I don’t know when it changed, exactly—when exactly I stopped trying to defend Abigail or be her ally. Maybe over time I just got tired of it. And then there was Dad—he was always right there, ready to come to Abigail’s aid.

Neither Dad nor I were fighters. Abigail seemed animated by some other spirit, something neither he nor I knew how to be, and I think he marveled at her a bit. “A spitfire,” he used to chuckle when she was little. He stopped chuckling as she got older, but he still took her side. Gloria, he’d say to Mom, she’s just being a teenager. I didn’t point out that I was a teenager too, that I had been for years—Abigail and I were a mere eleven months apart, after all—and that I’d never once been outside the principal’s office, never really caused trouble at all. Even though maybe I’d have liked to, sometimes.

I didn’t set out to be “the good child”. It wasn’t something I wanted. But apparently Abigail had chosen “bad” and there was a role that needed filling.

Abigail had Dad. So Mom needed me. Those were how the lines got drawn, though when they were drawn and who first drew them, it’s hard for me to say. But then sometimes the memories come so clearly, of Abigail and me back in grade school, how I’d look for her bright hair in the playground at recess and how I was comforted when I found it, and I wonder if there was a different way it could have all played out.

I hear Sam’s door close and the house go quiet and then, much later, just as I’m drifting off to sleep, the sound of Oliver’s key in the door.

Wide awake again, I decide to get up. I throw on my robe and pad downstairs. But when Oliver glances up at me from the hallway, there’s a sweaty sheen to his face and a slightly frozen look in his eye that makes me stop.

“Ol?”

He frowns at me, but it’s almost like he’s looking through me.

“Oliver…” I pause, feeling a shiver of disquiet in my stomach. “Is everything okay?”

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Oliver frowns.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost…Are you sure you’re okay?”

He heaves a sigh, shifts his eyes from mine. “Of course, Gill. It was a long day, that’s all. Some of the distributors aren’t playing ball, and Dev was on the phone non-stop…it’s just a bit crazy right now.”