He nodded. “I understand that. You presumably arrived a few days or so later.”
“Are you an obstetrician?” asked Polly, curiously.
“I’m sorry?” said Archie.
“Well,” Polly shrugged, “we seem to be talking about the pacing of conception, and I thought maybe you had some expertise or something, because you know, we just met and usually men like to take girls out to dinner before they talk about making babies.”
There was a pause. Nina hadn’t been able to stop herself from imagining a Schoolhouse Rock!–style sperm and egg animation, so she didn’t have anything to say, but her brother laughed and had the courtesy to blush. His hair was very dark red like Nina’s, and, like her, he blushed well.
“You’re right, I’m being incredibly rude.” He looked around, as if suddenly realizing he was in a public place, but fortunately for him the store was empty. “I only just found out where you worked and . . .” He trailed off. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have marched in like that.”
Nina shrugged. “I would probably have done the same.”
“But you didn’t,” he said. “Are you able to come and have a cup of coffee or something?”
Liz had Apparated, as she frequently did. Honestly, she could be McGonagall’s sister. “Go ahead, Nina,” she said. “We’ll struggle along without you. It will be hard, but we will try.”
Nina made a face at her and reached under the counter for her phone/wallet combo thingy.
Archie and Nina went across the street to the Belgian place, and Vanessa grinned at Nina when she handed them menus.
Nina burst her bubble. “Vanessa, this is my half brother, Archie.”
Her dark eyes took him in, and after a second she nodded. “I didn’t know you had family in town.”
“That makes three of us,” he said, before Nina had a chance to. She narrowed her eyes; a brother who stole her lines was something she hadn’t considered. They both ordered, also the same thing, then sat there and looked at each other with open curiosity.
“You look like me,” Nina said, after a minute. “A guy version, obviously.”
“Thanks for clarifying,” he said dryly, “and, actually, you look like me. I’m a few months older, remember?” He pulled out his phone and flicked to the gallery. “And to be truthful, we both look like our dad.” He handed her the phone. Their father, apparently, standing with his arm around the shoulder of a younger Archie, smiling for the camera in a pro forma way: point, smile, click, move away, drop the smile, get on with whatever important thing you had to do. You know the smile. William Reynolds had been handsome; his hair was thick and the same color as hers and Archie’s, but his eyes were difficult to read. Maybe they’d been easier in person, but Nina was never going to find out.
She said, “I don’t recognize him at all. I never saw a picture, never heard his name, never even knew my father was American.” Their food arrived. “The whole thing is blowing my tiny little mind.” She shook out her napkin, her mouth watering at the smell of her croque madame. Grilled cheese in any form was her spirit animal.
Archie pronged a lettuce leaf and chewed it thoughtfully. “Yeah, me too. Can I ask you about your mom?”
Nina nodded, also chewing. She watched her new brother, noticing additional similarities between them: the cheekbones, the eyelashes. How strange, to have a brother all of a sudden. She remembered a friend of hers who had an older brother in high school and how awesome that had been for her and all her friends. A steady supply of boys one or two years older, paraded through the house for their inspection. Damn, that would have been nice to have; maybe it wouldn’t have taken her so long to lose her virginity.
Archie sipped his water. “What’s she like, your mom?” He paused. “The home-wrecker.”
Nina frowned at him. “That’s not fair; she didn’t wreck your home at all. In fact, she had nothing more to do with your dad once she found out he was married.”
“True. I withdraw the home-wrecker comment. But what is she like?”
Nina thought about it. “She’s cool. She’s a well-known photographer; you can look her up online. Candice Hill. That’s how I usually find out where she is and what she’s up to. She’s Australian and travels all over the place, which is why I never knew where my dad came from. She never, ever mentioned him, except to say she wasn’t sure who he was. Apparently, it was more preferable for me to think she was promiscuous than it would have been for me to know my father, which is a weird choice.
“I didn’t see much of her when I was a kid, and see even less of her now. She loved me, I guess, but she was busy.” Nina took a bite of her croque madame and shamelessly talked while chewing. “She carried me around everywhere when I was the size of a loaf of bread, but once I needed regular meals and got too big to sleep in a hotel drawer, she found an apartment here and hired Louise.”
“Louise?”
“The greatest nanny in the world. Her own kids were at college, and her husband irritated her, so she moved into our apartment to take care of me. Once I went to college, she moved to Georgia, to be closer to her grandchildren. She’s my family, my regular cast member. My mom is more like a guest star.”
“And now our father is like a character the other ones talk about.”
“Right, but one that never shows up. He’s Godot. Or Guffman.”
“Charlie in Charlie’s Angels.”
“Norm’s wife in Cheers.”
Archie smiled. “Well, he was around all the time when I was little. He worked a lot, but when he was there, he was really there. He had that way of making you feel you were the only person in the world. As long as you were right in front of him.”
“He was a lawyer, right?” Nina had seen that online but wasn’t sure she was remembering correctly.
“Yeah, entertainment lawyer. He and ten thousand other guys in this town. He inherited money from his parents, then made lots more, threw parties, went to parties, drank a lot, glammed around, the usual thing. He was larger than life and really smart. I loved him. When my mom died, he was devastated.” He frowned. “But now all I can think of is how he had you the whole time and never paid any attention to you at all.”
“I think that was my mom’s doing, not his.” Nina paused. “Do you think your mom knew about me? Do you think he told anyone?”
“Well, he told Sarkassian, because he put you in the will. He must have thought about you. He was pretty buttoned up; it’s highly unlikely you slipped his mind.”
Nina waved at Vanessa and ordered an iced coffee. Archie did, too. “Are you ordering the same thing as me on purpose?”
He shook his head. “No, I guess we like the same things. We’re like one of those twin studies, where they look at twins who were raised apart and yet turn out to have both married a woman named Darla.”
“Not the same woman, hopefully.”
“No, that would really be too coincidental. Were you a happy kid? Did you have a good childhood?”
Nina shrugged. “More or less. I was shy. I’m still shy. I wasn’t good at making friends. I got anxious a lot. Honestly, it would have been nice to have sisters and brothers and cousins and stuff back then. Now I’m not really sure what to do with you, although it feels nice to have a family for the first time.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “But maybe it’s too late for me to really be part of yours.”