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Yeah, I didn’t need him to finish the sentence. Not when I already knew that I was no longer welcome.
She won.
Again.
Refusing to bow my head in shame, I walked out of the bedroom with my last shred of dignity in tatters and didn’t stop moving until I was on the other side of the street.
“Don’t start,” I warned the minute I stepped inside and was greeted by a tall figure in the front hall. Reaching up, I swiped Claire’s cowboy hat off my head. “I’m in no form for another lecture—”
“How’s it going, little brother?”
My blood ran cold at the sound of his voice, and I momentarily froze, hands clutching the door handle as a wave of pure, undiluted panic washed over me.
“Gibs? Is that you?” Mam appeared from the kitchen doorway, all bright smiles and full of bubbliness. “Look who flew in a week early from Mumbai to surprise us!”
“You’re back.”
My stepbrother stood in the middle of the hallway with his big arms folded across his chest, looking far less formidable to the seventeen-year-old version of me than he had the seven-year-old. “I’m back.”
Meanwhile, Keith appeared behind her with a stack of photographs in his hands. “Gibs, son, take a look at this beauty,” he said, thrusting a picture in my face. “This is Mark’s wife, Meera, and their son, Yash.”
My eyes took in the sight of the petite Asian woman, with a toddler on her hip.
He had a son.
A little boy.
“Mark’s been offered an overseas transfer with work. He and Meera are considering a permanent relocation,” Mam gushed, draping her arms around her husband’s adult son. “Isn’t it wonderful, Bubba?”
I could feel the ground shifting beneath me and my world fucking ending. “Relocation?”
“That’s right, son.” Keith nodded in agreement as he wrapped an arm around my mother’s shoulders. “The whole family will be back together soon.”
36
Big Brothers Mend the Best Fences
CLAIRE
Guilt-ridden didn’t even tip the scales of how dreadful I felt as I sat across the kitchen table from a distraught-looking Lizzie.
My head was in a spin from the crazy twists and turns this day had taken. It had been one wild roller-coaster that had left me sitting in the middle of the consequences of my actions, responsible for upsetting my friend to the point where she had collapsed in a heap on my bedroom floor.
The only reason Lizzie was sitting upright in my kitchen now was the boy placing two mugs of hot chocolate on the table in front of us. Hugh had somehow managed to console her to the point where she agreed to come downstairs and talk it out with me. Thank god because if she had left without clearing the air, I thought I might join her on the floor.
“I’m sorry, Liz,” I offered for what had to be the fiftieth time. But it was the truth. I was sorry.
From what I could gather from Hugh, my disclosure this afternoon to Mrs. Young, no matter how well intended, had upset the woman so badly that she had ended up at the out-of-hours doctor with chest pains. Chest pains that were directly linked to the fear of losing her one remaining living child.
I didn’t mean to cause the woman any pain. I would never intentionally harm another human being. All I had been trying to do was be a proactive friend who acted in her friend’s best interests before disaster struck instead of afterward.
Whether or not I was right or wrong to tell her mother might still be up for debate, but there was no denying the sheer level of upset my tactless admission had caused.
Gerard had stormed out ages ago, clearly reeling from taking the brunt of Lizzie’s anguish, which, to be fair, wasn’t anything new.
I desperately wanted to rush across the road to check on him, but I had a horrible feeling that my friendship with Lizzie was resting on tenterhooks right now.
I couldn’t bail.
