49. Tom Cobalt
TOM COBALT
The regal dining room is laid out for an elaborate feast, all prepared by our family’s chef.
Roasted goose, seitan, potatoes, and vegetables wedge between ornate candelabras and candlesticks.
All lit and dripping with wax while a gilded chandelier sparkles above us.
But I’m not focused on the theatrical tablescape that rarely, if ever, has changed since I was kid.
My gaze pins on my sister, who’s standing and filling her goblet with a deep, dark merlot. We’ve been allowed to have one glass of wine at dinner since we were teenagers—so Audrey drinking is not why I’ve stalled out in the doorway.
It’s her dress.
“Why are you wearing a nightgown?” I ask her.
“It’s not a nightgown,” Audrey counters. “It’s a slip dress.”
“It’s a black silk nightgown.” With tiny spaghetti straps. She looks like she’s ready to go to a cocktail party with rich twentysomethings that just got done gallery hopping through Chelsea and the Lower East Side. I know the type. I party with the type.
I’m just not used to my sister embodying it.
It’s been five seconds, and I already miss her costume dresses.
Ben is totally cool, calm, and collected. Not even breaking a sweat as if this isn’t the most abnormal thing we’ve encountered tonight.
As soon as he sees my slack-jawed expression, he tells me, “Audrey showed me the dress in advance. The shock wore off hours ago.”
“Where was my advanced notice, Audrey Virginia?” I accuse.
She lifts her goblet. “Become my favorite brother, and maybe you’d receive one.”
“I’m not unseating Ben, okay.” I pull out a chair and tell my brother, “Your position in her life is safe.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Ben smiles.
He says just the right thing to make Audrey beam.
I take a seat across from my two youngest siblings and scroll through my phone—trying to stop myself from opening my mouth. I can’t help myself. I really can’t. “Is it to piss off our older brothers?” I ask her. “Because I’m almost positive they’re going to pretend you arrived in a paper bag.”
Audrey sinks down in her chair. “No, I have better and more fun ways to do that if I truly wanted.” She narrows a hurt look at me. “Charlie has shown up shirtless countless times. But I show a little bit of shoulder and suddenly the world is burning?”
“Hey, it’s me—I love fire,” I defend. “And it’s not the shoulders. I’m just making sure you’re okay because this…” I wave my hand at her. “Seems like a cry for help.”
She untangles a strand of orange hair from her small gold hoop earring. “I have news. I thought I’d look the part. That’s all, really.”
“Fair. I did the same thing.” I motion to my face with the partial skeleton paint. “I’m dating Phoenix. I have a boyfriend.”
She applauds rapidly in excitement, but then abruptly stops.
“No, no, keep going.” I gesture her on.
Her face has fallen. “Why are you telling me now? Don’t you want to announce it?”
I rock back on my chair legs. “Unfortunately, I’ve been a fucking broken dam all night. Mom and Dad will be the last to know.”
“Unless Dad already knows,” Ben says.
“And Mother,” Audrey adds.
“Doubtful,” I say. “This literally just happened.”
“Mother and Father have sixth senses, though,” Audrey notes. She’s really the only one who calls our parents Mother and Father.
It reminds me of the night Phoenix met my sister, and he told me, “Your sister sounds very proper.”
“She purposefully layers it on at times,” I told him.
“She did it when she was little to try to sound older than she was since she’s the baby of the family.
But it kind of stuck. Whereas I love using as much slang as possible because it drives my dad nuts.
He should’ve never let slip that he can’t stand the word dude. ”
Thinking about that conversation is easier on my brain than Audrey’s impending bomb-drop.
I hold out my hand. “Merlot me,” I tell Audrey.
She stands and passes the bottle of wine across the table. Grabbing it by the neck, I put the rim to my lips.
“Starting without me, brother?” Eliot saunters into the room. His eyes are on me, not even sparing a single glance for Audrey. In fact, the rest of our brothers do the same thing. Charlie and Beckett file in one after the other and silently take a seat at the long ornate table.
Jane follows close behind with a baby monitor in hand. Maeve must be down for a nap. Thatcher, Jane’s husband, got called in as extra security for one of my cousins tonight. He’s a lead bodyguard on the team, so he often gets assigned elsewhere when Jane doesn’t need a security detail.
Eliot scoots his chair closer to mine, just to whisper more seriously, “Our sister is barely clothed, isn’t she?”
“Nightgown attire,” I whisper back. “And not like Little House on the Prairie. More like Gwen Van der Holt.” I name one of our party friends.
