Chapter 4 - Sister With the Champagne Flute
I carried my daughter back into the dining room on my hip, even though she was getting too big for it. The chatter started up again too fast, too loud, the way people talk after somebody drops a glass. Forks scraped white plates. Someone laughed at nothing. My sister stood near the sideboard with her champagne flute still in her hand, untouched enough that the light caught the cut crystal, and she was smiling like the last ten minutes hadn't happened.
She'd always been good at that reset. In high school she could cry in the principal's office and then walk out fixing her lip gloss. Now she touched my uncle's sleeve and asked about his golf game. She complimented my cousin's earrings. Every thirty seconds her eyes cut down to the head of the table, checking if my mother was watching.
My mother sat back in her wooden chair, hands folded. She wasn't eating. She wasn't smiling, either. She just watched the room with that calm, tired patience she'd had when we were kids and my sister and I fought in the back seat.
Growing up, everything had been a contest she set up without meaning to. Who cleared tables at the company picnic without being asked. Who got the summer internship filing invoices. Who sat in on the Monday meeting. My sister wanted the offices with windows. I wanted to be out of the building. I took the warehouse shifts in college because I liked working with my hands and not being looked at. She took marketing because she liked being looked at. My mother praised us the same way, which somehow made it worse. We both spent years trying to hear something different in it.
"Daddy, can I sit by Great-Gram?" my daughter whispered against my neck. She'd started calling my mother Great-Gram when she was three and couldn't get grandmother right, and it stuck.
"Yeah, in a minute," I said. "Let's get some water first, okay?"
I needed a minute out of that room. I walked her toward the kitchen, past the long table with its white plates and sweating water glasses and the centerpiece already shedding petals. The daylight from the windows was still warm across everything, which made the whole thing feel stranger. It should have been darker for what she'd said to my girl.
The kitchen was cooler and smelled like coffee and lemon. I set my daughter on a stool by the island and filled a small plastic cup — my mother still kept them from when we were kids — and she drank with both hands.
Then my sister came in, flute in hand, heels clicking on the tile. She closed the swinging door halfway behind her.
"You're hiding," she said, light, like we were still teenagers.
"She needed water," I said.
She leaned against the counter and looked at my daughter and put on the sweet voice. "Hey, honey. You okay? Auntie was just kidding in there. You know that, right?"
My daughter didn't answer. She turned the cup in circles.
"It's okay if you're shy," my sister said, then looked at me. "Can I talk to you? Alone for like one second?"
I glanced at the doorway to the hall. My cousin's teenage son was passing with his phone out. "Stay right here where I can see you, okay?" I told my daughter. "I'll be right by the door."
I stepped three feet away, still where I could see her. My sister followed, lowered her voice, and the charm dropped fast.
"Did you know she was going to do that?" she asked.
"No."
"Bull. You've been taking Lily —" She stopped herself, checked my face. She didn't know if I wanted her using my daughter's name like that. "You've been bringing her over here every Sunday for months. Reading books in the study. What did you think that was?"
"I thought it was a grandmother spending time with her granddaughter."
My sister laughed once, short. "Mom doesn't do anything without a reason. That company is all she cares about. And now she just hands it to a six-year-old on a Sunday in front of everybody?"
"She didn't hand her anything. She said a sentence."
"A sentence lawyers heard. You saw Uncle Ray. He already texted somebody, I guarantee it." She twirled the flute, watched the bubbles rise. "Listen. I need a VP title. Operations. I've been doing the work for a year without the pay. If Mom announces that, the board is going to freeze everything. No promotions, no moves. You have to talk to her."
I stared at her. "Why would I do that?"
"Because you're the golden boy now. Dad of the heir." She said it like it tasted bad. "She listens to you. Tell her this isn't fair to the rest of us. Tell her to at least put a real adult in charge until — until whatever."
"No," I said.
Her smile thinned. "No?"
"I'm not lobbying Mom for you. Not today. Not after what you said to my kid."
"It was a joke," she said quickly. The same line, polished. "Everyone takes everything so serious now. God, you used to laugh."
"You called her stinky in front of the whole family. She asked me why they were laughing." My voice stayed low. I didn't want my daughter to hear the shake in it. "Don't tell me it was nothing."
Something flickered across her face — not guilt, exactly. Calculation. She looked past me at my daughter on the stool, small legs swinging, navy bow a little crooked from where I'd held her.
"Fine," she said. She straightened up and her grip tightened on the flute. "You want to play protective dad, go ahead. But that announcement doesn't stand. Mom's old. She got emotional. People will contest it, and when they do, don't say I didn't warn you. You're going to regret letting her say that in front of everyone."
She didn't wait for an answer. She pushed the door open and walked back into the bright dining room with her shoulders back and her smile back on, flute raised like a toast nobody had called for.
May you like
My daughter watched me from the stool. "Is Auntie mad?"
I went to her and fixed her bow with fingers that weren't quite steady. "Come on," I said. "Let's go sit by Great-Gram."
