There’s no law against using Facebook! I fumed then felt stupid for having a mental argument over something that hadn’t happened and wasn’t likely to. When would it ever occur to someone to go that far instead of just emailing or picking up a phone?
I couldn’t keep her waiting forever. I had to make a decision. Would I face her, or not?
I cupped my hands under the faucet and slurped a drink from them then checked my makeup. Urban Decay setting spray saved my ass, yet again. No matter what happened, I would not lose my composure. I wouldn’t yell. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t have a panic attack.
I would be Sophie motherfucking Scaife.
Squaring my shoulders, I pushed through the door and strode down the hallway with my head raised high. With every step, my confidence built. I’d been through worse than an awkward confrontation. I’d been coldly chastised by Gabriella goddamn Winters, the Wicked Witch of the Upper Westside. This was not going to beat me.
I opened my office door said quickly, “Sorry for making you wait—”
And the words died in my throat. Sitting at one of the chairs in front of my desk, her back ramrod straight, was Susan. She was actually there, not as an abstract concept or a hypothetical. Flesh and blood, my flesh and blood. And she looked just as upset and terrified as I had staring at myself in that mirror.
She pushed her chair back and stood, awkwardly thrusting her hand at me like she was on a job interview. Maybe she was. I had no idea what she wanted from me.
“I’m sorry to come without calling. I didn’t know…” She grimaced and closed her eyes. “I didn’t know how to call. Or how to get in touch with you. You’re kind of…”
“Hard to track down,” I admitted guiltily. “You could have gotten my number from the reunion committee, I bet.”
“I didn’t really know who the reunion committee was.”
Silence lapsed between us.
“So, um.” I sat in my chair. Having the desk as a physical boundary between us made me feel a little calmer. “What brings you to New York?”
“Trade show,” she said quickly. “Travis’s dad is trying to expand throughout the Midwest, so he’s trying to make some contacts and see what other companies are…” She made a gesture with her hands, looking more helpless by the minute.
If she’d come here to be confrontational toward me, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. That was a relief. But since I didn’t know why she was there to see me, specifically, I couldn’t think of a response. We ended up just staring at each other. Probably just for a couple of seconds, but it felt like a micro-eternity.
Finally, she sighed and looked down at her hands, her brow furrowed. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“I…” What was I supposed to do? Reassure her?
“Travis doesn’t know I’m here. I haven’t told him anything about you.”
A tide of anger rushed through me, shocking in its intensity. It took every ounce of strength I had to control it. “Well, I guess I’m easy to forget. And cover up. And ignore.”
She looked up, utterly stricken. “I am so, so sorry.”
“About what?” Suddenly, my anger and hurt didn’t seem all that ridiculous or unwarranted. It was like I’d only just realized I was allowed to have feelings on the subject. That I didn’t have to earn the right to feel cheated or slighted. She didn’t have to give me permission. “About the fact that my father died and nobody bothered to tell me? Or even include me in his obituary?”
“I didn’t know how to contact—”
“You found me, now. You found me when you wanted to.” My jaw tensed until it ached. “Did you know about me?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But not until Dad was dying.”
Dad. She got to call him dad. He was her dad.
It was such a simple word but such an important privilege.
“Years.” My fist clenched against my thigh.
“The obituary was… That was a bad choice. I see that, now.” Her large dark eyes fixed on mine earnestly. “But you weren’t a part of our lives. And we just didn’t think about you.”
That stung, but it was oddly comforting at the same time. I hadn’t been purposely omitted or ignored. I’d just been forgotten. In a time of great stress, they’d been concerned about their family, and no matter the blood that made us relation, I wasn’t a part of that family.
And that wasn’t Susan’s fault.
The rigidity in my muscles eased some. “I know it’s easy to lose track of stuff when you’re in the middle of a loss like that.”
She nodded gratefully at that small concession. “Don’t be angry with me, but I read your book. On the flight out here. I know that you lost someone.”
I didn’t want to talk about that with her. Just like she had the privilege of calling Joey Tangen “Dad”, I had the privilege of keeping Emma private and close.
I changed the subject. “I hope you’re not here because you think you have to answer for him or something. You don’t. You weren’t even born when he decided to split.”
That was another thing I tried to keep in mind. I wasn’t exactly old and wise, and she was even younger than me. In my late twenties, I was only, just now, realizing the effects of time.
“No, I don’t feel like I have to do penance for him or anything. I’ve actually been struggling, since I found out about you. I’ve wanted answers, you know?”
Did I know? I scoffed. “Um, yeah. I’m familiar with that. Except the answers I wanted were more along the lines of ‘what’s wrong with me that my own father would abandon me’?”
Calm down, Sophie. This isn’t the pain Olympics.
“This is hard for you.” She didn’t say she understood or try to compare our experiences, which I appreciated. “If you don’t want to have any contact with us…honestly, it might be better.”
My heart folded in on itself. I hadn’t known what to expect when I stepped into the room. Being welcomed into the family, reunited with people I hadn’t known I’d lost? That hadn’t exactly been at the forefront of my mind. At least, not in a way I could articulate until she said those words, and I saw the option snatched away.
