12. Alex

Chapter 12

Alex

One Week Until Christmas

Mom kicked me out. Inconceivable.

Since Dad had been discharged, the house was as quiet as a library. ‘Dad's trying to sleep,' and ‘You shouldn't talk to your poor assistant that way.'

I packed up my laptop, snatched Dad's key fob, and swiped into his office at Clarke & Associates. Dad's employees lingered in the doorway until I greeted them, I wished everyone would shut the hell up.

When the door frame darkened for the fourth time in an hour, I scoffed at my sister's silhouette. Things had finally quieted, and now she arrived to bug me. She'd hung out in Dad's hospital room last week, always cracking jokes and flirting with staff. What could she possibly want from me?

I cocked an eyebrow over the laptop. "Why are you here, Mallory?"

"Good afternoon," she sauntered in and lounged in the client chair. I glowered until she lifted a covered plate. "I'm here to share homemade peppermint bark with my favorite brother."

Sighing, I closed my laptop. The girl knew my weakness.

"I'm not your favorite brother," I said, peeling off the foil to reveal dark and white chocolate adorned with crushed candy canes.

"You're my favorite to fight, Nick's my favorite to tease. "

My thumb made a satisfying crack in the chocolate before I popped it in my mouth. An involuntary moan slipped out and I dove for another. I pointed to the bark and spoke around the bite. "You made this?"

"Nope, Grace did," she reached for a piece, and I almost smacked her hand away. "She works at the studio."

I almost snapped that of course I knew Grace, she was my Mrs. Claus. Instead, I chewed, enjoying the rich chocolate and cool peppermint. "We met at the hospital."

"She loves baking for her students. Sometimes I wonder if they come more for her treats than the yoga," she said around a mouthful of chocolate, "but as long as they pay for the class and put some aside for me, I don't care."

I snagged the last bite before my sister could get her grubby paws on it. She pouted. "I said share the bark, Alex."

"You should have brought more," I said around the last mouthful. I considered picking up the plate and knocking the crumbs into my mouth like a heathen, except Mallory might tattle to Mom that I'd lost all my table manners.

"Those scavengers at the studio would have my head if I took more."

"You're the boss, take what you want."

"That's not the kind of leader I want to be. I don't want to exploit Grace." She unscrupulously licked her fingertips and pressed them on the plate to pick up candy cane dust. I was grossed out … and also jealous. A small morsel flew out of her mouth onto the desk. "She's basically my work wife."

"Work wife?" I flicked the piece off.

"My favorite coworker, I can't imagine the place without her. I mean, she'd be a great real wife, too. If I were into girls, I would marry Grace in a heartbeat and pump out, like, a million of her babies. Speaking of the studio … "

Dammit, the chocolate had been a delicious candy-coated bribe.

What could she want from me at her yoga studio? She probably needed a loan. Or she was too short to change the light bulbs.

"I'm here to rescue you."

"From what?"

"From the oppression of the late capitalist notion that your self-worth is tied to your billable hours. "

"Spoken like a hippie without a real job," I muttered, brushing the remaining crumbs into the trash can and re-opening the laptop.

She pushed it closed. "You're on family medical leave, so legally, you don't have to do anything." She winked. "My lawyer told me that."

"But my team in San Francisco —"

"— can wait. You've been home for over a week and I've barely seen you. And it's Thirsty Thursday!" I made a ‘get to the point' gesture. "Luckily for you, your sister has a yoga studio where you can unwind before Happy Hour at the brewpub. I'll throw in your first class for free …"

"I don't have workout clothes."

She pointed to a gym bag.I re-opened the laptop.

Her voice got dangerously quiet. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because they need —"

"But what do you need? When was the last time you were happy?"

I paused, trying to conjure a satisfying answer and coming up short. She placed her hands on the desk and leaned forward fiercely. "Don't tell me you enjoy working sixteen-hour days. You came home to help Dad, but Mom says you never stop working. It's unhealthy."

"It's necessary," I stood to my full height, towering almost a foot above her. The brazen little brat held my gaze. "You don't understand because your job is to help people stretch, but I have real work. The merger deadline is in eight days. If I fuck it up, I don't make partner."

Dad hustled for years to make partner in his firm — this firm where we were standing right now, that provided everything that my spoiled little sister wanted. This was the sacrifice required to be successful.

My snotty little sister stuck out her chin. "So you can make more money to spend on your fancy condo where you never spend any time, and your Mercedes that you only drive to and from work? So you can become yet another interchangeable straight white man joining the patriarchal lineage of straight white men?"

"I don't have time for a lecture about the patriarchy."

"Here's what I don't understand," she strode around the desk to push her finger into my chest. "You're working so damn hard to make a name for yourself, but you're not living."

"After I make partner —"

"— you'll change the goalpost and keep running full speed until it kills you." Her bottom lip trembled, but she sucked it in with a quick breath and barreled on. "It scares the shit out of me, Alex, because last week, I watched Dad die ."

