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“Yourself mostly,” I mutter and he laughs.
“Reina is used to working alone. No, listen, you’re right that I don’t really know her, but I know her type. I’ve met her type a dozen times. She has a shitty, mostly empty apartment in Marseille and she sleeps there maybe a dozen nights a year. She spends half her life on trains moving around Europe for her employers, taking meetings with men like me, negotiating contracts, doing dirty work, stealing things, hurting people, things like that. She might have colleagues, but she doesn’t have friends. How could she when she’s never in a place for more than a week or two? You grew up with stability, with normal parents. She didn’t.”
I chew on my lip and wonder if he’s right about her. Maybe the details are wrong, but the big picture? I haven’t given much thought to her childhood, and I wonder if she resents our mother for the way she was abandoned. She might even resent me for having both my parents stick around.
Although I’m not sure she would’ve loved living in my household. My life was far from ideal.
“She’s still my sister. Even if she hates me, I want to meet her, just this once.”
“Lucky you, because you’re about to do it.” He nods toward the door and I follow his gaze.
A girl steps into the cafe. She’s older than me by several years, probably in her late twenties, with long dirty-blonde hair tied up in a bun. She looks like an art student in baggy jeans and an oversized shirt with a bag on her shoulder like she’s carrying around a laptop. Her lips are red and her eyes are blue and I can see our mother in her nose and cheeks and the way she hesitates and tilts her head. That’s so much like our mother that I’m startled.
I slowly stand and turn to face my sister.
“Hello,” I say and hold out my hand. “My name’s Adrienne. It’s nice to meet you.”
She stares at my palm and looks past me to Peter. “What the fuck is this?”
I falter and lower my hand.
“Reina, this is your sister, Adrienne. She wanted to meet you.”
Reina says something fast and sharp in French and glares at me. “I know who she is. What the fuck do you think is happening here, little girl? We’re having some fun little friendly meeting? Like we’re having a family reunion?”
“No, I just thought, maybe—”
“Sit down, stupid girl.” Reina sits heavily beside Peter and takes out a cigarette. She lights it and takes a long drag as I sink into my chair already feeling like an idiot. “What is this, some kind of joke? You’re my mother’s other daughter, the one she actually raised. Good for you, we share the same piece-of-shit genes. I suppose that means we’re both cursed.”
“Cursed?” I glance at Peter, totally overwhelmed, and he’s trying not to grin. To be fair, he did try to warn me.
“Our mother was a selfish woman that didn’t care about anyone besides herself, and I suppose her stupid lawyer husband and their pathetic little family. Which I suppose means you, oh, merde, what a joke. Our pathetic mother went from the greatest thief Le Milieu ever knew to a housewife in under a year, all for some American dick. Can you imagine that? Being free, truly free, and tossing it all for some middle-class lawyer? Pute, pathetic, absolutely pathetic. A mistake I will not make.”
“I thought maybe—”
“And you.” She turns to Peter, gesturing aggressively. “What were you thinking, bringing this child here? She is nothing to me, not a sister, not a friend. She is a total stranger. You are supposed to be professional, no? And here you are, grinning like you won the lottery, you foolish man.”
Peter’s smile doesn’t falter. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
“No, you didn’t, you thought I’d be knocked off balance and maybe you could tip the negotiations in your favor. That will not happen.” She sucks on her cigarette and blows out smoke before looking at me again. “Why are you still here?”
I stare at her and sit with my spine rigid. This wasn’t what I expected, but now that it’s happening, I can’t see how it would’ve gone down any different. I’m ambushing this poor woman while she’s trying to set up some kind of illicit deal between her crime family and the Greek mafia—and here I am bumbling onto the situation like a total idiot. Of course she’s angry with me. Of course I look like a fool.
But that doesn’t change anything. I came here to meet my sister. I’ve spent my whole life wondering about her, about my mother’s side of the family, and I was only ever fed scraps. I knew Reina existed, knew what she looked like from an old picture or two, knew she was still in France, but never anything else. Now she’s sitting across from me and I can see my mother’s nose, my mother’s eyes, even some of my mother’s mannerisms—the way she frowns at me and flips her hair behind her ear, even the way she holds the cigarette dangling casually between two fingers on the edge of falling to the ground but never going dropping—and it’s like a whole new side of my family and my life opens up in front of me.
“Whether you like it or not, I’m your sister,” I say and when she tries to speak over me, I keep going. “You can sit there and curse in French and act all high and mighty and look down on me, but I’m still your sister. You’re not special, Reina, and neither am I, but at least I’m here trying to meet you. I don’t want to stumble through life knowing nothing about my mother before she met my father.”
Reina laughs once. “She didn’t tell you anything?”
“She barely ever mentioned it.”
“Naturally, she’d be ashamed of her criminal past.” She quirks an eyebrow. “And what about you? Did you take after our mother? Or are you also ashamed of her criminal past? Her true self, so to speak.”
I consider that and shake my head. “In some ways, yes, but in most ways, no.”
“Then you’re more like your American father, and all the pity for it.” She looks at Peter. “We have work to discuss.”
“I won’t be dismissed.” Anger bubbles up in my guts. “I’ve been through hell lately and I came all this way—”
