Chapter 27. Alex
ALEX
To say the media storm following the break-in last week has been intense would be putting it mildly. My family and I have become some sort of public fascination, a spectacle for all to see.
I’m tired of it.
My laptop is hooked up to the TV above the fireplace, and I’m sweating so much I look like a glazed donut. I must’ve delivered thirty presentations this year—to politicians, to CEOs, to scarily mean schoolchildren, to shareholders—yet I’ve never been as nervous as I am for this one.
Josie puts down her toy robot to take a fistful of popcorn from Mia’s bowl. “What about school?”
“Well, that’s a really great question, Jo.” I lean against the bookshelves. “You’d have to go to a new school, with new people.”
“What about Fleur and college?” asks Evie, ever the advocate for her sisters.
“I’m not going to college,” interjects Fleur, without taking her eyes off her phone.
Mia, élé, and Charlotte have been up for moving to the United Kingdom since long before I went to Sorrowsong. Josie and Evie, I’m not so sure on. It was Fleur I was most worried about convincing, but she’s completely uninterested, scrolling mindlessly on her phone.
“Fleur, please join us,” Mom says softly.
She scowls back at her. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Yes, fine, Alex. It all looks fine.” She shrugs. “I’ll be eighteen in less than a year, and then I can move wherever I like. This doesn’t really affect me.”
I deflate against the shelves. I want to mend the jagged edges of my relationship with Fleur. I want her genuine opinion. All six of these girls are children. All six of them have to come before Ophelia. They deserve that much. If any one of them desperately wants to stay, we’ll stay.
“Of course it affects you, Fleur.”
“You literally didn’t care about a single one of my opinions for all of last year, Alex.”
I shut my eyes for a second, letting out a long exhale. “Well, I’m trying to put things right.”
“Go back to the yard!” says éle, and I flick back to the brochure of the eight-bedroom country house a few miles out of Edinburgh.
This feels ridiculous, but my mother encouraged me to at least try.
Charlotte nods approvingly at the large yard and paddock. “We could get chickens.”
Mom leans over to wipe some ice cream off her bottom lip. “Scotland wouldn’t be forever. It’d just be for a few years. Then we’d settle down forever. Somewhere else.”
“I hate this house,” Mia says, waving her hand around our New York living room.
There are a few grumbles of agreement. When I see the foyer, I see my mother curled in a ball at the bottom of the stairs, convinced the staff are out to get her.
The office makes me taste the metallic tang of blood, the harsh bite of my father’s fist when he couldn’t punch the economy, so I was the next best thing.
A small smile sneaks across Evie’s face, that tiny little sliver of impulsiveness beneath the reserved personality that couldn’t be more different to her twin’s. “I’m all for it.”
My next exhale comes out as a small laugh of disbelief. “Really?”
“Why not? It sounds fun. Everyone at school looks at Mia and me like we’re a charity case, so … it’s not like I’d miss it. And Scotland sounds cool. And in two years, we’d go to college anyway … so … yeah. I’m in.”
My mother voices her agreement, and then three more follow.
Fleur just shrugs. Josie looks the most hesitant of all. “So … what about if we want to go to France on vacation?”
“We can still go. It’s even closer from there.”
“And … pizza?”
“Plenty of pizza over there, too. Maybe not as good as New York pizza, but still good. How about we let the others get to bed and discuss it over some cereal?”
She slides off the sofa, slipping her hand into mine. Mia gives me a wink, a huge smile on her face.
My mom is folding hand towels in the pantry when I go in for a fresh box of cereal, Josie is sitting at the island in the kitchen. “I love that house, Alex.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll talk to Fleur.”
I pick up the cereal box from the pantry and start heading back to the other room, but some invisible hand stops me in the doorway. A question burns a hole in my mind, has been for weeks. I’ve been waiting for my mom’s mood to steady out a little, and here we are. “Mom, can I ask you something?”
“Of course. Always.”
“Carmichael told me that it was you who asked him to convince the board not to let me take Green over.”
Her hands freeze as they fold a dishcloth. “Did he also tell you that I asked him never to tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“I can never decide if I like that man.”
“It’s not true, right?”
“It is true.”
“Do you realize what that could’ve cost us?”
“I calculated the risks very thoroughly. I did what’s best for you.”
“And Dad continuing to go unchallenged is best for me?”
“Being the CEO of Green is everything I never wanted you to have. You told me on your sixth, seventh, eighth birthday, your sixteenth birthday, your twenty-third birthday, that taking over your father’s company was your idea of hell.”
“Until it became a survival decision. One I would make again and again, a hundred times over.”
“I did what I thought best for my son.”
“But you could’ve consulted me.”
She turns back to the towels, away from me. Away from the discussion. Guilt rolls in, blanketing my anger.
“Maman.”
“Laisse-moi tranquille.”
A small voice filters in from the kitchen. “I’m bloody starving.”
Our laughter shatters the tension. “Where does she pick up these things?”
“Ophelia might be responsible for that one.”
I wrap my mom in a hug, inhaling the scent of the perfume she’s worn for as long as I can remember. “I’m sorry.”
“I just want what’s best for you, Alex. And I didn’t think that was Green.”
I grab the cereal box and pour two bowls, pulling out a stool to sit beside my littlest sister, who is getting alarmingly un-little. “Cereal after bedtime. Don’t you ever say I’m not good to you.”
