Page 37 of These Summer Storms

“Maybe not.” Greta shrugged a shoulder, as though the argument wasn’t worth it. “The point is, he’s left me with the worst task. I’d rather not talk for a week. Or…saysomethingniceabout Dad for a few days.”

The disparity between the tasks was startlingly unfair, but Franklinwouldn’t have cared about that. All he cared about was his ability to force them into action.

“So, don’t do it.”

Greta looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Don’t do it. Go public with your relationship, live your life.” Alice paused. “What’s the worst that can happen? Mom has to actually hire a secretary?”

“I’m more to Mom than just a secretary. She needs me.”

Before Alice could find an apology (the kind that came with difficulty because it required an evasion of the truth), Greta waved the words away.

“If I don’t do it…” Greta trailed off and shook her head, the rest of the sentence unspoken but heard nonetheless.If I don’t do it—I don’t get the money. And it’s always been the money. “I have no discernible skills.”

Alice didn’t miss the deeper meaning. What would happen when Greta needed an identity? Who was she if not the money? The name? The power that came with it? Who was she beyond Elisabeth, and Storm Island, and the enormous, too-small world it afforded her?

Who were any of them?

Alice didn’t know, and she’d spent five years trying to figure it out. “That’s not true. You have an MFA.”

An MFA and a book she’d been writing for a decade. Longer. Something she used to convince herself that she was more than her DNA. More than a statue, cast in her mother’s mold.

Greta cut her a look. “Like I said.”

“Well, worst comes to worst, you can go work for Sam. He’s going to be CEO.”

It was too horrifying to be considered a decent joke. “God, can you imagine how insufferable he’ll be?”

“Learned from the best of them.” Alice couldn’t help her laugh at that, letting it free her for a moment, before she went serious again. “It’s not so bad, you know. Paying rent. Grocery shopping. Buying furniture at IKEA.”

“You have furniture from IKEA?”

Ignoring the horror in her sister’s voice, Alice repeated, “It’s not so bad, Great.”

Maybe it was the words themselves—too hopeful. Maybe it was the nickname Alice had used for her when they were kids, bestowed the same day their father had brought autocorrect (at once deeply fallible and cosmically perfect) to the world—too heavy.

Whatever it was, Greta shook her head. “I can’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Alice replied, meaning it. “You should have something for yourself. You deserve it, after all of this time.” A long stretch of silence passed, full of things Greta wouldn’t say, until Alice added, “Is there—something else? That Dad said?”

That Dad knew?

After an eternity, Greta shook her head and repeated herself, “Even if I were willing to lose out on the inheritance…the family comes first.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You haven’t been gone that long,” Greta said, an edge of the robotic in her voice. “We’re all we have.”

“Cool impression of Mom,” Alice retorted. “Tell me. If that’s true, then where were you when Dad told me to leave and not come back?”

Greta went silent. What could she say?

“Don’t worry about it,” Alice said. “You weren’t the only one.”

“Alice,” Greta said, finally. “You know how it is…It’s not…easy.”

Alice studied her sister, the way a smattering of her blond hair, turning gray at her temples, had escaped the topknot she wore. The tiny creases barely born at the corners of her eyes and lips, dancing around the truth of her age. Forty.

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