Sasha took the glass Madison offered her and sat on the couch. “So what happened?”
Her sister’s brow furrowed, which hadn’t happened in over a decade to Sasha’s knowledge. Things were really dire if a Finerghty woman started laying off on injectables. “I’m not in love with him anymore, and I was just looking at him wearing his awful pants while talking about some bird that I’d never heard about and I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
“So you just walked out?” Sasha finally examined her sister’s outfit and noticed how off it was for her. Like Sasha, her sister had had proper decorum drummed into her practically from birth. Slacking was never allowed short of arterial blood loss. And even then, it was frowned upon.
“Yeah, I grabbed my purse and my passport. And I left.” Madison sounded bewildered by her decision.
“And you came here?”
Her sister took a big gulp of her wine and asked, “Should I not have? Were you going to have a boy over?”
Thinking about the boy she’d like to have over if it were possible to have him over wasn’t going to lead anyplace good. She had to put Patrick out of her mind entirely, but it was especially important while her sister was here. Even if Madison had committed the cardinal sin of leaving a marriage and possibly bringing scandal down on the family, she probably wouldn’t be able to stomach her thing for Patrick.
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“We’re not talking about me.” Sasha took another sip of wine. “Did Tucker cheat on you?”
“God, no!” Madison reared back and made a sour face. “Can you imagine Tucker cheating?”
Unfortunately, Sasha kind of could. Her sister wasn’t nice to her husband, and it wasn’t his fault that he was deeply uninteresting. It wouldn’t surprise her if Tucker met a woman who shared his interests and left Madison for someone who appreciated something beyond the fact that he’d checked a box for her.
“Are you going to get a divorce?” That would cause the greatest scandal in Finerghty family history. It would be a cataclysm that might very well kill their mother and pickle their father in very expensive scotch. For one moment, Sasha allowed herself to revel in the possibilities of relinquishing her title as the disappointing sister, but concern for Madison ultimately won out.
“I hadn’t even thought that far ahead.” Madison squinted. “Do you think that’s even possible?”
“I mean, it is legal to get divorced in every state, still. Although Mississippi is teetering, I think.”
“Stop being facetious. How would I even live on my own?”
Sasha allowed herself one eye roll. Madison had never held down a job before, but she had skills. She’d mostly done volunteer gigs and sucked off the family teat before getting married. Sasha was fairly certain that Madison could figure out how to be an adult. “Get a job and some alimony.”
That brought a pall over the room. “Mommy always says that you’re way too independent.”
“And you and Mommy are living in a whole other century. Join me in the 2020s instead of the 1920s where virtually no one gets stoned for being a witch if they wear makeup.”
“Stop being sarcastic.” The judgmental version of her sister was back, and Sasha was much more comfortable with this dynamic. Pam had warned her that this was likely to happen the first time she’d had a breakthrough in therapy—that when she was around her family, she would regress.
Sure enough, it was happening now. But Madison had never let Sasha off the hook, and Sasha’s job was to reciprocate when her sister was about to come into the light of freedom and join the twenty-first century.
“Do you know how privileged we are?”
Her sister squinted and drank more. “Are you going to attempt to talk to me about race again? You know that I don’t see color, and donate every year to the NAACP—”
“No, Karen. I’m not going to make that mistake again.” Sasha gave her sister a warning look when she sensed her about to retort. “I’m talking about how we’ve been given everything our whole lives, and never had to work for anything. It kind of makes me mad at our parents. They didn’t prepare us for being disappointed—only being disappointments to them. Like, it’s not a promise that everything will work out if you get married to an ‘advantageous match.’ ”
“They just want us to be happy.”
“But they never wanted to let us decide for ourselves what would make us happy.”
“You’ve got a point there.”
Sasha thought this was going to be a bigger fight than it was turning out to be. But she really didn’t want to fight with her sister. She wanted to help her through what seemed like some very real turmoil.
“Did you ever love Tucker?”
Madison sighed. “Maybe?”
“You don’t sound so sure about that.”
“I think you’re right about our parents. They don’t know what happiness is because they were miserable.”
She’d never thought she’d hear her sister say anything like that. Their family religion might officially be Catholicism, but the true liturgy of the family had always been the gospels according to Moira and Steve. Their family sacraments were looking perfect, acting perfect, getting into the right school, and marrying the right person—preferably one that your parents handpicked.
Sasha had tried to hang on to some of it—the parts where she did what she wanted and didn’t lose her parents’ approval. But that plan wasn’t terribly realistic, so she’d moved far enough away that they couldn’t keep tabs on her through spies in the community.
And sometimes, in her head, she still couldn’t get free of the specter of ancestral disappointment at her choices. Her family religion was fucked.
“What can I do?” That was not a rite in the family religion. The question “What can I get?” was more a part of the ritual. Maybe that was why Patrick was so compelling. She doubted that he’d ever asked himself that question.
* * *
—
PATRICK HAD NEVER BEEN an avaricious man. Not even before he’d taken his vows. His ambitions before the priesthood had been humble and realistic. His family did well enough because they owned the building that housed the bar and a few other businesses, but he’d never seen himself leaving Chicago for warmer climates. He’d never regretted the fact that he didn’t eat at fancy restaurants like Jack and didn’t feel comfortable rubbing elbows with high society like his brother.
He’d never wanted something that he couldn’t have or that anyone else would say he shouldn’t strive for. Granted, he was a white dude, so there weren’t many things in that category. He knew that.