“Cheers,” she says, knocking her shortbread against mine as if it were a flute of champagne.
“To you turning twenty-five.”
“And to Raven Architecture landing its first big project!”
That feels surreal, too. A university building in London felt like a ridiculous project to pitch for in our third year of business, but I poached some of the best architects out there, took the time to build the company up carefully, and after a slow first year and then two more years of trying to prove myself, it’s starting to pay off.
If my father’s surname had to be attached to the company that rotted his brain, rotted our family life, rotted my own childhood, then it had to be my mother’s name on the company that represents the final domino falling in my father’s vision for his firstborn child.
I haven’t gone back to visit him. Not once. I accept his call at Christmas each year, listen to his apologies. I wish him merry Christmas and hang up, and just like the day I walked out of the visitation room the last time I saw him, I feel nothing.
“And to Robert marrying Jacqueline!” Ophelia chimes, bringing me back into the here and now.Fucking Robert.Poached my assistant and then married her.
“And to Mia getting her first restaurant job.”
I cried for so long when Mia moved out two months ago that Ophelia thought someone had died.
“And Evie getting in a show on the fucking West End,” she says, like she can’t believe we haven’t covered that one yet.
We’ve had a lot of wins this year. I wish my mom was here to see them.
“I’ve booked the whole front row for us.” I let my most exasperated sigh drift up into the cloudless sky. “And cheers to Fleur, I guess.”
She presses her lips together to suppress a laugh. Fleur is engaged. The whole ordeal knocked ten years off my life. I’m goingto go gray by thirty, at this rate. I donotapprove, but Ophelia does, and I suppose that’s vaguely comforting.
She props herself up on an elbow, gazing down at me in the meadow. Her hair is longer, nails longer, freckles darker from time outside. A tiny fine-line tattoo decorates her collarbone, identical to the one on my ring finger. A small circle with a line extending from the center to the top. A clock pointing to midnight.
She’s still that pessimistic, grumpy girl I almost ran over outside Sorrowsong’s twisted gates. Sunshine makes her hot and annoyed, paper straws turn her murderous. Musicals and festive cheer make her never want to leave the house again.
But there’s a confidence about her now, a healthy glow beneath the pale skin that used to be tinged with a bluish hue. The shadows beneath her eyes are put there by our love of late-night showers together, and not by the nightmares that used to plague her dreams.
Raising the girls is so much easier with such a perfect role model for them at home.
She sweeps my messy hair from my forehead, her mouth twisting into a small smile. “What’s on your mind?”
I lean up to place a soft kiss on her lips. “That I’d like you to live to one hundred and twenty-five.”
“I’d be as wrinkly as a prune.”
“I’d love that.”
She snorts, her head landing in the space between my biceps and my chest. “No, you would not.”
I can hardly squash my smile long enough to kiss her. “Mmhmm. I’d take that prune home. Kiss it. Get it a blanket. Butter it some toast.”
Her laughter makes the sun look dull as she playfully shoves me away. “You’re full of shit, Corbeau.”
But I’m not. I watched my mother die without a wrinkle, and Ophelia’s parents died before their hair had gone gray, so the ability to watch time carve lines in her lovely face is my every birthday wish.
She sits up, muttering something about how gingers aren’t built for the sun. It gives me the perfect opportunity to check my phone. I have a whole load of unread messages in the group chat for her surprise party tonight.
Partymight be a stretch. But we’re all going to sit down with music at a reasonable volume around large bowls of chips in varying flavors, just the way she likes it.
Still at Sorrowsong completing her medicine degree, Divya hasn’t traveled far, but for the others—for Colette, Fleur, the twins, Vin, Belladonna, Magda, Mabel, Jack, all of her friends from work—coming to Scotland is a long day of travel. I hope it’ll help Ophelia realize just how important she is to so many people. That families don’t have to be tied by blood. That she has put her little thread of copper through the hearts of so many people, a web that extends around the globe.
Colette sends a picture of the living room of the house we’re renting for the weekend, decorated with pillows and balloons and raspberry cupcakes that look so good that they could only be the work of Mia.
Alex
