Page 44 of These Summer Storms

It wasn’t just that she was the eldest, though she was a textbook eldest: emotional (aggressively caring), controlling (extremely dependable), and intense (having a sensitive stomach borne of a constant and deep-rooted concern that, at any moment, someone in the family might stray from the path).

In another timeline, Greta might have married and had a family of her own, dominating the sport of PTA. Never gone anywhere near school grounds without a cooler full of organic juice boxes and clementines. Passed down an impressive amount of anxiety to a new generation as a momfluencer of the highest order.

But that would’ve meant leaving her own mother.

Though she did not have them herself, Greta had always intuitively understood that children belonged to one parent or the other. Not in the flippant, off-the-cuff way the world defined them (momma’s boy, daddy’s girl), and not in the sense of favorites (though Elisabeth and Franklin Storm had never hesitated to identify those). This was a deeper understanding. Cellular. Synaptic.

Greta belonged to Elisabeth and had from the beginning. She’d never even had a chance, not from the date she arrived, on her mother’s twenty-fifth birthday. Even Greta’s birth had been a gift to Elisabeth; she’d been born with speedy efficiency, so as to prevent any unduediscomfort for her mother. Elisabeth had labored barely ninety minutes, and Greta had arrived to the private maternity ward at St. Luke’s–Roosevelt before her father had had a chance to do the same.

If Franklin apologized for missing the birth of his firstborn, it hadn’t been passed down in the lore of the day. Instead, he’d laugh his booming laugh every January 11, toss a slim box from Cartier in the direction of his wife, and quip, “Not as good as Greta, though!” and return to work.

Diamonds might be forever, but Greta was forever and ever, amen.

And so, when Elisabeth climbed the stairs to her private study that morning, head full of the welcome distraction of a garden party summoning half the world to shower her with attentive concern (and celebrate her husband’s life), it was Greta who followed closest on her heels.

Emily trailed behind, a lost puppy, never so well attuned to her mother’s needs as her sister; how could she be? Even if Elisabeth were interested in training another acolyte, Greta would never have ceded the spot, the one reserved for what the world might have seen as her mother’s favorite.

She wasn’t her mother’s favorite. That spot belonged to Sam—though Greta tried not to think about it, because she was more important thanfavorite.

Favoritewas for frivolity; she’d been bred to be indispensable. For comfort. For intuitive understanding of what Elisabeth needed at any given moment.

What wasfavoritewhen compared toessential?

“The company sent a list.” Elisabeth’s words were crisp and clear as she crossed to the high-backed chair by the window overlooking the Bay, drawing Greta’s immediate attention.

“A list of what?” Emily asked.

Their mother did not look up from the quad-res screen of her tablet (commonly referred to as the 1107—in honor of the $1,107 Franklin used to start Storm Inc. nearly fifty years earlier), where a spreadsheet glowed in a half dozen colors.

Greta answered her sister. “Attendees for the funeral.”

“It’s not a funeral,” Elisabeth corrected, swiping to scroll the seemingly endless list. Would the island even fit all those people?

Of course it would. Elisabeth Storm would make sure of it.

“But it is, though, isn’t it?” Emily asked, looking to Greta.

“It’s acelebration,” Elisabeth replied.

Greta did not miss the fact that there was nothing appended to the wordcelebration. No,of life. No,of your father. Instead, it was a celebration. As though his dying was a boon to them all, and Elisabeth herself would lead the merriment.

The eldest Storm ignored the grief that whispered from the edges of her consciousness, yes, for her father, as it should be. As it would be for a good daughter. But for something else, too—for an altogether different kind of loss that she would not be able to ignore for long.

Don’t do it.

Alice’s words would have echoed if Greta had let them. But she had no intention of letting them echo. Alice didn’t understand; she never had. None of them did.

Greta had a job to do. “I’ll call the caterers.”

“Alice already did that, yesterday afternoon. When you were nowhere to be found.”

Controlling a flinch, Greta refused to think about where she’d been. With whom. She controlled, too, the breathless panic that surged up at the idea that Elisabeth had needed her and someone else had steppedin.

“I’m here now,” Greta said.

Elisabeth had reached the end of the list and was returning to the top. “This won’t do. There’s no one personal here. None of our friends.”

Emily leaned in to look over her mother’s shoulder. “Actually, Mom, it looks like your friends are in green. I see them…The Nadirs, the Silverbergs, the Nelsons, the Haskinses, the Singhs—”

---