23. Remy
As hard as I knew it would be, I found the strength to tell Rhea the rest of the story. All of it.
And now there are almost no secrets between us. I kept at bay the ones that involve innocent people, the secrets that would gain me nothing but my sister’s pity. The secrets that would betray people who have already been hurt enough. When it was all said and done, she hugged me, thanked me for the truth, and smiled.
I feel like I’ve failed her.
But Rhea is fantastic—she’s either handling this really well, or she’s in denial. I’d bet every penny I have that it’s the latter of the two, but it’s hard to fight her as she walks through the grocery store collecting random things. I wanted to wait for Claire to wake up, but it’s kind of nice to have this time alone with my sister.
“Nothing says ‘this is a wake for an incredibly well-respected man’ quite like roses.” She smiles innocently when I raise an eyebrow, gesturing to the rows of blooms in a cooler to our right. “You’re the one who said I need to play the part of doting daughter.”
“Rhea…” I sigh. “I’m not asking you to pretend he was a good father. After what I told you last night—”
“Which part?” She interjects, glancing at me over her shoulder. “The part where our father whored our mother out to his business partner resulting in a half-brother who tried to have my best friend delivered into sex trafficking? Or the part where he whored me out to sex traffickers?”
I cringe as an older woman glances our way in apparent disgust, but judging by the way her eyes linger on the roses as she passes, I guess she didn’t hear anything too bad. She likely doesn’t even speak enough English to understand what Rhea said beyond maybe the word whore. She must just hate yellow.
Actually, now that I think about it, my father hated yellow. That makes me smile as Rhea grabs the last bouquet off the shelf, adding it to the three she’s already tucked in the crook of her arm, and drops it into the shopping cart. She grabs some sunflowers next, then some other yellow flower I don’t care to contemplate the species of, before dusting her hands together and standing back to be sure she’s cleared the section of yellow flowers.
“This is the twenty first century, Ray.” I say, stepping in front of her before she can dance out of the way again. “Our father telling Davos that he can take you doesn’t constitute a legally binding contract. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that.” She huffs. “You know that doesn’t make it any better, right?”
“You know that nothing will make that better.” I shrug. I mean it when I say there are almost no secrets between my sister and I now—at least, none that are mine to tell. There are still things that involve other people—stories that can only be told by the main character.
I gave her a bit of time to stew on all the information I’d dumped on her, and then after Claire left, I went and convinced Rhea to hear me out. She knows everything I do about the people in our lives, she knows exactly what I do for Davos and the operation, and she knows that I have developed a taste for taking justice into my own hands. I left Claire’s part out of it when I told her about Giante, but she took that scarily well. You’d think her brother being a murderer would be the hard part to swallow, but her biggest hang-up in all of it was our half-brother.
Neither of us slept last night—we stayed awake like we used to when we were young, and we’d talk for hours about the things we wanted to do in our lifetimes. Never would ten-year-old Remy have guessed he’d have so much blood on his hands, but I think he’d just be glad the world is safe from Jonathan Boudreaux now, relieved that I turned into the protector we never had.
“No.” Rhea agrees. It takes me a moment to remember what we were even talking about. “But I have a plan to take the sting out a little.”
“By filling my house with the color he despised?”
“Oh, Rem,” She laughs, nudging me in the arm. “You confessed that our father was a murderer, and you think my earthly revenge is just to buy some flowers? You truly underestimate the depths of pettiness I ascribe to.”
“Well, I am looking forward to finding out.”
When Rhea smiles, it looks genuine. It falters a moment as she grabs a box off the shelf and peers down at it, presumably intrigued by the ingredients label of whatever she’s got. I turn back to scan the aisles, trying to figure out which one may have olives, before Rhea’s hesitant voice draws me back.
This time, when I face her, she is somber. “I’m sorry for how I treated you guys.”
I blink, unsure of what exactly she’s talking about. We discussed everything last night and landed in a good place, so her sudden apology seems out of left field. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “We kept secrets from you. I think you were justified to be a little upset.”
“I’m not talking about last night.” She flips her hand through the air like she can just push that thought right out of existence. “I mean, I’m sorry for telling you to stay away from her when she makes you happy.”
Her words give me a long pause. I’m not sure what to say, aware that there are multiple ways right now that I could ruin things. When she snaps her fingers in front of my face, I decide I can’t think of a delicate way to go about this. “She makes me happy?”
“Yes,” Rhea nods. “And I get it. I told you years ago when I first met her that she was pretty awesome. I don’t blame you for wanting to have something good in all of this… ugliness.” She sighs, and I can tell that’s not the word she wanted to use, but it’s all she could come up with. “I don’t blame you for trying to hold onto a little light in all this darkness, Rem.”
I consider opening my mouth again to tell her that it’s not as deep as she seems to believe, but she’s content to let the matter rest. If we can leave it at that without me potentially having to butcher my reasons for being drawn to her best friend, all the better. I don’t know how to convey to my sister that I’m drawn to Claire, that I have been from the first moment I saw her, but that it’s not because I think she can save me or make me happy. I decide to keep my mouth shut, and I do… until Rhea grabs a balloon and wraps it around the shopping cart handle.
Shes grinning when I glance at her. I’d ask if she knows what that text on it means, but there’s no way she doesn’t. She grew up hearing Spanish spoken on the daily, and though she may not have cause to use it often, I don’t believe for a second that she’s forgotten it.
“What?” She giggles, feigning innocence. “It’s just a balloon.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “And it’s just a party.”