by Kerry Clare
His parents were old-fashioned, he said. His sisters hadn’t even lived with their husbands before they got married. Derek loved his mother, but she could be too much, and expectations were high after all these years of them waiting for Derek to bring someone special home. “I don’t want you to have to deal with all of that until you have to.”
But at least they were finally talking about a future. After the election, perhaps, they could make things official. Derek was nervous, because, he said, when he was serious about a relationship, he was serious. “I want to get married,” he said. “There’s no messing around.” And Brooke was still so young. “I want to make sure you’re ready too,” he told her. “It’s going to be for a lifetime when it happens, so we don’t need to rush to get there. And I don’t want you to miss anything before then.”
“The one thing I really don’t want to miss is you,” she told him. They were driving up north for the long weekend—he’d spent a lot of time back in his office in Lanark that summer while the government was on break, and for once this time he’d brought her with him. She hadn’t told her parents she was coming home, because she didn’t plan to see them. This weekend was about the two of them, the kind of moments Derek had been making a point of since that day in the office with the blinds shut. There weren’t any groceries at his place, but she’d stopped at the bakery and picked out a box full of pastries. She was determined to prove it was possible to live on love and chocolate doughnuts alone.
“Provisions,” she told him, when he came to get her at her desk. She hadn’t had anything to do all day—she’d just been waiting.
And he’d said, “That’s the only drawback to being with someone half your age. The metabolism. You’re turning me into a flabby old man, Brooke.” And she delighted in the idea she had any power over him at all, even though she knew it was nonsense. Derek had the willpower of a triathlete, because he was one, simply mind over matter. That weekend she’d end up eating all the pastries, and he’d just subsist on air.
But that weekend would turn out to be another weekend where things didn’t go according to plan, when the world interrupted them, this time in the form of Brent Ames and the rest of Derek’s buddies, none of whom Brooke could ever tell apart and some of whom had teenage daughters who were closer to Brooke’s age than they were, rolling up the long driveway with cases of beer and shouting chants as they drank, which only got louder as they got drunker. She spent the evening in Derek’s bedroom eating doughnuts, and he never came to bed.
Friday Evening
Is she making a case here? A case for her and Derek, and what they were together, that it meant anything at all? A case that would make someone more convinced than her friends had been, or the girls in their office who’d stopped inviting her out for drinks with them? All that Brooke can offer are these shining moments that, in her memory, are always golden, cast in amber. Like Derek’s hand in her hand as they were on the road to somewhere. Nobody else will ever know how it felt, the firmness of his grip. Like an anchor, but holding her fast, not in the sense of pulling her down.
They couldn’t have understood, though, her friends, whose own boyfriends had only ever been boys with whom they’d trod the well-worn path of courtship, with all its milestones and clichés. Why couldn’t her friends understand why somebody might want something different from that, as rewarding as it was risky? They had no idea what it meant to be in a relationship where the stakes were high, where what happened really mattered and didn’t just crib the plot of another teen romance. “You’re not even properly living your lives,” is what Brooke thought when she had to listen to her friends lecture her on the chances she was taking with Derek and the mistakes she was making, while they were only ever reciting lines and playing parts. They always knew exactly what was going to happen next, because it was only what was happening to everyone, and that was a life that held no appeal to Brooke, even if the choices she was making were so much harder. No matter how straightforward it was, she and Derek on the road to somewhere, everything between them working—but it was always more complicated upon arrival. Somebody’s phone was buzzing, an urgent message, a change of plans. Life is never simple, and a political life, a public one, was even less so, but this was also what Brooke loved about it, the unexpectedness, how it was never boring. She had friends who talked about being bored at work, but she was never bored at her job, or in her relationship, either. It all felt as miraculous as it had from the very start, every day bringing with it something new, another wrench sometimes, but she knew how to deal with those, with the challenges. Brooke was good at what she did.
“You can’t possibly be happy with this,” were Nicole’s exact words the final time she tried to articulate her concerns about her sister’s relationship, but Brooke was happy. She really had been. And that should have been enough, and anybody else’s opinion on the subject, even Nicole’s, really didn’t matter.
All afternoon in the quiet library Brooke had been itemizing amber moments of her and Derek together—she’d made a mental spreadsheet, because she didn’t want any of it to get lost. Remembering what Nicole had said: “You can’t possibly be happy.” The phone call on the night of the press conference had been the first conversation she’d had with her sister in a long time. She’d barely seen her since moving back to Lanark, their schedules out of sync just so subtly so that their parents had hardly noticed their estrangement, but Brooke was sure Nicole knew the reason for their distance.
And now here was Nicole, walking into the library, as though Brooke had conjured her.
