28. Kane
Every Monday for as long as I can remember, Sloane texts me something random before nine AM. A meme. A complaint about traffic. A photo of whatever ridiculous thing she saw on her commute. Once, the word “MONDAYS” with seventeen exclamation points.
It’s nine forty-seven now.
Nothing.
I stare at the screen. No notifications. No missed calls. Just the wallpaper, a photo of the city skyline I took months ago, and nine forty-seven.
Vera shifts beside me, still asleep. We’re at my place. Neither of us wanted to be alone last night.
I set the phone down carefully. Get out of bed without waking her.
The penthouse feels too big. Too quiet. My footsteps echo on the hardwood as I move to the kitchen.
Coffee. I can make coffee. That’s something I can control.
I go through the motions. Measure grounds. Pour water. Watch the machine hiss and drip.
My phone sits on the counter. Blank.
I don’t go to the office.
Can’t face the blueprints that won’t hold my attention or the pretense that anything is. I text my assistant: Working from home today. Cancel my meetings. Then I turn off my work phone.
Vera finds me on the couch an hour later. Laptop open but blank. Coffee cold in my hand.
“Hey,” she says softly.
“Hey.”
She curls up beside me. Doesn’t ask if I’m okay.
“Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
“Eventually.”
She takes the coffee cup from my hand. Disappears into the kitchen, returns with toast and scrambled eggs I didn’t hear her make.
“Eat,” she says.
I eat. The food is tasteless but I finish it anyway. When I’m done, she takes the plate. Comes back and settles against my side.
We sit like that for hours. TV on but neither of us watching. Just existing in the same space.
My phone stays silent.
Tuesday, I try to work. I close the laptop after twenty minutes.
Vera’s at her own place, client calls she couldn’t reschedule. Said she needed space. Needed to breathe air that wasn’t saturated with shared grief.
I miss her already. She left two hours ago.
But she’s the only one living in this hell with me. The only one who understands what it costs to sit still and wait when everything in you says move.
My phone sits on my desk, dark and silent. I pick it up. Scroll to Sloane’s contact.
Her profile picture is from last Christmas. Both of us at Mom’s house. She’s wearing that ridiculous sweater with the reindeer. I’m wearing the one she got me that says “World’s Okayest Brother.”
She’s laughing in the photo. Really laughing. Head thrown back. Eyes crinkled.
I almost hit call.
Give her space. Real time. At least a week.
Marcel’s voice in my head.
Space.
Even though everything in me wants to reach out. To fix this. To hear her voice even if she’s yelling.
I’d take her anger over this silence.
But that’s not what she needs. So I sit with it. The wanting. The ache. The fear that this silence might not be temporary.
Tuesday evening, Vera comes back and finds me still at my desk, staring at a closed laptop.
“Talk to me,” she says, kneeling in front of my chair.
“I miss her.” My voice comes out rough. “I miss my sister. And I can’t do anything about it.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” It comes out sharper than I mean.
Silence. Vera doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull back. Just waits.
“She was your best friend, but she’s my sister.
She’s been in my life for thirty years. She’s the only person who remembers when Dad taught us to ride bikes.
When Mom burned Thanksgiving dinner that one year.
When I broke my arm falling out of that tree and she ran three blocks to get help even though she was only seven. ”
My voice breaks. “And I can’t talk to her.”
I keep thinking about that day. Seven years old. And she came back and held my hand the whole time we waited for the ambulance. Didn’t let go once.
And I looked her in the face and lied.
The sound that comes out of me isn’t dignified. My whole body shakes with it, and I stop trying to stop it.
“I know,” Vera says, against my hair. Not it’ll be okay. Not she’ll forgive you. Just I know, which is the only honest thing she can give me and exactly enough.
This is worse than Vanessa. Worse than any of it. Because this time the wreckage has my handwriting all over it.
On Thursday, I break.
Slowly, under the weight of waiting.
I’m in the car. Driving nowhere in particular. I end up outside Sloane’s apartment building.
I don’t remember deciding to come here. Don’t remember the turns I took or the lights I ran. Just: parked across the street. Staring up at her windows.
The lights are off. She’s probably at work.
But I sit there anyway. Engine idling. Hands gripping the steering wheel.
I could go up. Could wait in the hallway until she gets home. Force this conversation before she’s ready.
My hand reaches for the door handle.
She set a boundary. You going there now would be violating it.
Sometimes love means sitting in your own guilt instead of making the other person comfort you through it.
I pull my hand back. Put the car in drive, and leave.
But it takes everything I have.
Saturday morning I wake at six and can’t get back to sleep.
Vera’s still out. I make coffee and sit at the kitchen island and look at the spot on the floor where the cardamom rolls were.
I cleaned it up Tuesday morning while Vera was in the shower.
Three trips to the trash. Didn’t tell her.
