“And a man bought it.”
Liam had already begun to smile into his coffee. He said nothing, which was worse than anything he could have said.
“A man,” Stephy said.
“Mm.”
“Sophia. What man.”
“He’s a neighbor. He’s across the road. I don’t have a — Willow’s done a whole—” I heard myself going down without a parachute and could not locate the cord. “Willow has opinions.”
“Opinions about what,” Stephy said, delighted, leaning in as far as the bump would permit.
“She’s appointed herself as head of my surveillance division. Since August.” I gave up and reached for my coffee, because if I was going to do this, I was not going to do it un-caffeinated. “She gave me a full briefing Saturday. From the wicker chair. She had arrival times. She had a motorcycle count — she said, and I’m quoting, ‘they come in shifts, Sophia.’ She has a working theory that they’ve all stepped out of a magazine called Sexiest Man Alive, which I’m fairly sure isn’t a real publication, and when I raised that, she said if it isn’t, it should be.”
Liam had stopped pretending to drink his coffee.
“And then,” I said, because apparently I had decided to drive this all the way into the lake, “she gave me a closing assessment of the new owner’s shoulders. Which I’m not going to repeat at my brother’s breakfast table. With the eggs right there.”
“Repeat it,” Stephy breathed.
“No.”
“Sophia.”
“She compared them to a man she knew in 1972 named Noah, and that’s all I can tell you, because honestly I am far too embarrassed to repeat the rest of it.” The color was all the way up my neck now and I hated it, hated that they could tell I was getting flustered. “That woman is cruder and funnier than I amphysically able to be at this table. I don’t have the range. I’d need a license.”
“You’re pink,” Stephy informed me, joyful. “Liam, look at her, she’s gone pink.”
“I see it,” Liam said, grave as a judge, the bottom half of his face safe behind his mug.
“I’m not pink. I’m warm. It’s the stove.”
“The stove’s off,” Stephy said sweetly, and ate a piece of my toast.
I did the only thing that has ever reliably worked on Stephy, which was to point at the thing she was pretending wasn’t there.
“How are the feet?”
She groaned like I’d said something indecent. “Don’t. If you offer, I’ll cry, and then you’ll feel obligated, and then I’ll have won, and we’ll both have to live with knowing it.”
“Put them up.”
“Sophia—”
“Stephanie. Up.”
She put them up. I turned her chair, took one swollen foot into my lap, and pressed both thumbs slow into the arch — and the sound she made started out as a laugh and arrived somewhere else entirely. Her head went back against the chair. Her eyes went bright and wet.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, that’s — Liam, I’m leaving you. I’m leaving you for your sister.”
“Understood,” Liam said.
“She has the hands of a healer, and you have the hands of a man who handcuffs people for a living.”
“Also understood.”
I worked the arch until the tension let go of her ankle and the wet went out of her eyes, and I’d just taken up the second foot when Liam stood, drained his coffee, and came around the table. He put his hand on the back of Stephy’s neck and kissed the topof her head. Then he put his hand on the top of mine and kissed that too, the way he’d been doing it since I was twelve and didn’t reach his ribs.
