Serendipitous as it was that I had Friday off already, I was a little uneasy about spending the day entertaining Fenn without chasing her away with my warnings about Julian. At her suggestion, I picked her up at 7:30 am for a class at Yoga for the People, followed by breakfast at Cracked (admittedly, we were a little sweaty but I figured everyone around us could just deal with it). Fenn noisily smacked her way through a bacon and egg sandwich (“American bacon is so odd,” said Fenn, and every other Brit who’s made their way to this side of the pond) before we Ubered back to my little studio so we could both shower.

Clean and dressed by 10:30 am, with Fenn’s bags and portfolio stashed in a corner of the room, I thought it would be a waste if she didn’t get to do the SF tourist experience. Alex is unlikely to want to accompany his sister on a cable car (“what a letdown,” he told me when I finally made him take me on one when during our together/not together phase) or anything that smacks of pre-packaged fun, so we took the BART to Powell Street. Fenn and I kicked around SFMOMA for a while, taking in the “Mythos, Psyche, Eros” and Julie Mehretu exhibitions before hopping on the cable car (much enjoyed by Fenn, possibly because she knew her brother didn’t) down to Fisherman’s Wharf where I introduced her to eating clam chowder out of a bread bowl. I guided her over to check out Lombard Street, where I took multiple pictures of Fenn climbing up the crooked street for her Instagram account.

I didn’t speak of Julian during any of this, and I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to by that point. The acrimony between us last night had dissipated, and I was quite enjoying getting to know the woman who would soon (maybe) become my sister. I liked how she rushed to smoosh flowers in her face to smell them better. I liked how she patiently talked me through technique in the Mehretu show (though I majored in Art History, and take an interest in modern design, I know very little about modern painting). I liked how she balled up her fists and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet when excited, how she looked so elegant with her curls falling out of a French twist, how she crossed her eyes when she thought something was ridiculous. The yin to Alex’s yang, where she wasn’t already the yang to his yin.

I suggested the Presidio as the last of our destinations — it’s a favorite of mine for timewasting when I want to stay near enough to Alex’s — but as we got closer I realized she was wilting a little. We’d been walking (or hanging out on cable cars) since 11:15, and it was nearly 5. Alex would be home much later, so I sent him a text to let him know I was taking Fenn over to his place for a nap. I received no reply, which was a bit strange — usually I get an “awright beautiful” or the heart-eyes emoji or even a “kk” — but I dismissed it. He was probably in another meeting with the hapless Dave, the COO’s son, whom Alex regularly denounced as just being in the job because his mother fucked the right human 35 years ago.

Before letting herself be tucked into Alex’s bed, Fenn had to snoop around first in the loo to investigate his prescriptions (only one, for eczema, to her disappointment) and in the bedroom for… god knows what. (I really don’t want to know.) I placed a pre-order at Hunan Empire — potstickers and steamed dumplings, chicken chow fun, some General Tso’s and sweet and sour pork, vegetable fried rice and the wonton soup — to arrive for 8pm. After dinner, I’d shuttle Fenn back with me to Berkeley, where Alex would join us early in the morning to take over Fenn-tending before her 3 pm flight from Buchanan Field (Charles had arranged for a private flight). We had it planned out so neatly, our roles interlocking perfectly in the passage of the night and the day to follow, hands off and on, forward and back, like dancers in a reel.

And then the dancers forgot their steps, the musicians stopped playing, the floor was wrecked in disarray.

Something was off — this I could feel long before Alex opened the door at nearly 8. He hadn’t returned a single one of my texts in the hours since I’d settled Fenn in for a nap. All calls went to voicemail; his assistant told me he’d stepped into a conference room some time before to take a call but assured me he’d get in touch before heading home. He texted me at 7:30 to say he was on the way, and to wake Fenn up, that she needed to be awake when he returned. “Needs?” I replied. No response.

Tiptoeing into the bedroom, I sat down beside a snoring Fenn and stroked her arm to gently wake her. “Fenn. Fenn. Alex is on his way home. Time to get up, love.”

She opened her eyes and a lazy grin unfurled across her face as she stretched. “Mmmmmmm, that was lovely. Will we have dinner, too? I’m famished.” She raised herself up on her elbows, and patted her belly with one hand, as if to let it know help was on the way.

I couldn’t shake from my mind the premonition of a coming disaster. As Alex and I have drawn closer together over the past few years, I have begun to read his silences like an augur might a flight of starlings. I can sense which ones speak of pleasure, or laziness, or indecision, or apathy. But I am most sensitive to the ones which presage the noise. And this one? This one rang like a rackety bell.

“Fenn,” I said to her gently, “is there anything you can think of that Alex might have, hm, discovered about you or your trip that might make him, ah, unhappy?” Unhappy was an understatement, if I was divining his restraint properly.

She closed her eyes to me, covered them with a hand, as if not seeing me in the dusk of the room would make me disappear. “Turn on the light, love. How long until he’s home?”