My words scraped from my dry throat. “Well. Thanks for coming all this way to tell me that.”
“No, that’s not what I—” A tear fell from her eye, and she grabbed for her purse. The tissue she pulled out was crumpled; had she been crying on her way here?
I was taking out my anger at Joey Tangen on a daughter that he’d cherished, but victimized, too. I’d never known him. She probably felt like she hadn’t, either.
“Susan…” My stubborn heart wouldn’t apologize. “Neither of us knows how to be, right now. I’m mad, but not at you. Not really.”
“Yeah.” She nodded vigorously as she wiped her eyes. “I’m mad at him.”
Maybe that anger would be the force that united us?
“For so many reasons,” she added. “And especially for the position he’s put me in, right now. Because I think… I mean, I’m pretty sure you’re about to hate me.”
“Why?” Foreboding rose in me like a curl of smoke warning me of a fire to come.
“Because I’m here to ask you for something.”
Money. It was my first thought, not because I saw her as poor or less than me, but because I didn’t have anything else to offer. I summoned my inner Neil to phrase what I said next. “Perhaps you should simply come out and say it.”
It sounded better than just, “How much?”
“I have—we have—another sister.” She took a deep breath, and her chest shook. “She’s sick.”
Well, that was better than, “My husband sent me here looking for an investor.”
“Okay…do you need help with medical bills or…” God, that sounded so crass. Let me give you money, so you can go away.
“N-no. Well, yes. But that’s not…” She paused, took another long breath. “She needs a kidney.”
Well, let me just pull one out of my desk d
rawer.
No.
Wait.
“I-I’m sorry, are you—”
“It’s a genetic disorder, Alport syndrome. It’s on Mom’s side. So, I can’t donate, she can’t donate. Dad didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so…” Her face crumpled, and she couldn’t hide that she was crying. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
“No, no, wait!” I practically shouted as she moved to stand. “Don’t leave. I just need a minute.”
A kidney? That was a pretty big fucking ask—especially in our situation. Would she had even come here or contacted me, again, at all if not for a body part?
“She’s been waiting,” Susan went on quietly. “But there are so many people who need them. And the long-term…”
My head swam with questions. “How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
I thought back to sixteen. Living in the U.P., dreaming of one day getting out of Michigan altogether, working for prestigious publications, living a glamorous life.
Did this girl—
God, I didn’t even remember her name.
“What’s her name? I don’t remember from the…” I waved my hand so I wouldn’t have to say “obituary”, again. I didn’t want to bring it up, anymore. Suddenly, it didn’t feel as bad as it did before.
“Molly.”
Did Molly dream about her life in the future? Or was she just waiting to see if it was worth the bother?
I couldn’t stand to think of a kid in that situation. But was it so unbearable that I would just break off a piece of my body for a stranger?
Susan said, “My mom is beside herself. First losing Dad, then this. It would kill her to lose Molly, too. I know it would me, if she were my kid. I don’t know how people—”
A vision of Emma swam through my mind, and the haunted despair I caught in Neil’s eyes, still. It would always be there, a wound that would never heal.
Susan’s voice stuttered to a halt, whatever word she’d been about to say frozen in her throat. She blinked quickly and looked away. “My god. I should not be saying this stuff. Not to you.”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. But it wasn’t her fault that she’d struck a nerve. Yes, she’d read my book. That didn’t necessarily mean that it felt real to her. I hadn’t even become real to her until lately.
Unless it did. Unless that’s why she’d started talking about her mom and losing a child. Maybe she hadn’t read the book on the plane at all. Maybe she’d read it then formulated this plan to come get my kidney.
“This is a lot, I know,” she said. “And I wouldn’t ask, but my little sister’s life is on the line.” Her eyes searched mine, pleading for something she should never have asked for.
What would I have done to spare Neil his pain? What lengths would I have gone to, to keep Emma alive?
Why had it taken something so dire to make Susan acknowledge my existence?
I didn’t look away. Not even to blink. “Would you have contacted me if it wasn’t?”
Her features, an eerie imitation of my own, froze in shock. I doubted she’d expected to be held accountable in her father’s place. A similar scene had almost certainly played out in her mind while she’d made up her decision to come here. It might have even have held her back at the door. But I had no doubt that she’d never thought, upon hearing her tale of woe, that I would remain unmoved enough to think about myself.
Being self-centered obviously ran in the family. But I was much better at it.
Finally, she admitted, “Never in a thousand years.”
I made a split decision. The only one I could in the moment. “I need time to think. How long are you staying in New York?”
“Until Sunday. That’s when the conference is over.”
A week-long construction business conference? Where the fuck do I sign up for that bore fest?
It made me feel a little better to be mean in my head.
“Give your number to Mel on the way out,” I instructed. “Maybe I’ll call you before you leave. If not…”
“Then, it’s a no.” Her jaw clenched visibly.
I shook my head. “No. It just means that I needed more than a week to figure out if I want to donate an organ to a stranger.”
