Part 6
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Vivian’s gaze moved to the envelope.
“That letter was never supposed to be found.”
Julian laughed once, without humor.
“Then why was it addressed to me?”
“Because she couldn’t bring herself to say certain things while she was alive.”
Elena’s fingers pulled weakly at Julian’s shirt.
“Don’t let her explain it away.”
Vivian looked down at her.
The hatred in her expression was so sudden and clean that Julian felt it like a physical change in the air.
It lasted less than a second.
Then it was gone.
But he had seen it.
“Elena,” Vivian said, “you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know you lied to him.”
“I protected him.”
“From what?”
Vivian did not answer.
Julian felt something old crack open inside him.
There had been so many times Vivian had said she was protecting him.
When their father drank too much at Christmas and sent Julian upstairs early, Vivian had said she was protecting him.
When their mother stopped taking calls from friends because she was too tired to talk, Vivian said she was protecting her.
When Julian wanted to sell his share of the house after the funeral, Vivian told him he did not understand the taxes, the paperwork, the history. She said she was protecting him from making a mistake.
He had allowed that explanation to become a wall between him and every difficult thing.
Now Elena was lying on the floor beneath him, and Vivian was still calling her own choices protection.
“Did you keep something from me?” he asked.
Vivian’s eyes went hard.
“You are asking me that now?”
“Yes.”
“While she’s lying there?”
“Yes.”
The word surprised him.
It surprised Vivian too.
Julian looked down at Elena. Her eyes had closed again. Her face was damp with sweat. Every breath looked harder than the last.
He wanted to stand. He wanted to run to the phone, to the doors, to a car, to anywhere that could turn this into a problem with a process.
But he stayed.
The worst thing in the world, he had learned, was sometimes not that you could not fix something.
Sometimes it was that you had spent so long believing you could, you had not learned how to remain when fixing failed.
“Elena,” he said softly. “Stay with me.”
Her lashes fluttered.
“I am.”
“You’re not allowed to go anywhere.”
A faint sound came from her that almost became a laugh.
“You always say that like you can enforce it.”
“I can be persuasive.”
“Terrible at it.”
The words were thin, but they were Elena. Dry even now. Honest even now.
His eyes burned.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
For a moment, the foyer was smaller.
Not safe. Never safe.
But smaller.
Then Vivian stepped down another stair.
Julian looked up.
“I said stay there.”
“I’m not going to stand over her like a criminal.”
“You’re the one who said you wanted to help.”
“I do.”
“Then call someone.”
Vivian’s mouth tightened. “The landline is dead. My phone is upstairs. Yours has no service.”
“Then go get yours.”
She did not move.
Julian waited.
Elena’s fingers trembled against his chest.
“Vivian,” he said.
His sister’s face had changed by then. The composure was still there, but it was slipping around the edges. Her eyes kept moving—not just to Elena, not just to Julian, but to the jacket on the step.
To the envelope.
He followed her gaze.
“You’re afraid of the letter,” he said.
Vivian did not answer.
“That’s what this is about.”
“You don’t know what this is about.”
“Then tell me.”
“I can’t.”
The admission came out before she could stop it.
All three of them heard it.
Elena inhaled sharply.
Vivian’s eyes closed.
Julian felt the years between them rearrange themselves.
He saw Vivian at nineteen, standing in the doorway of his bedroom after their father had broken a lamp downstairs. She had told him not to go out there. She had told him she would handle it.
He saw Vivian at twenty-eight, filling out hospital paperwork while their mother slept.
He saw Vivian signing documents after the funeral.
He saw Vivian taking his calls, returning none of them, telling him the house was fine, everything was under control, there was nothing he needed to worry about.
He had mistaken her exhaustion for authority.
He had mistaken her silence for strength.
Maybe she had mistaken it too.
“What can’t you do?” he asked.
Vivian’s eyes opened.
Her face was no longer calm.
“I can’t lose this house.”
The answer was so plain that it took Julian a moment to understand it.
Elena shifted weakly in his arms.
“There,” she whispered.
Vivian looked down at her.
“Don’t.”
“Elena,” Julian said. “What does she mean?”
May you like
Elena swallowed.
“Your mother wanted you to sell it.”
