He nods. “I was stoked to meet you.”
“Why didn’t Kingsley tell me?”
“I don’t know. It’s just his way.”
“Did you always know? About me?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t know about Kingsley, even.”
“That’s okay. Now you do.”
I stare at Meer. The late-July sun makes his hair shine. The bottom of his shorts is wet from the waves that crash around his ankles.
He and I, we never squabbled. We haven’t bothered each other on long car rides or licked each other’s ice creams. We never padded downstairs together on weekend mornings to play video games and eat fistfuls of cereal straight from the box, and we didn’t sit through each other’s dentist appointments and chorus recitals.
I didn’t eat the asparagus off his plate to rescue him because he doesn’t like it. We never shared a tent. He didn’t break the blender and blame it on me. There are no stories to tell about us, no funny family anecdotes. We didn’t compete for our father’s love and attention because Meer had it all.
He is the child Kingsley decided to raise.
His mother is the woman Kingsley loved instead of Isadora. My father has a son, but he never wanted me, his daughter.
I can’t resent Meer for any of that. He wants a sister. I can see it in his wide-open face, the puppy smile he’s giving me. And though we have no history, we have blood. Kingsley’s runs in both our veins. I can see Meer’s pulse in the side of his neck, and the blue just visible in his wrists. It calls out to me. A brother who has been here, all along, when I thought I was an only child.
“What did Kingsley tell you about me?” I ask.
“He was just like, you have a sister, she’s out there in the world. Her name is Matilda Klein. And he told me that your mother is in the Persephone painting. That’s all.”
“I don’t think he could have known very much else. He hasn’t spoken to my mother since before I was born.”
“He thought it would be good for my imagination, to know you were out there.”
We stare at the ocean for a minute. “And was it?” I ask eventually. “Good for your imagination?”
“I drew pictures of you when I was little. I don’t mean to sound creepy. It wasn’t an obsession or anything. It was more the way a kid might draw a grandparent he doesn’t see that often, or an imaginary friend or whatever. I have this sketchbook, where I put ideas and stuff—I’ve always had one. And I’d draw a sister, standing next to me in front of the castle. Or on the beach. Especially before Tatum came to live with us, because once he did I wasn’t such a loner. Sorry, that sounds creepy, too.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say. And then: “I have a sketchbook.”
“Really?”
“For like, imaginary maps and game ideas and stuff I want to make. Some people think it’s weird.”
“Mine is mostly tattoo ideas. And doodles. I’m not an artist like Kingsley,” says Meer. “I started a sketchbook because he always has one. Most places he goes, or whenever he’s sitting around, he likes to keep his hands moving. It helps him understand the world. I wanted to be like my dad when I was little, but also—I alwayswaslike him anyway. I like to keep my hands moving and kind of process things by drawing stuff.”
“Me too.”
“I’m talking a lot right now. I think I’m nervous, probably? We don’t have a lot of visitors.”
“Me too, again,” I tell him. “I don’t meet new family members every day.”
Meer grins at me, sunny. I scan his face for similarities to my own—traits we both get from Kingsley. The mouth, and the shape of the chin, I think. But the way we look isn’t the important thing. Meer and I are connected. We have always been connected. Our whole lives, we’ve been knit together by our biology, and by Meer’s fantasies of me being part of his family, without my knowing it.
And now I know.
“When is our father due back?” I ask. The wordsour fatherfeel unfamiliar in my mouth.
Meer doesn’t answer. He steps deeper into the water. The waves are pretty big here, and they splash against his knees.