“So this is it,” said Nicole, looking around the library. “The big chance you uprooted your whole life back in the city for.” This was exactly why Brooke had been avoiding Nicole, because she insisted on telling it like it was—or at least like how she perceived it to be, which to Nicole would always be the same thing. She saw the look on Brooke’s face, though, and tempered her comment. “I just never pictured you here. I still can’t. I used to bring you here when you were three. It doesn’t look right, like you’re sitting in someone else’s chair.”
“Well, it’s been my chair since the summer,” said Brooke. “Whether you can picture it or not. What are you doing here?” Nicole’s arrival would be no accident. She was a busy woman, running her business, married to her high school sweetheart, her whole life a perfect arrangement, right down to the pickets in her fence. The one potential sore point in this perfect arrangement being that they hadn’t had children. She’d always wanted to, and Nicole had never said why it hadn’t happened. Other people’s internal affairs were always Nicole’s business, but she didn’t like to talk about her own.
She said, “Mom told me to come.”
“Did she.”
“And I had to pick up a few things in town anyway. Believe me, not everything revolves around you.” If only that were true. “And I told her you wouldn’t want to see me, that I’d only be intruding, but she made me do it. She’s more worried than usual. What happened?”
“To who?”
“To you. She said you’re hiding. And I said, ‘So it’s not just me,’ and she said it wasn’t. And now all this garbage about Derek. You’re so mysterious about everything that went down between the two of you, and Mom knows even less than I do, but she doesn’t think you should be alone right now. So I’ve come to take you to dinner.”
“I’m working.”
“For ten more minutes,” she said. “I know your schedule.”
“I might have plans,” said Brooke.
“Mom said you never have plans.”
“Mom doesn’t know everything about me,” said Brooke. “And neither do you.”
“So you do have plans?” Nicole asked.
Brooke admitted, “No.” She was still waiting to hear from Derek. She wanted to be ready to jump into a cab and be out at his place at a moment’s notice—so no, this was not a great time for dinner. But Broo
ke couldn’t tell her sister that, because it would only prove Nicole’s point, the one she kept returning to, which was that Brooke was being undone by everything, that Derek’s downfall was becoming her own.
Brooke said, “You don’t have to do this. And what’s Sean doing tonight?”
“Sean is pretty good at fending for himself,” said Nicole. “And it’s definitely time for a catch-up anyway, you and me. I’ve even missed you, a little bit. As I’ve mentioned. And I’ve been worried.” She gestured toward the periodicals, at the papers hung that morning with Derek still on the front page. Looking more polished, but wan under the headline:
GIRLS “NOT YOUNG. NEVER UNDERAGE.”
Things still weren’t looking good. Nicole said, “I’ll wait over here.”
She sat at the table by the papers and watched Brooke on her perch at the counter doing nothing. She didn’t even bother to pick up a magazine, some kind of distraction. She just stared at Brooke as she went through the motions of the end of her shift, shutting down terminals, putting up chairs, and turning out lights. She’d already made an announcement that the library was closing in fifteen minutes, and now it was time for the five-minute call. She got on the PA system and cleared her throat like a warning, so she wouldn’t startle remaining patrons too badly.
“The library will be closing in five minutes,” she said smoothly into the speaker. “Please bring your materials to be signed out to the circulation desk.”
But there was nobody left, as Lindsay confirmed when she came back up from her sweep of the stacks with Peter the Security Guard. He saw Nicole waiting. “A friend of yours?” he asked Brooke.
Brooke said, “Peter, do you remember my sister?”
“He likes you,” Nicole said afterwards over sushi, which wouldn’t have been Brooke’s first choice for dinner because the sushi in this town was not incredible, but the only alternative was the Italian place, and when your father owns the pizza joint, going there would be disloyal. So sushi it was, sashimi even, which Nicole ordered because she was the kind of vegetarian where fish was fine, although her choice confirmed she definitely still wasn’t pregnant, and she must have been studying the expression on Brooke’s face as this occurred to her, but she got the reading all wrong.
“And yes, Ms. City Slicker, we’ve got sashimi out here in the boonies.”
“I live here,” Brooke reminded her sister, before Nicole went all-in accusing her of snobbery.
“But you don’t really,” she said. “It’s like Mom said. You’re hiding. And not just from me, but from everything. I want to find out what’s going on. Is this about Derek? What a mess.”
What if Brooke just told Nicole everything? What if she just came out with the whole story, a burden lifted? She would have her sister back again, because did she really have to be so alone in this? It would be so easy; it would feel so good. But she couldn’t do it. Not yet. Everything was still hinging on what Derek would have to tell her tonight.
“It’s not true,” Brooke told her. “What they’re saying.”
“That Derek Murdoch goes out with girls who work for him, girls just out of school? Sound familiar?”
Brooke asked, “Since when is that illegal?” The waitress delivered their miso soup. Brooke had never been in a Japanese restaurant before where all the staff were white. “And no, I mean the other stuff.”
“How he made some poor girl suck him off in a trash can.”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Brooke.
