I grabbed my wine glass and swallowed the rest, rallying. ‘He’s from Cobalt. He was Stella’s neighbor. That’s probably how you remember him.’
I watched the realization drip down his face. ‘Ah.’ He laughed, then smiled, then gave me a look of disbelief. ‘He was still living there? Down the street? That’s how you know him?’
I shook my head. ‘Samantha was in touch with him. We emailed and talked on the phone for a while, and then I visited him. He was living in New York at the time, actually, but then his job transferred him to Annapolis.’
Steven sat back. His eyes were on the ceiling, and I could tell he was reliving that night he confronted me in Philip’s yard. I felt embarrassed, as I knew I would. ‘So I guess it’s serious, huh, if you moved in with him?’ Steven finally asked.
‘Not necessarily.’
Angie and Steven exchanged a glance, their eyebrows raised.
‘It’s not like we’re engaged,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I mean, who knows, right? We might not marry anybody, Steven, with the models we had for parents. And, I mean, we were into some pretty weird stuff as kids. It’s not like we had a normal childhood.’
Steven just stared, aghast.
‘Well, he seems really nice,’ Angie said quietly. She picked up her messenger bag and stood. ‘Excuse me.’
We watched as she slipped out the front door, found my father, rooted through her bag, and lit up a cigarette. Then, Steven dumped the rest of the first carafe of wine into his glass. ‘I would appreciate it if you didn’t discuss some of the things I used to be into,’ he said quietly. ‘Like, you know. That time in Cobalt. All that crazy stuff I used to say. I mean, Angie doesn’t really know about any of that. She wouldn’t get it.’
I crossed my arms over my chest and felt my heart knocking against my wrist. ‘These days, I thought you’d be saying I told you so.’
Steven’s Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Look.’
But I was on a roll. Here he was, finally in front of me. ‘I thought you’d be saying that we should’ve sent every foreigner out of the country when we had a chance. That we should’ve screened everyone, whoever they were. That this was bound to happen-everyone was saying it wouldn’t, but they were too stupid to pay attention. You would’ve found Muhammad Atta and killed him with your bare hands. You would’ve snuffed out every last one of them, and then we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
‘Summer,’ Steven warned, ‘that’s not fair.’
I raised an eyebrow. My cheeks felt seared. ‘It’s not?’
Something I’d been holding in for years was now wafting around the room, vaporous and spectral. I wasn’t sure if it felt good or not. I didn’t even know what I was angry about, exactly, and what chances Steven had taken from me. Philip and I had still ended up in the same place, after all. Hadn’t we?
But it was more than that-Steven could have been a better brother to me. And maybe I could’ve been a better sister to him. We hadn’t really tried hard enough, neither of us. We had both a lot and very little to work with.
‘It was just a phase I was going through.’ Steven ran his hands through his thinning hair, making it spike up. ‘It was just a thing, okay?’
I sighed, suddenly out of energy. ‘Yeah. Okay.’
He pulled out the collar of his shirt. ‘Jesus. I feel like they turned up the heat, huh?’ Steven twisted around and looked at Angie, who was leaning against the front window. We couldn’t see her cigarette, so it looked as if there were a thin curl of smoke rising up from the center of her palm.
Then, I noticed something else. I leaned forward. ‘Is Dad smoking?’
My father stood next to Angie. He put a cigarette to his lips, breathed in, and blew a smoke ring toward Angie’s head. Angie laughed.
‘I guess he is,’ Steven said, his voice flat.
I sighed. ‘Dad keeps all kinds of secrets.’
Steven frowned, uncertain. ‘I doubt he does from you.’
‘Ha.’ It came out hard, sharp.
‘I’m serious. You guys are, like, the same. You always were. I always felt so jealous, actually, how easily you understood him.’
An incredulous laugh caught in my throat, but there was no trace of mockery in his face anywhere. ‘Well, I don’t understand why he’s smoking,’ I finally said.
For one moment, even though we barely knew each other, we were connected. Steven and I held the same past that started everything, that made everything flip. Once Angie and Philip and my father and Rosemary returned, we’d be splintered apart again, but right then, it was just the two of us, The Schnoz, spying on our mysterious father. Back then, we’d been so certain he was a superhero, and thought that since we looked like him, we’d grow up to be superheroes, too.