On Tuesday morning, the rain picked up again. It sounded like quarters being dropped on the roof. I was in bed, watching the droplets run down the skylight. My head was cottony and it felt like there were razor blades in my throat. I popped a horse-sized pill out of the foil, but my body struggled against swallowing it.

"Hello, you've reached—Eli Kane," his voice cut in, gruff and prerecorded, "who is unable to take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone."

That was weird. Straight to voicemail. I brought up our message thread. Text: Eli, where are you? Call me back. It didn't deliver, the blue bubble of text waiting in the ether, stuck somewhere between my phone and his. I sent another text. I called him again, my body betraying me, soothing itself at the sound of his recorded voice, "Eli Kane." Fucking idiot, that's not the real him, riling my heart up again.

When I dragged myself downstairs, Mom was sitting in Victor's favorite armchair in the living room, slunk back into the cushion like she had been waiting for me.

"Hello, my dear." Her voice was strange, her words slurring together. Her hands were deep in the pockets of a chunky knit cardigan as she locked eyes with me. "I need to talk to you," she said. There was a copper smattering of freckles on her fair face, and she wore no makeup aside from a poorly blended dab of concealer on her chin.

"Oh, lovely. The six words every child wants to hear from their parent: I need to talk to you." I resisted the urge to open the front door and throw myself into traffic. Mom was behaving so strangely. She offered a small smile, and I automatically returned it. Her smile looked real, but was it? Can I even trust my own mother right now? This whole place... it was making me question everything.

"Tom wants to have breakfast with you," she said, eventually. "He's already waiting for you at that waffle place you both used to love."

Summer had arrived violently and without warning; most of the tables inside the air-conditioned Waffle House at Floyd Baker Avenue were filled. I headed down the alley between the pizzeria and a smoke shop that wasn't there ten years ago, and Mrs. Robinson, our know-it-all neighbor, cornered me just as I was about to step inside the familiar, yeasty-sweet haven of the waffle shop.

"Well, look who it is," she said, her voice sharp and carrying. "Still in town, are you? Like a bad penny." She leaned closer, her breath smelling faintly of mothballs. "Strange to see you around without that girl, you know."

"Cindy?"

"Yeah, that one. No one was surprised when Cindy left, you know. Not one soul. She was a Sports Illustrated model in a sea of girls with crooked teeth and flat chests. The boys practically drooled over her, and the women? They couldn't stand her near their sons. Or their husbands, for that matter." She gave a knowing sniff. "Almost dropped out her senior year, she did. A few months later she just... vanished. There were whispers, of course. Pregnant, some said. Others claimed Darlene kicked her out. Maybe it was both. That girl always was trouble." She shook her head, a picture of righteous indignation.

My stomach clenched. So this was the narrative Gaffney clung to, the one that painted Cindy as a fallen woman. While they didn't really know if she was okay. If she was even alive, to begin with. It made my blood boil.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Robinson," I said, trying to keep the anger from showing. "Tom's waiting for me inside. I need to go." I offered a curt nod and turned toward the waffle shop door, leaving Mrs. Robinson standing there, a living example of small-town gossip and unkindness.

The waffle shop was a quaint storefront: wooden slats were painted seaside white and blue, though the sea was a long way away. The rest of the area consisted of a cafeteria with a Burger King, a Dunkin' Donuts, and a Subway. Off to the side were the bathrooms and a newsstand selling snacks and maps of South Carolina. Everything looked too new, too family friendly. No truckers were pissing in the parking lot and no girls in leather skirts haunted the cigarette kiosks. It was nothing like some of the places off the interstate that I remembered from when I was a kid, and it was good.

When I stepped inside, looking for my brother, a young woman approached me. Her curly light brown hair bunched up around her head like a cloud. She had a white apron over the front, and she wore pearl earrings. She had a prim jacket and spectacles, and a bright yellow pocket square. It was the type of bold coloring in an otherwise drab outfit that said, "I consider myself a fun-loving type—but I decided to study accounting, and I now know seventeen different ways to fill out a ledger." Waffle House was embroidered on the pocket, as well as Lorelei.

Lorelei chirped at me: "Welcome to Waffle House! Table for one?"

"No, I'm actually looking for... Oh, there he is."

Tom stood up in our usual booth, and dragged his fingers through the same ginger-colored hair as mine. His peacoat was unbuttoned, exposing his work polo. "Over here," he shouted.

As the waitress brought us menus, behind one of which Tom promptly hid, I felt a stab of homesickness. I thought of Tom, our mother and me, in this very booth, many years ago. Back then, the tables were grimy and the plastic seats would stick to your thighs, but they had the best silver dollar pancakes. Always with strawberry syrup.

Cindy and me worked here together for a while. Cin loved that job, even though it got her up at four-thirty in the morning. She worked the counter, weighing out butter cookies and tying up cake boxes in twine. She hoped our boss would eventually let her help with the decorating. She adored cooking and baking, and always had steady hands, like a sculptor's.

Lorelei returned, her cheerfulness feeling jarring after my encounter outside. "Morning, folks! What can I get you for?"