“You were there?”
“I know him,” said Brooke. “He wouldn’t do that. Besides, it was a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t mean it never happened.”
“You’re being unfair,” Brooke told her sister. And not for the first time.
“The whole thing gives me a bad vibe,” Nicole had confessed to Brooke back when she and Derek first got together, and now Brooke could see from her sister’s expression that the vibe hadn’t changed since then.
“So Derek’s still your hero?” she said to Brooke now. “Even after all those things they’re saying?”
“People say things all the time. Doesn’t mean they’re true.”
“I’m still curious about why he packed you off home, though. What happened?”
“He didn’t pack me anywhere.”
“You’re still seeing him?”
Brooke said, “It’s complicated.”
“It’s probably less complicated than you think,” Nicole said. “Have you seen him lately?”
Not since she left the city in June. “He’s coming home this weekend,” Brooke told her.
Nicole said, “Of course he is. He’s got his tail between his legs. Among other things.”
“He’ll be back tonight. I’m waiting to hear from him.” Her phone was on the table, and she’d had to move it aside to make room when the food arrived.
Nicole said, “I’m worried about you too, you know. It’s not just Mom being crazy. It’s like you’re disappearing.”
Brooke said, “I’m right here.”
“But not really,” said Nicole. “And what are you doing here anyway? It doesn’t make any sense. You’re better than all this, don’t you know that? Better than small-town sushi, even. Don’t think I don’t know that. You’re fooling no one. Something’s up.”
“I just needed a break,” said Brooke.
Nicole leveled with her. “It’s like you’re broken. And I don’t know if it was him who did this to you, but it makes me furious. You’re my little sister.”
“I’m twenty-three years old,” said Brooke. “What makes you think that anyone did anything to me?”
“What does age have to do with any of it?”
“Because you’re treating me like a child.”
“I’m not. We’d be having this conversation no matter how old you were. You also don’t have to pretend to be invulnerable, you know. Being a human being is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed.” Her phone buzzed—it was him. The sweet relief of her faith rewarded again. The world righted on its axis. She was not such a fool after all. Can you call me? Tonight?
She texted back, I’m out for dinner. Hang on. Soon.
“So that’s him?” Brooke nodded. “And you’re going over there? He’s coming to pick you up?” His place was way out of town, inaccessible by public transit. She could take a taxi.
“He just got home,” said Brooke. “It’s been a long drive. I can’t ask him to come all the way downtown.”
“But you shouldn’t have to ask him, Brooke,” said Nicole. “That’s just my point.”
“You don’t understand.”
Nicole said, “I do. Just because a person has a job that’s important doesn’t mean they’re obligated to treat everyone around them like crap.”
“He doesn’t do that,” said Brooke.
Nicole said, “I’ll drive you, once we’re finished here.”
Brooke said, “It’s out of your way.”
“But see, that’s what we do for the people we love,” her sister said. “We go out of our way. We come downtown. We remind them at every single turn that they are essential, incredible, valuable parts of our lives.” She made it sound so easy.
“How is Sean?” Brooke asked. Sean was like that. He was as reliable as his pick-up truck.
“Sean’s good,” said Nicole. “You don’t need to stay away, you know. You’ve moved back up here, and I see you less than when you were in the city.”
Brooke said, “It’s not been the best time.”
“I know,” said Nicole. She squeezed Brooke’s hand across the table. “You’re wasting an incredible resource, though, a big sister who is willing to beat the living daylights out of anyone who’d dare to hurt you. I swear, if you want me to nail his dick to the wall, I’d do it.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, and rolled her eyes.
Brooke’s phone buzzed.
“Is it him?” Nicole asked.
We need to talk, he’d written. This moment she’d been waiting months for, beginning to fear it might never come. Finally she had a leg to stand on, a shred of dignity. She hadn’t been wrong about everything.
Brooke nodded. It was him.
And Nicole said, “I’ll take you there.”
* * *
—
Brooke hadn’t been out to Derek’s place since coming back to town, except for one time when her mom had loaned her the car to go buy towels and bed linen at Walmart, and she’d just kept going beyond the boundary line where the town turned into country and the road became a highway. She’d known where she was heading without even thinking about it, that line from an old song running through her head about driving by a house even though you know that no one’s home.
But she had wanted to see it, that house that was his, a place that had felt like theirs more than once or twice. And of course, the house was all locked up because Derek was back in the city, and Brooke didn’t have a key, which underlined that this house had never been theirs at all. Perhaps nothing had been. She hadn’t even slowed down at the end of the driveway, because she didn’t want the neighbors noticing, or people thinking she was insane.
But the windows at the front were glowing now, and Derek’s car was parked by the kitchen door. And nobody else’s car was there, which was what she hadn’t been sure of. I’ll be back tonight, he’d texted. We need to connect. Inside that house, he was waiting for her.
