“What did he tell you?” She had been smart enough to guess at half of it—that her father had something to do with Cyril being packed off to train as a kit for the FOCIS. Now it sounded like Stephen knew the whole. She felt cheated, somehow. And exiled from her own family history. She felt less like a DePaul, for only finding this out now. She felt less like Cyril’s sister, and it hurt more than she might have thought.

Stephen finally met her eyes. “That Granddad gave up on him after he was nearly tossed from school. Because of that stuff in Tatié—the teacher who spotted him and all. He made a deal to keep him out of jail, so the family wouldn’t look bad.” After a long pause on Lillian’s part, he said, “Didn’t you know?”

The simple answer was yes, of course. But she hadn’t, really; none of the details. And she hadn’t ever asked.

Cyril had been in Tatié, a school trip. She had been home after her first assignment. After three years pushing paper and supporting the beleaguered consul in Gurunda-rai—her father could have seen her placed somewhere more comfortable, but he insisted the experience would build skill and character, and he’d been right—she had only wanted a peaceful summer before her next foray.

She had arrived to strangling tension. No screaming fights—that had made it strange. Only closed doors, low voices, a palpable air of fury and disaster. The abbreviated explanation was that Cyril had well and truly torn it up this time, might be sent down, could even be arrested, and needed something to straighten him out. These were not new sentiments, but this time there was an air of finality to it all; a new determination.

He disappeared a week later, for “a job with the state,” and the promise he’d be gone for a good long while.

“I…” The radio played footsteps, the creaking of a door. “Steenie, I’m not going to … I didn’t know.” She wanted to tell him she wasn’t like her father, but that was patently untrue. She had striven every day of her adult life to emulate his skill, his poise, to live up to his name. A name that was now poison, which Stephen would have to bear. “They never did get along,” she said, instead.

It was the wrong thing. “Like us.”

“I love you, Steenie.” It got her a sideways glance, which was all she could have hoped for. “All right, you’re a tangle in my reins. I won’t say you aren’t.”

His shoulders came up around his ears. “So you don’t like me.”