“Maybe it’s because whenever we tried,” Annie said, “you always got bored as soon as you started to lose.”
“Sounds about right,” said Peter, and Emma shot him a look.
“Fine, then,” she said. “I’ll be the stupid thimble.”
While they played, Emma kept a close eye on her sister, making sure she didn’t snake a hand past Charles to steal money from the bank or nudge her marker forward one space too many to land on Free Parking. The Healy family had a long-established tradition of cheating in these kinds of games, applauding cleverness and ingenuity over straightforward honesty, at least within the realm of the game board.
“It’s run by a pint-size millionaire wearing a tux,” Dad would say whenever Emma attempted to reform them. “I’m pretty sure he expected this sort of thing.”
On her next turn Annie managed to land her little top hat directly in jail. She fumbled through her piles of colored money and handed Peter—who had quite happily agreed to be banker—a fifty.
“What’s this for?”
“You can bribe the banker to get out of jail.”
Charles laughed. “No way.”
“Don’t think so,” Peter said, shaking his head solemnly.
Annie looked over at Emma. “Healy family rules, right?”
Peter cleared his throat politely. “Uh, we play Milton Bradley rules.”
“No way,” Charles said, eyeing the top hat suspiciously. “This game’s corrupt.”
“That’s the point,” Annie and Emma said at the exact same time, grinning at each other in an unexpected display of solidarity.
“The idea is to be clever about it,” Annie explained. “But corruption rules.”
“Exactly,” Emma said. “Jailbirds pay off bankers to let them out early. That’s just the way it is. Healy family rules.”
Peter shrugged and laid the money obediently in the bank, Annie rolled the die, and the top hat went skittering further up the board as they continued to play.
Every so often Emma found herself sneaking a sideways glance at Annie, wondering if she herself looked the same way: competitive and impatient, tensed up as if ready to pounce, yet clearly enjoying herself. It had been a long time since Emma had spent time alone with her, without the rest of the family around to muddle the conversation with talk of philosophy or ethics or poetry.
She was surprised now—and a little unsettled—to see so much of herself in her sister. If you took away the clipped tone of voice and fancy vocabulary, the ramrod-straight posture and refined mannerisms, the similarities between them were undeniable. But it was something that went deeper than that too, a shared background that transcended everything else, and this somehow made Emma uneasy. All day she’d assumed they were butting heads because they were so different, but it now occurred to her that maybe that wasn’t the case at all. Maybe it was because they were so similar.
Underneath the table Peter gave her foot a little kick, and Emma lurched for the die, thinking it was her turn. But when she saw that Charles was preparing to roll, she raised her eyebrows at Peter, who looked embarrassed.
“I’m still sort of hungry,” he mumbled. “The sushi was good; it just wasn’t …”
Annie stood up and stretched. “That’s okay; I could use a snack, too,” she said, heading toward the kitchen. “Popcorn okay with everyone?”
Peter nodded, and after a moment Emma scrambled to her feet to follow Annie out of the room. She was already tearing open a box of microwave popcorn, her head half hidden by an open cabinet.
“You can go back and hang out if you want,” she said. “I’m not much of a cook, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got this covered.”
“What about drinks?” Emma said, opening the refrigerator. “I could help with those.”
Annie shrugged and pulled a few glasses from a shelf, handing them over. “Knock yourself out.”
Emma filled each one with ice, and Annie leaned back against the counter as the popcorn began to heat up, little bursts of noise emerging from the microwave like distant fireworks. Out the window Emma could see the building next door, each lit square revealing a different scene: families eating dinner or watching TV, two people gesturing wildly at a toaster, a fat man with no shirt flipping an egg with a spatula. Emma’s eyes skipped from one to the next, like changing television channels, and when she turned back to her own scene, it was to discover Annie watching her closely.
“So?” she asked, and Emma blinked back at her.
“What?” she said, although she already knew. Annie didn’t answer, just folded her arms, and Emma took a deep breath. “I wanted to go down to North Carolina.”
“To see Nate?”
She hesitated. “That was part of it, I guess.”
“Well, what was the other part?” Annie asked, her mouth turned down at the corners, her green eyes searching Emma’s.
“I know about Thomas,” Emma said finally.
Annie stared at her for a moment, as if searching through the catalog of her mind, a lengthy glossary of schoolmates and colleagues and cousins and friends, seeking among them the Thomas who might have sent her little sister careening south in a stolen car. And when it finally registered—when it seemed to occur to her that it was the Thomas, the only Thomas, the forgotten and the unforgettable, the long-lost but never-quite-gone brother—her mouth curved into a tiny O of surprise.
“How did you … ?” she began, her voice low. “How long have you … ?”
“Not long,” Emma said. “I found the birth certificate in the attic.”
Annie shook her head with a kind of mechanical tempo, back and forth so steadily and for so long that Emma began to wonder whether she was okay. She didn’t think she’d ever seen her sister so discomposed; Annie just stood there looking shaken and edgy and quite suddenly pale. The popcorn had long stopped popping in the microwave, but neither made a move to turn it off, and the burnt smell soon filled the kitchen. The dog padded in to investigate, the toenails of his three good paws clicking unevenly as he crossed the tile floor, and when it became clear that the smell wasn’t going to be followed up with any sort of food, he curled up at Emma’s feet with a sigh.
“It wasn’t meant to be a secret,” Annie said quietly.
“Well, you all did a pretty good job of not bringing it up for seventeen years, then,” Emma said, sliding down along the cabinets until she was sitting on the floor beside the dog, who scooted over to rest his chin on her knee. To her surprise Annie joined her on the floor, sitting cross-legged in her expensive pants, the charred smell of the popcorn hovering like a cloud over their heads.