“Well, I guess he knows everything then.” Barrett throws up his hands in defeat.
“Was I the only one?” she asks, and Barrett’s dark gaze flicks from me to her.
“What?”
“Was I the only one Ewan wanted to sterilise?”
For a long moment, Barrett stares at Lily, a dumbfounded expression written across his face.
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” she snaps, standing from the chair and taking a step closer to him. “Has Ewan threatened a hysterectomy or arranged one for your sisters or mine?”
His frown deepens.
“What? No,” Barrett snaps. “Bernie had one years ago, but that was for medical complications with her labour, and her baby died.”
Bernie? My mind flicks through the stuff AJ said, and I come up with the name Bernadette. He said she fell pregnant to a family rival and ran off with him, and when Ewan found her, the baby had been born, only two weeks old. Said Bernadette was urged to have the procedure.
Urged meaning forced.
“And Cassie? Fallon?”
Barrett shakes his head at Lily’s question.
“No, Cassie doesn’t want kids. And Fallon… well, she doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body.”
“And what about my sisters?” Lily asks, crossing her arms over her chest. “Do they have children?”
“No. Jen and Ell have said they don’t want kids either.”
“And you don’t think that’s strange?” Lily snaps. “That not one Marx daughter has had children?”
Barrett sighs, shaking his head as he steps back and rests his arse on the end of the couch.
“I’ve never really thought about it.” His eyes flick to me for a moment and then back to Lily. “What are you getting at?”
Lily is quiet for a long moment as she regards her cousin, and I know she’s trying to figure out who to believe. Who to trust.
“Gracie’s twenty-first is coming up soon,” she says when she finally breaks the silence.
“It is.” His eyes narrow on his cousin, and I can tell he knows she’s up to something.
“You were invited,” she reminds him, and he fights back a cringe.
“Doesn’t mean I’m going.”
“Yes, you are,” she says matter-of-factly, turning to face meand shooting me a wink as she comes to sit back on the arm of my chair.
Fuck, I love how she gravitates towards me all the time. It’s like she can feel this magnetic pull between us.
“Says who?” Barrett snaps, and the mortified expression he’s wearing has me sucking my lips in, trying not to laugh.
“Stop being a big baby, Barrett. You need to face your fears head on, and the twenty-first is the perfect time to do it.”
“Un-fucking-likely.” He stands, moving across the room to the fridge and taking out a beer.
“You have to go, and take a plus one.”
