Not because you have a crystal ball.
You know because it’s physics. It’s science. It’s cause and effect.
I don’t want to argue with Hemingway, though. And I don’t want to be the reason he doesn’t have a family, if that’s what he wants. So I swallow my arguments of logic and science. I search for something I could say, some way to show him that we’re not enemies, even if we don’t agree.
“I’m trying to make a better future,” I say, finally.
Not exactly an enthusiastic promise, but it’s the truth.
Even without believing it’s possible, I’ve kept fighting for Hemingway’s health. And now I’ll keep fighting for the baby’s health. I’ll keep donating money and supporting research. I’ll keep pushing science along like Sisyphus with his goddamn boulder up a hill, knowing it’ll roll back down.
Hemingway stands, and I’m not sure what he’s doing until the moment he offers me his hand and pulls me up from the couch. Then he throws his arms around me. “Congratulations, asshole,” he says into my ear. “I hope you don’t fuck it up, because this is more than you deserve.”
I already have fucked it up. But I don’t say that to Hemingway.
“What’s more than you deserve?” Our mother’s voice startles us both.
We both turn to watch her breeze in, fixing her hair as she comes.
Geneva Hughes has white-blonde hair and blue eyes and innate charisma. She looks like she could be an old Hollywood actress with high cheekbones and a tulle gown. She sweeps across the den and kisses my cheek, then Hemingway’s, smelling faintly of ocean spray.
The last time I saw her, I visited her home in Prague to break the news that I was letting Hem come home from boarding school. She didn’t like it. She thought he should live apart from my father, the same way she lives apart from him.
She can’t stand the heartbreak of seeing him broken, and she thinks we can’t stand it either.
But I can stand the pain. The realization hits me like an eighteen wheeler.
I stand the pain so my father doesn’t have to face this alone. Which makes me wonder why I’ve been pushing Eva away. Maybe life is just a journey through heartache. It’s coming for me anyway. I can’t escape it. That’s the irony. Pushing Eva away hasn’t made me avoid it. It’s still here.
Maybe the pain is worth it.
Hemingway pushes a hand through his hair. “Hey, Mom.”
“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” My mother sweeps her hands around the room. It’s like she just stepped out to look at her flowers in the garden. She has the air of a person who’s been gone for a few hours, not a few years. It feels, somehow, like she belongs here rather than her hundred vacation homes around the world.
My brother points at me. “He knocked up Eva Morelli.”
“Phineas. Is he joking?”
I’m going to punch him. “No. He’s not.”
A slow nod. “This explains the engagement. The number of texts I get, my God. Everyone angling for information. Everyone trying to get an invitation to the wedding. I just smile and pretend to be mysterious, when the truth is I don’t even know if I’ll be invited to the wedding.”
I feel the smallest twinge of guilt. My mother wasn’t included in planning for the engagement because no one was. It was supposed to end before it became anything real.
Now there’s a baby on the way. My baby.
“I’m sorry.”
“No phone call. No text. Not even an email. I don’t know where I was supposed to find out. How are kids sharing information these days? Do you have a TikTok account?”
I deserve that. “I should have told you. Is that why you came?”
“What is your new daughter-in-law like? they ask. Oh, yes, of course we’ve met, I say. But it’s been almost a decade. I remember a serious young woman with dark eyes. Obedient. So busy managing her parents that I doubted she had any room for being a child. You have that in common, I suppose.”
My heart squeezes. She was serious, wasn’t she? I was so busy having fun that I barely noticed. Like Hemingway said, I defined happiness as parties and yachts and fucking random people. “Of course you’ve met Eva.”
“What does she look like now? Beautiful, I say. Because I can find some photos from the society websites as well as anyone. What does she do? Oh, she’s so accomplished. Very philanthropic. She manages the Morelli Fund.” My mother’s voice has become shrill. “It’s on their Wikipedia page.”
“I should have told you.”
“Tell me now, Phineas. Why Eva? Why a Morelli?”
Christ. The Morelli family has been in a longstanding feud with the Constantines. For decades. And Caroline Constantine is my aunt. My mother’s sister. “They’ve repaired the rift between the families.”
She waves this away. “I’ve heard those rumors. I know about the little Morelli-Constantine children being born. I don’t know why Caroline has allowed it. It’s not going to end well.”
“The Hughes are Switzerland in that feud, anyway,” I say, this time with a hint of warning.
As head of the family I have this power—even over my mother. She would prefer that the Hughes family get involved, that we officially side with the Constantines. That would only make us smaller. The Hughes family is above the feud. My father saw the wisdom of that.
She gives me a dark look. “Still, a Morelli? My God. They’re so…Catholic.”
That makes me smile. I wonder if Eva wants me to convert. Probably. I imagine myself in swim trunks and a baby pool getting baptized. Then my smile fades. That’s assuming I can repair things between us. That’s assuming I even want to. Looking at my mother reminds me of why I might not want to. It’s one thing to accept my own pain. It’s another to inflict it on someone else.
“Though I suppose with a baby on the way, there’s no choice,” my mother continues. “At least she’ll be an obedient daughter-in-law.”
I can’t help it. I snort. “Obedient is not a word I’d use to describe Eva.”
My mother’s expression turns grave. “Does she know?”
“She does.”
“I suppose she thinks marrying a Hughes is worth it.”
“She doesn’t need money. Or power. She’s already rich and powerful.”
“It would be better if she did need those things. It would be better if she only cared about the Hughes name, because that’s all she’ll have once the curse takes you.”
My throat feels tight. “Right.”
“I’d like to meet her. She should know what she’s getting into.”
I can just imagine that. “The timing isn’t good right now.”
“She should know how it feels to watch the man you love waste away to nothing.”
“Geneva!” My father comes in through the door, wearing his pajamas, his hair askew. He looks like a tired, faded version of himself, except for the eyes. In his eyes there’s only delight. He recognizes her. Fuck, he recognizes her. There was only a fifty-percent chance of that happening. And why is he even wandering around the house? “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”