Page 116 of Dial F for Finance

Hailey looks at it for a long time. Zooms in. Zooms out. Sighs.

“Oh, Jen,” she says finally, and her voice has gone thick. “Look at your face.” She swipes—I let her—through the couch, the sunroom, the staircase, back to the confetti. “I’m so happy for you, I could scream, and I’m not going to, because you’d leave. You know that, right? You deserve this. You deserve somebody who looks at you like that. You’ve deserved it this whole time, even when you were being a fortress with fabulous hair.”

“Hailey.”

“I’m serious. Don’t argue with me in front of my city.”

My phone buzzes in her hand, and she glances down before I can take it back. Her eyebrows go up. “Who’s Dustin, and why is he texting you a picture of himself and a girl holding a—” she squints—“a driving school brochure?”

I lean over. Dustin and Hannah, cheek to cheek on the Round Hill porch, brandishing the Stamford adaptive-driving program brochure like a lottery check. The text underneath:

Dustin:

NICKY SIGNED ME UP. REAL LESSONS. Hannah gets to come to my graduation. Tell Jenny.

And then, three seconds later:

You are Jenny. Tell yourself.

“That’s my brother-in-law,” I say, and the word comes out of my mouth for the first time ever, easy as breath, and I have to look at the window for a second. “And the girl in the photo with him is his girlfriend, Hannah. She’s deaf, so the whole family is learning sign language for her.”

“You have a family,” Hailey says, watching me. “Like, a whole aggressively functional family. In-laws who text you. God, what is that like?”

“Loud,” I say. “You’d love them.”

“So where is this husband of yours today? Do I get to meet him?”

“He had some meeting he needed to go to.”

“What kind of meeting?”

“He didn’t say. But he has a bunch of clients in New York. It’s why he has an apartment here.”

Hailey’s eyebrows rise. “Oh my God. It’s just hitting me now—you married a billionaire.”

“I did.”

“Oh my God. I need to be you when I grow up.”

And then her face does the thing I’ve been waiting for since I sat down, because my sister and I run on the same operating system: the joy stays, but something practical moves in behind it, like weather.

“You know Ma’s going to hate him,” she says.

“I know.”

“Not because of anything he does. Because of what he is. Charming, rich, everybody’s favorite—he’s a walking rerun of the worst years of her life, and she’s not going to see the difference, Jen. She’s going to see Dad with better lawyers. She’ll take one look at that smile and start sharpening.”

“I know, Hails. Why do you think I haven’t told her?” I say it to the table. “I’m scared to even let them in the same room. He wants to meet her. Of course he wants to meet her—he thinks every problem can be catered. And all I can think about is that kitchen, and the cake in the trash, and what she could do to this thing I just—” I stop. Breathe. “It’s new, is all. It’s real, and it’s new, and she breaks things because she wants everyone to feel as unhappy as she is.”

My sister reaches across the table and grips my wrist, and suddenly she doesn’t look like the girl who cried with me over my prom dress. She looks like a woman who stayed in that house eleven more years than I did and knows exactly what it costs.

“Then don’t hand it to her,” she says. “Listen to me, because I know her better than anyone alive. Ma’s misery is a festering pustule of hate. You can’t heal it, you can’t outrun it, and you cannot keep scheduling your life around all the pops and gurgles⁠—”

“That is the most disgusting metaphor I’ve ever heard come out of someone’s mouth.”

“You waited your whole life for something like this,” she continues, without even breaking for breath. “Do not let her rain on it. If she can’t be happy for you, that’s her ceiling, Jen. It was never yours.”

I flip my hand over and grip her back, and for a second we just sit there, two of Maria Pemberton’s daughters holding on in a loud coffee shop, and something that’s been clenched under my sternum since high school—since forever—lets out about ten percent of its pressure. Which for me is a lot. Ten percent is enormous.