Susan stood and hesitated in front of my desk for a moment, as though she expected me to say something else or stand and shake her hand. I just stared her down. Her spine straightened, and she smoothed her blouse. “Thank you for your time.”
Maybe that had been intentionally cruel, calling them strangers. I wasn’t sure. Of, like, anything at all. And the worst part was, if someone asked me if I wanted to donate an organ to a stranger, I probably would have said yes by now. This was for my own sister, and I was on the fence?
She left, closing the door behind her, and I sat in silence broken only by the buzzing of my pulse in my ears. What was I supposed to do, now? Think it over? Do more Facebook spying? How much information would it take to convince me to save a life for people who’d never cared about mine?
How much could I reasonably blame on them, and not on Joey Tangen? As far as I knew, he might have forbidden them from contacting me. Or maybe they’d wanted to but didn’t know how. Maybe they’d just given up.
I’d known they were out there, in a vague sort of way. Somehow, I’d learned that he’d made a family and that I wasn’t a part of it. That was the way it always was, and I’d accepted that. I’d never tried to find them because I knew I wasn’t welcome. If they had come to me and asked me to a be a part of their lives, that would have been different; I couldn’t have forced my way in, even if I’d been brave enough to try.
Now, the sisters who’d never truly existed in my mind before were too real to ignore, and they weren’t extending an offer of family or love or acceptance. They only needed me for spare parts.
Susan had been right; it was a lot to ask, and manipulative, even if she’d never intended it to be. Help us, or someone will die. Someone you should care about, because you’re bound by blood.
But how could I care about any of them, when they’d never cared about me?
Chapter Nine
The ride home was interminable. Too quiet, too much time alone with my thoughts. Usually, I just slept during the two-hour commute. Tonight, I couldn’t; I doubted I would sleep before the alarm went off in the morning.
We pulled up to the front door of the house, and I thanked the driver as he helped me out. I staggered inside, dropped my bag on the floor in the foyer, kicked off my shoes, and wandered into the empty living room.
“Hello?” I called, not really expecting an answer. I didn’t even know if Neil and El-Mudad were home, and if they were, the place was too damn big to yell to anyone. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to see them, yet. Not when I hadn’t decided how to proceed.
The sooner I told Neil, the better. I’d worked too hard at being honest and sharing important things with him to let all of that go out the window. El-Mudad presented a new complication; if we were really going to be together, me potentially giving away an organ would concern him, too. It wouldn’t be fair to keep it from him on the basis that Neil and I had more history and a legal document binding us.
I went to the huge windows and looked out at the horizon. The ocean glittered under the golden-tinged evening sky. It reminded me a little of the Big Lake back home. Superior wasn’t really a lake but an inland sea. Not as impressive as the whole Atlantic but a formidable presence, nonetheless. There was a feeling to bodies of water. I was familiar with the lake; the ocean remained a stranger.
Things like that tied you to a place. If we packed up and moved tomorrow, I would miss the view, but not the water itself. But my home, the place where my roots were, still called to me. Right now, they seemed to be calling me a traitor. There I was, standing in my big empty palace, staring out at an ocean that didn’t know me and that I had no claim to, while people who needed me waited in hellish limbo to find out whether or not I would claim them.
They don’t want to be claimed. They want to claim a part of you.
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I looked down, my gaze traveling from the beach grass and over the massive length of our finely manicured lawn, to the flagstone patio and the heated salt-water swimming pool. That’s where I found Neil and El-Mudad, standing in the waist deep water, laughing and smiling, their arms around each other. Even though I couldn’t hear them, I laughed softly, too, and put my hand to the glass. I wanted to be down there with them, but even if I were physically close, I couldn’t be present. Not until I told them.
I watched them a little longer. They kissed, Neil’s hand on El-Mudad’s cheek. A thrill went through me; my libido wasn’t really concerned with my inner turmoil.
I didn’t hurry out to meet them. I took a quick shower—the noise I made when I took off my bra sounded like a moribund cow groaning, so I was glad El-Mudad wasn’t there to hear it—scrubbed off my makeup, and braided my wet hair back. Then, I changed into some super-short gray cut-off sweats and a black ribbed tank top.
By the time I reached the patio, Neil and El-Mudad were already out of the pool. El-Mudad reclined on one of the lounge chairs, an arm thrown above his head, his face crumpled in tortured concentration. Neil was on his knees beside the chair, his head bobbing slowly as he sucked El-Mudad’s cock.
El-Mudad looked pretty close to coming, so I couldn’t resist. “What are you guys up to?”
El-Mudad’s eyes flew open in surprise, and Neil lifted his head to look back at me. With a panicked “Don’t stop!”, El-Mudad lifted his hips, cum dribbling from his straining, untouched cock. He gasped in frustration, his orgasm ruined.
“Sophie, that wasn’t very nice,” Neil scolded, sounding more like my Sir than my husband. “Get over here and clean it up.”
He got to his feet and adjusted his own erection then moved to the head of the lounger. “Give me your hands,” he ordered El-Mudad. “You know the safe word.”
The Sister (The Boss Book 6) Page 14