Eliot keeps his face impassive. “She wants a reaction out of me, Beckett, and Charlie?”
“No, dude,” I whisper. “It’s something else. Like I don’t think this is going to be a hilarious thing.”
“Fuck.” He takes the wine out of my hand. “You think Charlie figured it out already?”
Charlie is whispering with Beckett the same way I am with Eliot.
“No,” I murmur. “I think we’re steps ahead.” I’m telling myself that, at least.
Jane is careful with her feathers around the candles.
I have a sudden light-bulb moment. Leaning back into Eliot, I whisper, “If Jane knows something, then what if she dressed up for Audrey?” Because no way did she dress up for me. That was merely an unfunny coincidence.
Eliot eyes our sister. “Bird couture?”
I stifle a laugh. “She looks like Mister Feathers. Sort of. Maybe Audrey is going to babysit Ben and Harriet’s cockatoo.”
“Maybe.”
Talk of the bird at our apartment reminds me of Phoenix, who I thought was still there. I start typing out a message on my phone. He looked so spent when I left, like truly exhausted in every sense of the word. I don’t know how he forced his body out of my bed.
TOM CARRAWAY
You’re having dinner with the demon?
I send it to my boyfriend and flip my phone face down next to my place setting. The room is dead silent. Bizarre energy. Jane gives Audrey an encouraging nod, and she gives one back.
Eliot points the wine bottle between our sisters. “What is this fowl play?”
“Fowl as in poultry,” I chime in, opening and closing my lighter.
“Is chicken on the menu, sisters?” Eliot questions.
“Perhaps,” Audrey says. “You might all be chicken-shit scared.”
Ben snorts out a swig of water.
I’ve never heard her say chicken-shit. Normally I would rise with applause, but I am disturbed. “This is disturbing behavior now,” I tell her.
“Just wait and watch,” she sips wine.
“Ominous,” Eliot and I say in unison, but I sound tenser than he does.
Jane takes a cautious sip of sparkling water.
Charlie rubs harshly at his eyes, not entertaining Audrey or this mystery, and Beckett rises to pile green beans and carrots on both of their plates. They speak too softly in French to each other. I can’t pick apart their words.
I am really baffled. Eliot swigs the wine, then passes it back to me. Yeah, I’m going to need that. I drink more straight from the bottle. The dry, smoky flavor hits my throat.
Our parents enter, but their presence can’t even cut the thick tension. I ignore the clench of my stomach. Neither Mom nor Dad seem surprised by the arctic blast frosting the table.
They both take their places at either head. No usual banter. No verbal insults. I almost want to fucking leave.
Especially when Dad says, “Opening remarks have commenced.”
Eliot and Audrey rise to their feet at the exact same time, so forcibly, so quickly, that their chairs are shoved backward and clatter to the ground.
I’m holding my breath.
Eliot normally takes the lead on opening remarks. It’s not so much a rule as it is a tradition, and Audrey loves traditions. I’m unsettled she’d even want to break it.
“You always go first,” Audrey tells him pointedly.
“Claim it then.” Eliot extends a hand to me. I fork over the wine, and he fills his goblet to the brim, then raises it to our little sister. “First to finish off their wine wins.”
Determination cinches her blue eyes, and she raises hers back. “I accept.” They don’t break eye contact as they both start chugging the wine as fast as they can. Crimson liquid drips down Eliot’s jaw, down Audrey’s chin.
Our little sister keeps up with him for five seconds before Eliot outpaces her. He sets his goblet on the table first, but Audrey doesn’t quit. She keeps going, her throat bobbing, until she empties her glass.
Her chin, neck, and collarbones glisten with red wine. Eliot’s the same.
He arches his brows, an impressed smile flicking across his lips. “The floor is yours,” he waves her on and lowers himself in his seat.
“Thank you,” Audrey says into a tiny nod.
She takes the cloth napkin Jane offers her and dabs her chest and neck.
“I have a very important announcement. As you all know, starting in the fall, I will be a senior at Dalton Academy. I spoke with my advisor, and I was able to get on track to graduate this December.”
Holy shit.
Eliot maintains a nonreaction. I teeter too far back on my chair legs, but Eliot grips the wooden frame so I don’t go down.
“You’re graduating early?” Ben asks with furrowed brows.
She nods. “Like Charlie.”
“Not like me,” Charlie glares at her—like a vicious, soul-decaying glare. “I skipped the third and fourth grade.”
Audrey lifts her chin. “Like Beckett then.”
“I was homeschooled,” Beckett notes with a soothing tone.