad standing in the doorway. So engrossed in the horrible moment with Harry, I hadn’t even heard his car pull into the drive. I glanced at Mum and gave a slight shake of my head. If Dad found out, Harry would be in for it.
Mum ignored me. “Our son said terrible things to his sister and I’m frankly baffled and too upset to even …” She threw her hands up, tears gleaming in her eyes. “I can’t believe one of my kids could be that cruel.”
“Mum.” I shook my head at her. “He’s just a kid.”
“And you would never have said anything so nasty to anyone when you were his age.”
“Because I wasn’t a coddled eleven-year-old who’s never had a hard day in his life. Harry has grown up with two loving parents in a financially secure home. You can’t compare us. Circumstances made me more empathetic.”
“Are you really defending what he said?”
“Wee yin?”
I turned at that. Even after all these years, Dad still called me wee yin.
“What did he say?” Dad repeated, striding into the room. He bristled with tension and even though he’d cut me to the quick, I suddenly felt a bit sorry for Harry. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Dad.
Mum repeated his words verbatim.
Dad’s expression darkened and he marched toward the hallway.
“Dad, don’t.”
He looked back at me. “He’s twelve in July. He wants to start spewing nasty shit like that as if he’s a man, then he can take a telling like a man.”
I looked at Mum in worry.
She shook her head at me, fully trusting Dad to deal with it in the correct way.
Too concerned I’d caused a rift between my parents and Harry, I followed Dad against my mother’s whispered wishes for me to stop. He was already in Harry’s room, the door ajar. I held my breath, listening as I watched Dad tower over Harry’s bed where my brother sat with his iPad on his lap.
“… Is that what you said?” Dad growled.
“So what if it was?” Harry whined. “It’s the truth.”
“Do you even realize how much you hurt your sister? Does it even compute? Do you even care, Harry? Because we’ve got big problems if you don’t care that your sister is out there looking like you punched her in the gut.”
Harry flinched and looked away. “I didn’t think it would bother her that much.”
“That you said she wasn’t your sister? Or that you referred to her as the daughter of a psychopath? Or that everyone hates her? None of that was supposed to bother her?”
Silence from my brother.
“If you choose to wield words like weapons, you have to deal with the consequences. And if you’re grown up enough to say terrible things to people, you’re grown up enough to handle the truth.”
I frowned, wondering where Dad was going with this.
Dad lowered himself onto Harry’s bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “Harry, look at me.”
My little brother didn’t bother attempting to deny the order. He turned his head, and I watched as he struggled to meet my dad’s gaze.
“There are two reasons I never, ever want to hear you tell your sister she’s not your sister or hear you throw her birth father in her face.
One—when your sister was only a year younger than you are now, she was terrorized by that man.
Terrorized, Harry. He kidnapped Callie and held her at gunpoint before he tried to kill your mother.
You have no idea how traumatic that was for them.
I never want you to be in a position to ever fully understand that.
Ever. So I won’t go into the details. I will say if you did know what your sister has been through, you would be disgusted with yourself for using that man as a weapon against her. ”