Max reached into his pocket.
For a single, paralyzing moment Avery thought he was pulling out a ring, and her heart skipped and skidded wildly in her chest because she had no idea what she would do if he did.
Then her breath let out, because it was only a set of old-fashioned brass key-chips, for automatic entry into the house. Max looked up and met her eyes. She wondered if he’d heard the relief in that sigh.
“I love you,” he said simply. “All I want is to make you as happy as you make me. I want to see your first smile of the day when you wake up, and the last one before you go to sleep. I want to share my fears and my hopes and dreams with you. I want to build a life with you.” He slid one of the pair of key-chips toward her across the wrought-iron table.
“I love you too,” Avery whispered, because she did.
“Are you crying?” Max lifted a hand to her face, capturing the single tear that had escaped to run down her cheek. “I’m sorry, I know the apartment is kind of a fixer-upper. If you hate it, we can pick another one,” he hastened to add, and Avery shook her head.
She wasn’t sure why she was crying. She loved Max. They fit together so easily, without conflict or friction or obstacles. He made Avery the best version of herself. So why wasn’t her love for him as free and unencumbered as his was for her?
Why wasn’t she as blazingly certain of what she wanted as he seemed to be?
“I’m crying because I’m so happy,” she said and leaned over to kiss him, wishing it were that simple.
LEDA
THAT SAME EVENING, Leda was sprawled on her bed, idly flicking through the feeds on her contacts, when a flicker from her mom appeared. It was addressed to Leda and her dad. I’m stuck at work, don’t wait for me for dinner!
Leda’s mom, a corporate lawyer, had been working a lot of weekends recently. With Leda’s older brother, Jamie, away at college this year, that meant that Leda and her dad were often home alone—and ever since Eris’s death, they hadn’t been on the best of terms. They’d gotten in the habit of both claiming to have “a lot to do” and wolfing down their food as quickly as they could before fleeing in opposite directions.
It saddened Leda. There had been a time, not long ago, when she felt incredibly close with her dad—when on nights like this, he would have looked at her with a guilty smile and asked if she wanted to go to their favorite Italian place around the corner, instead of staying at home. They would linger over double dessert, exchanging stories from the day, strategizing whatever problem was bothering Leda.
In the wake of Eris’s death, Leda hadn’t known how to face her dad. Their relationship had become strained, and they drifted ever further apart. Now they met and spoke with the impersonal, courteous disinterest of strangers passing in the street.
But this time, Leda wasn’t going to ignore her mom’s message the way she always did.
She may not have figured out the truth in time to repair her relationship with Eris, but it wasn’t too late for Leda and her dad.
She headed down the hall to his home office and paused at the door. A chorus of voices talked over one another on the other side; he must be on a vid-conference. She tapped at the door anyway.
“Leda?” she heard her dad say, breaking off from his call. “Come in.”
Matt Cole’s office was delightfully cozy, all bold colors and deep wood furniture. A glazed redwood trunk, hovering in the air in suspension, served as the desk. Before the antique étagère flickered a holoscreen, squared off into eight boxes, each containing the disembodied head of someone else on the vid-call. Leda wondered which of them were in Asia, or Europe, or South America.
“I’ll need to see a revised deck by tomorrow morning. Thanks so much, everyone,” her dad concluded and sliced horizontally into the air to end the conference call. “Hey, Leda,” he said, turning hesitantly toward her. “I just have a few more things to wrap up before dinner.”
“Actually, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Leda glanced at the sleek black chair before the desk but dismissed it as too businesslike, the type of place she would have sat if she were one of her dad’s clients. Instead she headed to the pair of armchairs nestled in one corner of the office.
Her dad followed with cautious footsteps. Leda took a seat, curling her bare feet into the heated carpet and reached for the framed instaphoto on the nearby table. It was her mom’s wedding portrait.
Ilara looked incredible in her wedding gown, a minimalist sheath of ivory silk crepe. Its neckline swooped down in a dramatic V, but she could pull it off. She was as thin and small-chested as Leda was. She looked so happy in this photo, Leda thought, her eyes dancing with a light, almost playful joy.
“What is it, Leda?”
She set the photo back down, her heart hammering in her chest. She knew this was the right thing to do, yet she was still afraid. Once she said these words, she could never un-say them.
“I want to talk about Eris. I know that she was my half sister.”
Her dad seemed utterly lost for words. His eyes had drifted from Leda to the image of her mom, still smiling blithe and unaware in the hammered pewter frame.
“Oh, Leda,” he said at last. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
But you did, Leda thought, though it seemed unnecessarily cruel to say. You hurt all of us. That was always how it happened, wasn’t it? No one ever set out to hurt the people they loved, but they ended up doing it all the same.