Page 42 of Throwing Shade
“I’d never have guessed, stabbing oneself out of boredom being such a conservative response to any situation.”
“You’re not funny. Speaking of drama, do you have my library card? That teen King Henry the Eighth retelling finally came in.”
“He should have had pre-nups. Less drama. And check your rain jacket. That’s where it was last time.” Chuckling, I flicked on the burner, the gas hissing to life, and heated up the oil in the pan. “Can you imagine if kids’ books were written with legal contracts? Well, Aiden, the reason that Susan, Edmund, Lucy, and Peter had to sign a release of liability form before going through the wardrobe was to keep the White Witch from being sued. No, Rachel, Frodo was right to explain to Gollum that his best course of action regarding the ring was to prove providence.”
“You’d be a great children’s librarian,” Sadie said, softly as she washed lettuce leaves. “I know that’s why you got your Masters in Library Sciences. I wish you hadn’t given up on that dream.”
I slid the meatballs into the sizzling oil.
“It’s not that easy.” I adjusted the heat. “Dreams are great, but they don’t always pay the mortgage or grocery bills. Also, children’s librarian positions are highly coveted—whenever I applied, I never seemed to make it. But come on, it’s not as if I’m on my feet eight hours a day gutting fish. I work in a law firm with a fancy schmacy ergonomic spinny chair. That’s pretty good, all things considered.”
“But it’s not what you want,” she said, then sighed.
I let it go. She was passionate, and I loved that about her, but in a family full of people chasing their dreams, sometimes you needed a realist. “Hey, why didn’t you call me before you left Nessa’s?”
“Aunt Genevieve gave me a lift.”
Great, now she’d bitch to her brother about me. Genevieve had pretty much cut me out of her life after the divorce, which suited me fine. She’d never believed I was worthy of her baby brother, but she was close to Sadie, which was all I cared about.
“Where were you all day?” Sadie chopped cucumber into thin slices. “I was doing homework and kept expecting you to come home. Were you day drinking with Jude?”
“Day drinking while on vacation is a perfectly respectable tradition.”
“You guys did it last weekend.”
“What did the labour movement fight for, if not for weekends to be times of rest? To be, in effect, vacations?” The lid on the boiling water rattled, steam pouring out. I dumped in the rotini and set the timer.
Sadie snorted. “And you wonder where I get it from? Seriously, were you with her?”
“No. I had stuff to do.”
She slid the cukes into the salad bowl, before pointing at me with the knife. “Is something wrong with her?”
Hot oil splattered onto my wrist and I winced. “Why?”
“Uh, hello. You know how competitive Jude is. I was winning our Scrabble game. She’d want to catch up.” Sadie looked at me, totally guileless and trusting, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell her that her aunt was missing. She waved the knife. “I knew it. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. She had a family emergency and had to take off for a couple days. I’m sure she’ll play as soon as everything is clear.”
“Okay.” Sadie finished up the salad, but she stopped singing along.
Dinner was a subdued affair, with both of us pushing our food around our plates but not really eating. My daughter was upset, and I felt sick with guilt for lying, for abandoning Jude, and for not helping Rupert.
Sadie got up to clear the table but I stopped her.
“We can do that later. Let’s watch Buffy.” Sunday nights were sacrosanct TV date nights. Even if Sadie was at Eli’s that week, she came home on Sunday after dinner so the two of us could watch our current pick.
We settled in to watch the episode in season five where Dawn runs away after finding out she’s the Key. I was glad we’d both seen the series before, because I was finding it hard to concentrate, and given Sades’ restlessness, she had the same difficulty.
She finally curled up on the sofa with her feet in my lap. “Spike’s right,” she said, after the scene where the vampire and the Slayer fought over keeping Dawn’s origins a secret. “Buffy should have told her sister the truth.”
“How do you break something like that to a person?” I picked at a loose thread on my beige couch. I’d drooled over this crazy amazing orange velvet couch in the showroom, but it was too showy, so I’d settled for sensible stain-resistant furniture.
Sadie shrugged. “You just tell them. It’s always better to know because the truth is still out there whether you want to admit it or not. All we can do is choose how to handle it. Besides, being the Key is cool. Dawn would see that if she hadn’t been treated like a dirty secret.”
Schooled by a sixteen-year-old.
As my wise child said, the truth was out there—Jude was out there—and the only choice I had was in how I handled it.
I sent a text to Laurent. I’m game if you are.
