That strategy lasted me through college and two years post-graduation, until my grandmother died. And then there was no one left in the home my parents had filled with memories. Their photos still lined the walls. My mother’s quilts draped across the beds. My dad’s family recipes still sat on their shelf in the kitchen. I couldn’t sell it, couldn’t let it sit empty, unloved, left to fall apart and be forgotten.
So I moved home. And there was Kate, out on her parents’ porch next door with some small helpless creature cupped in her hands. Tall and lanky like her father, with her mother’s sea-storm eyes. Freckles on her nose and streaks of auburn in her dark hair from all the hours she clearly still spent outside.
I looked at this eighteen-year-old in front of me, who’d shot up into a woman, wild and electrifying, barely recognizing her, while a very different kind of recognition blazed through me.
I knew right then that peace was the last thing we were ever going to share.
“Christopher?” Bill presses. “What do you say?”
I blink, torn from my thoughts. “I’ll . . . try.”
And by “try,” I mean I’ll make myself scarce, even if Kate stays a bit longer than she typically does. I’ll stay away and she’ll cool off. It’ll blow over. Then she’ll be gone, and I’ll have kept my distance. No more fights will have happened, and that will appease our family and friends.
The sound of Bill’s name cuts through the uneasy silence at our table. Hearing Fee call him, Bill glances toward the bar, where she pats a to-go bag and offers him a smile.
“Well.” Bill stands slowly. “I’ve said what I came to say. And now my shepherd’s pie is ready to go.” He raps his knuckles gently on the table. “Don’t blame Jamie for this intervention, by the way. I asked him if I could crash your meet-up.”
Jamie scrubs his face.
“I am sorry about the other night,” I tell Bill. “And I’ll try to smooth things over.”
Gently, he clasps my shoulder again. “Thank you.”
As Bill walks away, Jamie sits back against the bench and rubs his eyes beneath his glasses. “Well, that was stressful.”
“Says the one who wasn’t in the hot seat.”
“God, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to feel like that.”
“It’s all right,” I tell him. “I appreciate your honesty. I think I’m just . . . wrapping my head around it.”
Two pints of Guinness are set at our table, then a shot beside my beer, which, judging by the smell, is a strong Irish whiskey.
Jamie frowns in confusion and says to the waiter, “We didn’t order these.”
“Compliments of Fee.” They jerk their head toward the bar. “She said you both looked like you needed it. You especially,” they tell me.
“Cheers to that, I guess.” I raise my beer glass and knock it with Jamie’s as he lifts his, too.
After tipping back our pints, we set them down on heavy exhales. “I’m not touching the whiskey.” I slide the shot toward Jamie, who slides it away from himself, toward the edge of the table.
“Me neither,” he says. “A shot and a beer, and I’d be laid flat. I’m too old for that nonsense.”
A laugh leaves me. We’re both only in our early thirties, but I feel the same way. “Hangovers in your thirties hit hard.”
“They really do,” he says. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels like this. You’re, what? Thirty-three?”
My laugh fades. “Yeah.”
This coming April, I’ll be thirty-four. One year closer to being as old as my father was when he died. Since I’ve realized how close I’m getting to outliving him, I dread each birthday a little more.
“Something wrong?” Jamie asks.
I force a smile and lift my hand for the waiter. “Nothing a plate of Reuben nachos won’t cure.”
? FIVE ?
Kate
“We’ve arrived!” Bea trills. Shouldering open the door of the Edgy Envelope, she enters the store on a dangerously lopsided twirl that almost takes out a standing display of greeting cards. “Bring Your Sister to Work Day has commenced!”
I shut the door behind me on a sigh. “You are aggressively cheerful when you’re in love.”
“Aren’t I?” She grins.
I roll my eyes, a begrudging smile tugging at my mouth. Bea’s happy in a way I haven’t seen her in years, maybe ever. For her sake, I’m trying to act happy, too. But the truth is I’ve never been good at faking much, especially happiness, and I’m too on edge to be happy right now. This is officially the longest I’ve been home in half a decade, and as I step inside the Edgy Envelope, the place that seems to knit my sisters’ friend group together, worries tangle into an anxious knot beneath my ribs.