Tom grunted and pointed to the menu. "The Lumberjack Special," he said. It was his usual—a double waffle with bacon, sausage, and maple syrup.

I glanced at the offering, the colorful pictures of various waffle concoctions blurring before my eyes. My mind was still replaying Mrs. Robinson's cruel words.

"Rhiannon?" Tom's voice cut through my thoughts. "What waffle do you want?"

What waffle did I want? The question felt loaded, heavier than it should. He couldn't even be bothered to look at me, to acknowledge my presence properly. The resentment radiating off him was almost palpable. Does he hate me? The house, the inheritance... had it poisoned everything between us? I knew that hate isn't something you can put in a person's heart by taking away something they love. You either have hate in you or you don't; it hides in someone's body like a cancer, waiting for the right moment to come out.

I smiled shyly at the waitress. "I'll have the Berry Bliss, please. With extra whipped cream." The thought of food suddenly felt unappetizing, a lump forming in my throat.

She raised an eyebrow slightly, but jotted it down. "Alrighty then. Lumberjack, and a Berry Bliss coming right up!" She headed toward the counter, leaving an uncomfortable silence hanging over our booth. Tom still hadn't looked at me.

I hadn't realized I didn't hate my brother until right now. I didn't hate him for mocking me. I didn't hate him for always being on our father's side. His lack of support was at least consistent, I'll give him that. It was Cindy I hated. My only friend, who kissed my eyelids when I cried and let me hang on her like a monkey at night during sleepovers, taking up the whole bed with my tiny body. My best friend, who protected me when my father got drunk, and my mother unraveled in front of me. Cindy, who said she'd never leave me, but left me and never came back.

Tom cleared his throat, dashing my hopes of spending the rest of the breakfast in silence. When I looked over at him, he got this look on his face like he might pass out.

"It wasn't personal." He gripped the menu so hard that his nail beds turned white. "How I acted when you moved away... It was just hard for me."

Did Mom put him up to this? If I weren't so shocked, I'd ask him exactly what he thought was so easy for me. Our father controlling me? Our mother being too weak to stand up against Victor? Having to move to Canada, rooming with a woman I'd never met?

"It was a long time ago," was all I said.

"He always preferred you, you know," Tom continued, his gaze still fixed on the menu, as if the words were being dragged out of him against his will. "Never stopped talking about you. Even when you were gone. You left, but you didn't. You were always there, a ghost of you sitting beside me in an empty chair. Your name was mentioned during all meals. Your room was left intact."

"It's because I was the one that got away," my voice sounded bitter. "The rest of you were still under his control. I never did anything Victor wanted me to do."

"Some things that he wanted for you, Rhiannon," Tom looked up, his patience clearly fraying. "Were not bad for you. To get good grades, and get into a good college, and get a good job."

"A job related exclusively to architecture, or landscaping, you mean? At any rate, what's the point of life," I asked, "if you go to school, then go to work, then die?"

Tom looked horrified. I was always such a little nihilist.

"Sorry," I whispered.

"Beverly likes you a lot, you know. She's really happy you're here. And... well, I heard you're going to give the house to Mom. Mr. Kane told me. Is it true?"

"Yep. All hers. You guys can redecorate it as you like it. I'll go back to Montreal on Thursday and you can go back to your daily routine."

"If that's true... then there's really no reason for me to keep holding onto this... this grudge." He avoided my gaze again, a flicker of something that might be shame crossing his face.

Oh?

"Maybe... maybe I was jealous of you. You never seemed to care about dad's approval, and yet you always seemed to have it. You always did the opposite of what he wanted and he admired you, loved you for it. While I... I cared so much... tried too hard to please him. I almost turned into his exact copy, and it was never enough." He finally met my eyes, a raw vulnerability there.

"I'm not sure Victor was capable of loving anyone but himself." I sighed. "Sometimes I'm worried I used to be very much like him, even when I defied him. Maybe I still am. And I hate that, you know?"

"We can't mend ten years overnight, I know that. But... we're adults. And Beverly and I... we'd really like it if you visited more. To see the baby, when he or she is born. I... I want to make an effort."

So there was something else hiding between the members of the Carmichael family, something my return had disturbed. Beneath the land mines, there were secrets too. This unexpected tenderness, from a brother who usually treated me with a poorly concealed disdain, caught me off guard. But then again, he did protect me immediately when that reporter attacked me, with an unexpected aggressiveness.

Touch my sister, I'll fucking kill you!

And what about those bruises on Beverly's neck? How well did I really know this man? He was my brother, and even if I was just now realizing he was capable of being vulnerable, I also knew he was quick to anger. A chilling thought crept into my mind: could he? Could Tom be capable of something as horrible as harming our own father? Does he suspect I know something, that I'm investigating this? Is he trying to get into my good graces? How much do we really know about the people that surround us?

A text pinged up on my screen, the sudden chime slicing through this unsettling thought. God, I was Miss Fucking Popular today, wasn't I? Mom's weirdness, then Mrs. Robinson's venom, Tom's unexpected confession. And who knew who was writing me now.

I pulled out my phone, my fingers clumsy as I unlocked the screen. It was Eli. The message was short and to the point:

Got the tox screen results. As promised.