Chapter 6 - THE HISTORY MY SISTER CALLED HELPING
Brooke finally admitted entering my apartment before the drive-in.
Not apologetically.
She described it as helping.
“Mom was worried about you.”
“So you used Dad’s emergency key?”
“You weren’t answering.”
“I was at work.”
“You were pulling away from everyone.”
“I’m thirty.”
“That doesn’t mean we stop being family.”
Every sentence returned to the same idea.
Family granted access.
Family granted exceptions.
Family turned boundaries into insults.
“How many times have you been inside without telling me?”
She refused to answer.
So I asked another question.
“How long have you been giving Rachel information about me?”
Brooke became defensive.
“She loves you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“She made a mistake.”
“She cheated.”
“Once.”
“Twice.”
Silence.
Apparently Mom had not told Brooke about the second time.
Interesting.
Rachel had admitted it during our final breakup because I had caught enough lies that maintaining the first version became impossible.
Brooke recovered.
“Whatever. The point is, you two had something real.”
“What I have with Lily isn’t real?”
“You barely know her.”
“And yet you already dislike her.”
“I don’t dislike her.”
“You followed us to a drive-in.”
“That was Mom’s idea.”
I laughed.
There it was again.
Everyone had participated.
Nobody had chosen.
Mom’s idea.
Rachel’s emotions.
Dad’s blood pressure.
Family peace.
Responsibility evaporated whenever the Cole family moved as a group.
Then Brooke said something I almost missed.
“We’ve fixed this before.”
I went still.
“What?”
She realized too late.
“Nothing.”
“What have you fixed before?”
“Ethan, stop interrogating me.”
I wrote the phrase down after we hung up.
We’ve fixed this before.
That evening, Dad called and asked whether I still had contact information for Anna Mitchell.
Anna had been my girlfriend in college.
The first woman I ever seriously considered marrying.
We broke up at twenty-three after six strange months in which she grew increasingly uncomfortable around my family. At the time she told me:
“I feel like I’m dating four people.”
I thought she was being unfair.
Years later, she moved to Denver.
I hadn’t spoken to her since.
“Why Anna?” I asked Dad.
He exhaled.
“Because your mother contacted her too.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“When?”
“During your senior year.”
I closed my eyes.
Suddenly Brooke’s sentence became much heavier.
We’ve fixed this before.
May you like
The ring on my kitchen table no longer looked romantic.
It looked like a prop that had been used in a play I didn’t know I was acting in.