The gravity of her statement fell as palpable as a gauntlet thrown, and silence suspended between us. Every heartbeat thundered in my ears, matching the pulse in her neck. Her pained gaze was a challenge, daring me to defend myself against her witnessing our father's near-death experience.

She tightened her ponytail and took a breath to compose herself until her voice was more restrained but still emotional.

"Grace and I were there, Alex. He stopped breathing. The chest compressions, the CPR, they …" Her voice was clipped. "Once the doctors shocked him, he regained consciousness. I chased the gurney. I could tell in his eyes that he thought it was the end."

Her haunted blue eyes brimmed with tears. "Between labored breaths, he said, ‘Tell Mom I love her, ok? And take care of your brothers for me.'"

I didn't know what to say. Slowly, I wrapped my arms around her. Her shoulder shook and she tucked herself into my embrace, burying her face in my chest.

"He told me to take care of my brothers," she murmured between uneven breaths, "but how? Nick's stuck on location. And you came home, but you're biding your time to return to San Francisco." She tightened her grip. "How am I supposed to take care of you when you're chained to them?"

Her arms around my waist weren't the only thing tightening. My heart constricted at her indictment, my throat squeezing around the truth.

"What if he'd been here? Is anybody trained in CPR? Or at home … Mom wouldn't have had a defibrillator. What if Grace hadn't recruited him for that speech at the hospital, and a fucking cardiologist wasn't standing ten feet away? What if he …?" Lines of tears ran down her face. "Would Nick have rearranged his filming schedule for the funeral? Would you have stayed after a long weekend? Or would you have buried Dad on a Friday and gone back to business as usual by Monday?"

She released me and sunk into the chair as the confessions kept pouring out.

"I can't sleep, imagining how Mom would have looked at his graveside. My therapist had me write a draft of his eulogy, though I'm not sure if I would have the strength to deliver it. Or maybe you or Nick would have volunteered." She forced a pained smile through the tears. "Nick would have brought down the house with a performance in Dad's honor."

I dropped into the chair next to her and rested my elbows on my knees, heart heavy at the scenarios she'd been gaming out — the ones I'd been purposely pushing away.

"You're working harder than he ever did. You never do anything halfway, do you?" Our eyes met, and hers were full of hurt, neglect, and pain. "Does your office have an onsite defibrillator? How often do you work late, alone? At least with Nick —" her voice cracked, "he's always surrounded by people on set, and adoring fans. The studio has insurance to make sure he's medically ok. And he's gotta be working out like crazy to get that fucking six-pack, am I right?" Finally, her mouth curled into a cynical smile.

"He's gonna outlive our kids with that insane workout routine."

When her eyes met mine, the mischievous glint had returned. "What are the odds that if he gave the eulogy, he would work in that awful Shakespeare monologue? That one he delivered like four million times?"

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers …" I declared with false bravado.

She pretended to wince. "If I never hear that phrase again …"

My laugh surprised me. "Women would still swoon over him."

"Yeah, but that doesn't take much. Hell, I'm ready to offer that cardiologist a gratitude bang."

I cringe-laughed at my horny sister, who was cooler than I expected. Even if I never wanted to think about her boning Dad's annoying doctor.

"When was the last time all five of us were together?" I'd been trying to remember since Grace asked me about my last Christmas home.

She leaned back in the chair, her face softening. "Eight years ago, I think. A few days before I left for Buenos Aires. You were so pissed I dropped out of college."

"Not pissed, surprised," I lied. I'd been livid Dad let her quit school.

"Nick and Kate kept joking about pierogies, didn't they?"

"Pierogies? I don't remember that."

"Some inside joke from when you and I were skiing." She looked out the window, north towards the mountains. "We owned those Black Diamond trails. You wouldn't stop talking about Victoria."

I remembered. We'd just adopted a cat and my whole family brainstormed what to name her.

"Are you and she still ..."

"We broke up three years ago," I said, surprised that she didn't know. I'd assumed Mom told her so I wouldn't have to. Had it really been years since I talked directly to my little sister?

"Why did you stop coming home?" Her voice was quiet, bracing herself for an unpleasant answer.

"Not much to come home to, after you left and Nick landed The Twelve ."

She looked me straight in the eye, a challenge to make sure I was paying attention. "I moved back four years ago, Alex. Four years. You've been home once , for the anniversary party."

"You've made your point, Shrimp." I'd forgotten the old nickname until it emerged. It started because she was tiny and wore so much pink, but once she went vegan, it was fun to annoy her with delicious food she refused to eat.

Mallory's eyes crinkled at the dusted-off nickname, remembering one of her own. "Come to class, Lex?"

Right. Her older brother, the evil genius.

Her expression was tinged with hope and worry as she held out her hand. When I shook it, she grinned. "Can I mark today on my calendar as ‘Alex Told Me I Was Right And He Was Wrong Day'?"

"I wouldn't go that far," I said. I packed up the computer, picked up the gym bag, and let her lead me out of the office to her yoga studio, gripping my wrist the whole way like a bailiff escorting a flight risk.