Page 120 of Suite 7

“Mm.” She drinks her coffee. I look at the load distribution numbers on my screen.

A silence opens. Not uncomfortable. The Sinclair sibling kind, the one we’ve had since we were children, where neither of us needs to fill it.

“How’s Vera?” I ask.

I didn’t plan to ask it. It arrives in the room before I’ve decided to put it there.

Sloane looks up. “Vera?”

“Yeah, you mentioned her when you came in. Said she’s having a slow morning.” I keep my eyes on the screen. “Is she alright?”

“Oh.” Sloane settles back. “She’s fine. Good, I think. She’s been different lately. Happy, but somewhere else. She is seeing a guy named Gerald.”

She pulls apart another piece of roll.

“She won’t tell me anything real about him, which is making me insane because we tell each other everything, but I’m trying to respect that it’s new and she wants to be careful.”

I keep my eyes on the screen.

Gerald.

My gaze moves, without my permission, to the windowsill. The small terracotta pot. The succulent sitting in it with complete indifference to the conversation currently being conducted in its name.

She named me after a cactus.

I look back at my screen. Something in my chest that has no business being there presses against my ribs.

“Gerald,” I say. Carefully. “Sounds like a solid name.”

Sloane nods, already reaching for her coffee. “Doesn’t it? Very dependable.”

I say nothing. I do not look at the windowsill again.

“I’m glad she’s happy,” I say. The words are completely true and completely insufficient. I say them flat, like I haven’t spent the last weeks learning the smile she gets when she’s surprised by something good.

“Me too.” Sloane smiles at her coffee. “I’m going to take her to lunch this week. Force a proper sit-down.” She looks up. “You should try getting along with her sometime, you know. For my sake. The Sinclair-Beckett Smackdown is funny but she’s going to be in my life forever. It would be nice if the two of you could be in a room without starting an argument.”

“Sloane.” I set down my pen. Look at her directly. “There’s something I want to⁠⁠—“

My sister’s face opens with attention.

The words are there. All of them. The whole shape of the conversation I’ve been running in my head for days, the lead-in, the explanation, the Vera and I, it started at Eclipse, I should have told you sooner. I can see exactly how to build it. I know the structure. I know which wall to touch first.

I open my mouth.

“—actually, Mum called me twice this week,” Sloane says, leaning forward, the attention shifting into exasperation. “Twice, Kane. Two voicemails. She wants everyone at the table for her birthday dinner and she’s already catastrophising about the seating plan and whether you’re going to bring work to the table again. She literally said—“ She does our mother’s voice, a pitch I recognize from years of being called down to dinner, “—tell your brother that laptops are not a condiment⁠⁠—”

She’s laughing. Actually laughing, the head-thrown-back version, and the moment closes around her laughter the way a door settles shut on its own, and the words I was building go back into their container.

Not yet.

I look back at my screen.

“I won’t bring the laptop,” I say.

“Tell her that. She doesn’t believe me.” Sloane pulls out her phone, still smiling. “I’m going to text her right now that you said it so there’s a record.” She’s already typing. “Birthday dinner. No laptop. Binding verbal contract, witnessed by me.”

“Witnessed by you is not legally binding.”