Couldn’t explain why it felt like something that needed to be done alone.
The floor is clean now. You’d never know.
I pull out my sketchpad, the one I use when a design problem won’t let me sleep, when I need to think with my hands instead of my head. I don’t draw buildings. Just lines. Shapes.
Some things you can restore to what they were. Some things you can only build into something new.
I look around the kitchen and my eyes land on Gerald.
He sits exactly where he’s always sat, on the shelf above the bar cart, in his concrete pot, small and stubborn and completely indifferent to the wreckage of the last week. Six years on that shelf. Seven weeks since he had a name.
I set the sketchpad down and cross to him. Crouch slightly to look at him at eye level.
He looks — fine. Probably fine. I have no idea how to tell if a cactus is not fine.
“Vera waters you, doesn’t she,” I say. Not a question.
Gerald says nothing. He is a cactus.
I go to the cabinet under the sink. Find the small watering can Sloane brought over the same day she brought Gerald, with a Post-it note attached that read: for the inevitable day you forget he’s alive. Love, your sister.
I fill it. Return to the shelf.
Pour a small amount into the pot. Study him.
He looks the same. Possibly I’ve just drowned him.
I don’t know how much water a cactus needs in November.
I don’t know how much water a cactus needs at all.
Vera knows, Vera named him, Vera would know whether this is right or whether I’ve killed the only plant I’ve managed to keep alive for six years in the same week I blew up everything else.
I set the watering can down.
“Don’t die,” I tell him. “That’s an order.”
Gerald offers nothing in response.
Sunday, Vera and I cook.
Not like last Sunday, the one that ended with scattered rolls and a closed elevator.
This is less graceful. She burns the onions.
I cut the vegetables into pieces that are, she informs me with great solemnity, architecturally inconsistent.
We argue about whether garlic quantity is a matter of preference or objective fact.
It’s the closest thing to normal we’ve had in a week.
Sunday night, I barely sleep.
Vera’s beside me. Breathing steady. But I stare at the ceiling. Watch the shadows shift. Count down the hours.
I dream of Sloane, us as kids at the pier, throwing pennies in the water.
I wish we could stay like this forever, she says, in the dream. Just you and me. No secrets. No lies. Just us.
I wake before I can answer her.
Exhaustion finally takes me sometime before dawn.
Monday morning, I wake to find Vera already in the kitchen, making coffee.
“Today’s the day,” she says when I appear.
“Yeah.”
She pours me a cup.
We drink in silence. Morning light strengthens through the windows.
Finally, I pull out my phone. Open messages. Scroll to Sloane’s contact.
That Christmas photo stares back at me. Both of us laughing.
I start typing.
Me: Sloane,
Delete. Too formal.
Me: Hey,
Delete. Too casual.
I try again.
Me: I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. I’d like a chance to talk. Friday at 7? Your place or mine or somewhere neutral. Your choice. I love you.
I show Vera.
She reads it. “It’s good. Not too much. Not too little. Respectful.”
“What if she doesn’t respond?”
“Then you try again next week.” She takes my hand. “But she will. I think she will.”
I stare at the message for another moment.
Then I press send.
Delivered.
Vera’s hand tightens on mine.
“Now we wait,” I say.
I set the phone face-down on the counter. Can’t bear to watch it.
I go to the office. Owe Rachel at least a few hours.
She looks up when I walk in. “Kane. You’re here.”
“I’m here.” I drop into my desk chair. “Tell me what I’ve missed.”
She fills me in. The Richardson project. The Zhao consultation. Three new inquiries from last week. I try to focus. Try to care. But my phone sits on my desk and all I can think about is whether my sister will ever speak to me again.
The day drags. I go through motions. Answer emails. Review blueprints. Pretend everything’s normal.
But every five minutes, I check my phone.
Still nothing.
By five PM, the hope fades. Maybe she won’t respond at all. Maybe the silence is her answer. Maybe this is what the rest of my life looks like, the Richardson project, emails, blueprints, and the absence of one person who I’ve known since she was born.
I pack up my things. Head for the elevator.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I freeze for a moment, then pull it out with shaking hands.
A text. From Sloane.
I open it.
Sloane: Friday. Seven PM. My place. Come alone.
No warmth. No I love you too.
But it’s a yes.
It’s a door left open. Not wide, barely cracked, one hand still on the edge, ready to close it again if I say the wrong thing. But it’s open.
I’ve spent my career learning that the hardest part of any structure isn’t the building. It’s the repair. Knowing which wall to touch first. How much weight it can bear before it needs to rest. When to push and when to wait.
Friday, I find out if I’ve learned anything at all.
Me: I’ll be there. Thank you.
No response to that.
But it doesn’t matter.
She left the door open.
Now I have to figure out how to walk through it without breaking anything else.