Nicknames were everywhere, growing up. Prince, Princess. My dad’s special name for Tom that made him go red and pleased: Tiger. Maybe Dad did know what we brought in that night.
“I love that you have a key,” I say without thought, like a creep. “This would be a collector’s item, probably.” I use his Garfield key to unlock the door, and he scrapes his thumbnail into the empty screw holes where my BARRETT WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY brass plaque used to be. He’s probably thinking about how I’ll never shoot his wedding. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry.” But also, I’m not.
I push the door open with my knee. He’s looking now at the remaining plaque that reads MAISON DE DESTIN, hung by Loretta to set the mood for her tarot clients. Ooh. Something about destiny. Fancy. He’s wistful as he uses his thumb to check if it’s screwed tight.
“I miss her so much,” he tells me, and we are sad and silent until Patty does her jackhammer run through our legs, sneezing and huffing. Thank you, little animal.
I click on the nearest lamp, and the first thing we see is my underwear. Above the fireplace, there’s a row of fancy black bras hanging up to dry on the old nails that once held our Christmas stockings.
“Well,” Tom says after a beat. “That would give Santa a stroke.”
I laugh and throw my keys onto the coffee table. “I wasn’t expecting c
ompany.” The echo of Vince’s car reverberates through the room like another lie. Patty sets off with single-minded determination down the hall.
“If you pee inside, you are getting in trouble,” Tom says to her departing form.
I unhook the bras and toss them on the armchair. “Christ, what a night. I’m glad you’re here.” I pull out the wine bottle and use the hem of my top to work on the screw-top lid.
He holds out a hand. It would be easy-peasy for him. “Here, I’ll do it.”
“I’m perfectly capable.” I step around him into the dark kitchen. If I’m not firm with him, he slips and starts trying to do everything for me. Princess Mode. “Do you want some? Or do good boys like you need to get into bed?”
Eyebrows down. “Good boys like me get up at five A.M.”
“Bad girls like me go to bed at six A.M.” I grin at his despairing head shake. He reaches for the light switch on the wall, but I stop him. “You’ll get a zap.”
“Seriously? Have you been zapped?” Aghast, he looks at my chest. It contains the one thing he cannot fix.
“No, because I learned from Jamie’s mistake.” I can’t help grinning. Holy fuck! Ow! Darce, stop laughing! That hurt!
“Smiling at the thought of your brother being electrocuted.” Tom doesn’t want to be amused but he can’t help it. “Such a bad girl.”
“I’m the worst.” I use a wooden spoon to flip the switch. “Okay, so it’s looking bad in here.”
I watch him scan the room from top to bottom: the water-stained ceiling, the bubbling wallpaper, the floorboards that bounce under his feet. I’ve been used to it, but now I see the full extent of the room’s shabbiness.
“Can you tell me what your fight with Jamie was about? I’ve heard his side. But I want to hear yours.” He turns away, his eyes following the line of a crack in the wall. Behind his back, I drink my entire glass of wine soundlessly. When he turns around, I’m holding a second full glass. The perfect crime.
“What can I say? My temper got the better of me.” I sip daintily.
“Okay,” Tom half laughs as he turns on the kitchen tap. It splutters and sprays him, and when he turns it off, we hear a loud dripping. He finds the sink bucket in the cabinet underneath. “Aw, jeez.”
His phone chimes, and he looks at the screen, a smile on the edge of his mouth. He texts back, probably something like, It’s okay, I arrived safe. Miss you, Megs.
A hot feeling grabs me by the throat. I want to take his phone and flush it all the way to the sewage plant. I drink a mouthful of wine and it helps a bit.
“So, the day I made Jamie very mad. Where do I start? We had been driving each other insane. Living in bedrooms next door to each other was easy when we were kids and we had you in a bunk bed to mediate.”
But with no buffer, we were agitating and arguing. Jamie wanted us to move to the city. I wanted to stay. I couldn’t buy him out. It was a tug-of-war argument that I couldn’t win, because like Mom said, Loretta wanted us to tart up the cottage and split the money. Think of it as a little nest egg, Mom said, patting my heart.
I told her that I didn’t want a nest egg. The way I’d earned it was too much for me to bear. Mom was gentle. I’m sorry, Princess. I know what she meant to you. This is her way of showing what you meant to her.
“So there was a knock on the door one Saturday morning. Jamie was out jogging. It was early and I was very . . . tired.”
His eyes move to my glass.
“Okay, it was like eleven A.M., and I was hungover as hell. On the doorstep was some good-looking hotshot giving me his business card. I thought I was having a sex dream.”