Sadie didn’t like the way Gigi was telling stories like she needed someone to hear them. It sent a shiver down her spine much the same way sucking a lemon or getting a paper cut did.
Seth came in just as Gigi put the last piece of chicken on a paper towel.
“It’s time you two start being civil to each other before I knock your heads together in the hope of knocking sense into you both. I’m going out to have a cigarette. You two eat. And talk.”
“Gigi,” Sadie started but was cut off.
“Do this for me. We’ll talk more later, I promise.” And Sadie thought how amazing it was that Gigi could smile while holding such command in her voice.
She and Seth stared at each other. Her fingers twitched at her side. How could you want to hug and throttle someone at the same time? Sibling love was no joke.
“I feel weirdly like we’ve been set up on some kind of twisted blind date,” Seth said, looking at the platters of food. A laugh bubbled out of Sadie. She felt like she was going insane. Like nothing fit together. Like all the pieces of who she thought she was were unraveling at the seam, and she couldn’t quite figure out how to keep them together.
“What are we going to do?” she asked her brother.
Seth looked at her like she really had gone mad.
“We’re going to eat,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Because if we don’t, Gigi will lock us in here like it’s the end of fucking days, and I swear to God but that woman actually terrifies me.”
Gigi had already put a basket of garlic and parsley biscuits on the table. Seth grabbed one and tore into it as he tossed another to Sadie. She took a bite and as she chewed, she rolled her eyes. Her grandmother had put a dash of white mustard powder in the dough, which was meant to help the eater get things off their chest and deal with challenges.
“Sit down—I’ll make your plate.” She sighed, wiping her tears and washing her hands with lemon verbena soap. “We better get this over with.”
When she had two heaping piles of food, they sat down, and both looked at their plates as if they held some kind of answer. Before taking a bite, Seth cleared his throat.
“She gave me a very specific set of rules and instructions while we were in the hospital.” He opened the notes on his phone.
“We’re not allowed to mope about, and we’re not allowed to treat her like she’s dying.”
“Even though she is,” Sadie said, her voice granite hard.
“Even though she is,” Seth echoed. “We’re absolutely not allowed to tell anyone. That was her first rule. And we can’t try to convince her to take treatment, and we have to be nice to each other. Hey, it’s in the notes,” he said when Sadie rolled her eyes again. “And when she gets bad, if she starts to get dementia or whatever, we’re supposed to drop her off at the hospital and leave her there.”
“Like that’s going to happen,” Sadie snorted.
“I know, I’m just telling you what she said. Oh, and you’re supposed to re-salt the perimeter every night, whatever the hell that means.”
Sadie nodded, even though her world was fracturing. She could do this. She would do whatever Gigi wanted, even if it was insane. Her greatest fear was coming to pass, and she thought she would shrivel up, curl into a ball, and weep until she submerged herself in a river of her own tears. But to her surprise, a resolute calm was slowly working its way through her system, burning down her throat like elderflower cordial. She would take care of everything.
“Okay, thanks,” Sadie said, nodding slowly. “I’ll take it from here. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
“What do you mean?” Seth asked, genuinely confused.
“I mean”—Sadie waved an airy hand—“you do what you do, and I’ll do what I do. You’re busy, you have a life, you were—”
“Would you quit pushing me away?” he cut in.
“I thought that’s what you’d want,” she said, her brows pulling down in the middle. “I figured I’d be doing you a favor.”
“God, for being my twin, you really don’t get it.” And just like that, the tenuous peace they’d been forming snapped like peanut brittle. “Do you even know why I left? Because I couldn’t take living in your goddamn shadow anymore. I was drowning in magic that I had nothing to do with.”
“You never wanted it anyway!” she argued. “All you cared about was being normal, separating yourself from us, living your own life.”
“Yeah, and that’s worked out really well for me, hasn’t it?” He shook his head like she had no idea about anything.
“Oh, I’m sorry Gigi’s dying and that you have to actually involve yourself in our lives. But please, don’t do us any favors.” She wanted to cross her arms but knew it would look petulant.
“Listen, we can’t do this. It’s one of Gigi’s rules. Can you please just believe me when I say I’m doing the best I can? I was a dick, okay? I shouldn’t have left like that. I should’ve told you. I should’ve answered your calls. But I couldn’t. I was in a black hole. It’s like I have this demon living inside me that dictates when the darkness comes, and I can’t stop it. Some days it’s quiet, and I wake up and think I can do it, I can make it through the day. But other days I’m just suffocating, and I hate not being in control like that. So yeah, I was a dick. And I’m sorry.”
Sadie stared at her brother. He’d never spoken like that before. Tendrils of guilt started to hook into her heart. What kind of twin was she? What kind of sister that she didn’t even know, couldn’t even guess that he was going through any of that?
“Why haven’t you gotten help?” she asked quietly.
“Like a therapist?” He laughed without humor. “How do you think that would go? ‘Hey, shrink. My magic is giving me depression and anxiety.’ Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“But look at Raquel. Her bipolar disorder has gotten so much better. It’s manageable now because she’s on the right meds. She sees a psychiatrist and a therapist.”
“Yeah, and I’m really fucking proud of her for that. It’s not that I don’t believe in therapy, I just don’t believe in it for me. Our magic, it messes everything up. We’re not normal.”
“All I ever wanted was for you to be proud of being a Revelare,” she said. “I never understood why you tried to run away from it. I’ve never known myself apart from you. And I didn’t—I don’t like it. I missed you,” she confessed. “I blamed myself for your leaving. I thought if I’d tried to help you with your magic more, or if I’d tried to be more normal, maybe you’d have stayed.”
“Sadie.” He was shaking his head. “Listen, I was a selfish dick. I can’t take it back. You’ve always known who you were, and even while I was gone, you found more of yourself apart from me. I was just trying to live up to that in some small way.”
“But you were trying to do it on your own. And that’s what family is for. You’d just never let us help you. You’ve always wanted to blame the magic, the family name, instead of just accepting that it’s what makes us different. Instead of understanding that that’s why it’s so important for us to stay together.”
“Maybe I wanted to see who I could be apart from all that.” He shrugged coldly.
“As always, you’re missing the point,” she said, frustration making her hair curl. “You never told me about your magic or your curse. But I’m incapable of keeping anything from you, so I told you the minute after the ceremony was over. Remember? A curse of four heartbreaks? Jake was the first. You were the second.”
Sadie couldn’t tell if that was a revelation to him. They were both so good at the game of keeping emotion from their face that sometimes it was hard to remember it was just a defense mechanism. She knew how easy it was to shut out the people you loved the most, needed the most. Because maybe, if you didn’t need them so much, it wouldn’t hurt as much when they weren’t there for you. She loved him the most, and so he had the most power over her.