Quitting this Family after Being Abandoned for Laughs novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Too Sorry to Be True

Colin and Dani arrive with apologies and gifts; Tara records both and sees a message about whose glass is engraved.

Colin was sitting on my front steps when the car dropped me off.

He had a tray of two coffees, a dozen white roses, and a face that was already sorry.

"Tara." He stood so fast the roses nearly fell. "Thank God. I was sick all night."

"Were you," I said.

I started my phone recording in my coat pocket before I looked at him.

He tried to take my hands. I let him.

"I didn't mean for it to go that far," he said. "Dani rigged the whole thing. I only drove you out there because she begged me."

"You told them the tower would go dead."

"That was a joke. I'd never actually do that to you."

He said it with his thumb across my knuckles, in the kind voice he used on waiters who had made a mistake.

"My assistant filed the notice," he went on. "It was already scheduled for the area. I just said it at the right moment, babe. Honest."

I watched his face while he lied.

It was a good face. I had kissed it two hundred times.

"I believe you," I said.

His shoulders came down.

"I knew you would," he said. "That's why I love you. You never make it a fight."

I took the coffee and the roses and let him follow me up the stairs.

In the kitchen he wiped the counter with a paper towel and told me I was brave.

He said he had been watching the field from the road in his car for an hour after I stopped answering, which could not be true, because I had seen his taillights go.

I nodded at every sentence.

When he said, "Joyce wants us for dinner tomorrow, a rehearsal for Saturday, you'll come, right?" I said yes.

When he asked if I could forgive them, I said I was working on it.

At 8:40 he kissed my cheek and left for his office.

I locked the door behind him and stood with my back against it.

My hands were completely steady.

The knock came ten minutes later.

I looked through the peephole and saw my sister in a yellow raincoat with a garment bag over her arm.

Dani had been crying. Her nose was pink and her eyes were wet.

I opened the door.

"Nor," she said. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

She threw her arms around me and held on.

I stood inside her hug and counted the things she had done to me on one hand, and ran out of fingers.

"Mom said I went too far this time," she whispered into my shoulder. "I feel like such a monster."

"It's okay," I said.

"Is it?"

"I'm tired, Dani. I just want Saturday to go well."

She pulled back and wiped her face with her wrist, and she laughed, a small wet laugh.

"I brought you something to make it up to you."

She unzipped the garment bag.

Inside was a long green silk gown, the exact green I had pointed to in a shop window two years ago and never bought.

"You remembered," I said.

"Of course I remembered. You're my sister."

She held it against me and looked at the mirror over my shoulder.

It was my size to the inch.

"Try it on," she said. "I'll make tea."

While I changed in the bedroom, I heard her moving around my kitchen, opening cupboards she had never touched before.

I came out in the gown. She clapped.

Then her phone buzzed on the counter between us, and she picked it up, glanced at the screen, and laughed too brightly.

"I need the bathroom," she said. "Two seconds."

She left the phone face-up by the kettle.

It buzzed again.

I did not touch it. I only leaned over.

The message was from a contact saved as Mom.

Dad has the vial. Colin's glass is the engraved one, do NOT let anyone else pour for him. And don't let Tara near the bar.

The bathroom fan started up in the hall.

Under the first message a second one appeared.

After he drinks, you take him upstairs. We'll bring everyone up at ten.

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