“This should be every day.”
“So, you’re not too sure about Scotland, huh?”
“Well … I have a thousand million billion questions.”
“Oh my god. We’re gonna need more cereal.”
She giggles, leaning her head against my arm, asking me questions until past midnight.
ALL THREE GUARDS are stony faced as the middle one wheels my father into the visitation room at a high-security correctional facility upstate. I quash the myriad emotions that bubble up my throat, fighting hard to meet him eye to eye.
I can’t believe he’s alive. That he lived yet my mother’s time is running out.
“Cain,” I say, as the guard kicks the brake on the chair and steps back.
He looks pale. Tired. His frosty blue eyes are dull, hair fading to silver.
“Alex. I didn’t think you’d visit.” He looks almost hopeful, like I might’ve forgiven him. Better extinguish those hopes quickly.
“I’m here to say goodbye, to tell you that we will not be visiting you. If the girls want to come when they’re eighteen, they can. But I wouldn’t keep your hopes up.”
That snatches his next sentence away. His mouth opens and closes, opens again, closes again. He looks devastated, but I can’t find it in myself to care.
I pop my knuckles, frustrated by his silence but well aware he’d only piss me off if he spoke. “I’m done with you.”
“Did she survive? The girl?”
“Ophelia is fine.”
“I want to talk to Fleur.”
“Fleur is going through enough.”
“I want to make things right between her and I,” he says, but his eyes are glittering with ill intentions.
I’ve seen his version of making things right.
The whispered threats, the harsh bite of his words that sting so much more than his fists ever could, and the drunken, saccharine apologies that had my too-kind mother forgiving him each night.
I won’t have him feed his poison to Fleur.
My laugh is bitter, acidic on my tongue. “We’re long past that. What you did to Mom is irreparable.” I shake my head, simultaneously desperate to leave and longing to understand just how he ended up so terrible. “I remember you loving her.”
“Of course I love her, I—”
“Just loved Green more.” I try to let it go, but I just can’t. “They told you she had a medical condition, and you told them she was just high-maintenance. I was twenty-one, driving her to hospital visits so you could fuck your secretaries.”
“I’m sorry, Alex,” he snaps, but the telltale flexing of his fingers tell me the only thing he’s truly sorry about is the guards and the cuffs that prevent him from touching me. “What more do you want me to say?”
I don’t even know. Sorry is all he can say, but it doesn’t feel enough. It’s so unsatisfying. I hardly recognize him sitting opposite me, hardly understand how anyone could think I look like him.
I rise to stand, unsure what anyone could say to make any of this less terrible. “Well. Have a good rest of your life.”
“It’s not too late to turn yourself around. Lose the girl, cut the distractions. You could be worth something, Alex.”
Ophelia crosses my mind. The way those brown eyes brighten when they meet mine. The pink tinge that kisses her nose when I compliment her. My voice is soft and sure when it comes. “I am worth something, dad.”
It’s the gentlest reply I could’ve given, and yet he flinches like he’s truly, finally understanding that all his efforts to turn me into him have been in vain.
And for the shortest of seconds, it’s like the past ten years of emotions pass through his expression at once.
It’s gone in an instant, but the strong line of his shoulders droops a little lower than it did when he came in.
It’s the punishment he deserves, and no guilt hits me.
I’m halfway out the door when his voice stops me. I expect a final, cutting blow. A remark that’ll haunt my lowest of days. But it’s just a quiet, dejected, “Look after the girls.”
“I’ve been doing that for a very long time.”
And then I walk out, leaving the crushing weight he piled onto my shoulders for so long behind.
I unlock my phone as I pace out of the foyer and into the sunny parking lot beyond, dragging in a desperate lungful of fresh air. Finally. I slip a cigarette between my lips, thumbs hammering out a text.
Alex
It’s done. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.
Robert Harwood
A day we’ve talked about for years. How do you feel?
Alex
I don’t really feel anything at all
Robert Harwood
I think you’ve been grieving his loss for a long time before today.
He’s probably right.
There’s one thing left on my list of things to do this Sunday, something I seem to carry over from day to day.
I scroll through my contacts, but a call from Ophelia pops up before I reach the name I’m looking for.
Her voice is always so welcome, a metronome for my heartbeat, a salve for my wounds. “How did it go?”
“I don’t know, really. I don’t really know how well it went or how I’m feeling.”
“That’s okay. If you were jumping for joy, I’d understand. If you were weeping in the car, I’d get it, too.”
I don’t know how I ended up with her in my life. She’s not just a reason to tread water, she’s a whole life raft. “Fuck, I miss you.”
“Does your heart ache?” she asks, tone teasing.
“And my dick.”
Her laughter is soft and happy, followed by a yawn. It must be late for her. “Sucks for you.”
“I was actually about to make a call.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah … it’s … I don’t want to tempt fate.”
“Tell me when you’re ready. I love you.”
The call drops, and my grin in the reflection of my car is ridiculous, a glint in my eye I’ve never really noticed before.
I don’t look like him at all.
I don’t feel like him anymore.
I extinguish my cigarette and press my phone to my ear, letting it ring.
“I thought I’d never hear from you again.”
I take a deep breath, swallow my pride. “Is it too late to take you up on your offer?”