Flicking on the bedside lamp, I passed over the blue floral skirt she’d shucked off before getting into bed. “Better pull this on. We have about 20, maybe 30 minutes. So if you’re going to tell me what Julian” — oh yes, I was certain of that now — “has to do with this, start now.”

She hopped out of bed, pulled on the skirt and tugged me up from where I had been perched. “Does Al have any whisky?” she asked. “I expect we’ll be needing it tonight.” Fenn led the way into the living room, where she settled herself on the faux-Danish Modern sofa as I brought down tumblers for us all and the bottle of 16-year-old Edradour from the shelf above the sink. I plunked a couple of ice cubes — thunk thunk — in her glass and mine; Alex’s could wait. Fenn and I were both going to need a generous application of alcohol to get through whatever tempest was about to blow in the door, so I filled our glasses with nearly three fingers each.

“Talk,” I ordered as I passed the whisky to her. (Who am I these days that I order people about?) “As much as you can, as quickly as you can. You’ll find I shout less than your brother will.”

In 20 minutes, Fenn filled in the gaps that didn’t make sense. Much of the story was true — Charles really did live in LA, really had married that gallery owner, really had found Fenn and wanted her to come to California to meet people and get her work seen. Andrew Kil-whats-his-face was really falling in love with her mother, and it seemed like he really might propose soon. And while it was true that Cora had given her money to go to Edinburgh to see Frances, she knew full well that her daughter was going to California directly after that. “It was the main reason I had to see Alex,” she explained. “I would have been happier skipping all this, all the questioning I knew I’d have to face if I came here. But Mummy insisted I see Al, make sure you were making him happy.”

I raised an eyebrow, crossed my arms across my chest. “And am I?”

Fenn gave me a small smile. “Yes, most certainly. You’ve changed him. I swear that little black cloud he always talks about has almost disappeared.” (I wouldn’t count on that after this evening, I thought sourly.)

There was, Fenn continued, one remaining problem — she still needed to get to California. And while she had been saving the money she received from the drawing lessons she gave in Dunkeld (the weekly excursions were masked as trips to sketch the Birnam Oak or the waterfalls at the Hermitage), it was not enough to get to California without spending most of it. So she did what the Carrs always did when they needed large amounts of money: she called Julian.

“Julian said he’d be only too happy to pay for my flights and my hotels since we were such old friends. Wasn’t a problem to come here first, do my familial duty, as he put it, to keep Mummy happy. He said the only payment would be for me to let him take me out a couple of times to dinner, which hardly seems like payment at all. I don’t know why you and Alex are so upset. He saved my life, more than once, and you know that. Without his money…” Fenn trailed off, took a large sip of the whisky, looking deep into the amber liquid in her glass.

“You should know there is never, ever, anything Julian does without expecting something in return. It won’t be ‘just’ dinner. He’ll be expecting more.” I searched her face, looking for something like shock or distaste, but she just shrugged. “You’re not a fool or an innocent. I know you’ve had boyfriends at home. You know what more is.”

I could see the tears starting to well in her eyes, and I regretted being so direct. “And so what? So what if maybe I want that? Maybe I want Julian again,” she whimpered in a strangled voice. (“Again”?) “Maybe he wants me, did that ever occur to you?” she continued, louder, sterner. “He said you’d be like this, he said you’d be jealous and try to stop me. But everyone seems to forget I’m an adult, and I can do whatever I please.”

This was bad. Very, very bad. The Carrs have never been known for their perspicacity of judgment, and Fenn was following in the family line. “Does Cora know Julian’s paying?” I guessed the answer, but I needed to know from her lips.

Fenn started to answer when the front door to the apartment flung open. Alex, laden with the Chinese food. He slammed the door behind him with a firm kick and threw the bags down on the kitchen counter. “How much has she told you? How long have you known?” he bellowed at me, his face twisted in anger.

I rose from the sofa to greet him with a kiss, but he rebuffed me, ducked my embrace. Spotting the bottle, he grabbed a single ice cube from the freezer and angrily threw it in the tumbler I’d left out for him, then nearly filled the glass. “So lovely of you two hens to help yourselves to my whisky. Mel, answer me. Are you in on this travesty because if you are…” Alex trailed off and took a long draw on his Edradour, as his gaze upon me narrowed in suspicion.

“I swear, I only figured it out about half an hour ago. I know most of it, I think. I was asking her if your mother knows when you walked in.” (Stomped in, I thought.)

Alex grunted, my response seemingly acceptable. He pointed at Fenn, who by now was cowering in a corner of the sofa, her knees pulled up, her face reddening rapidly. “You,” he rasped at his sister. “You and our mother, thick as thieves. You never wanted to hear me, believe me, that Julian is a monster, a villain who lives only to please himself with his sick little power fantasies.”

“Fuck you, Al,” Fenn cried. “You never want me to have anything nice. You want everyone always to be as miserable as you.”

“You see this woman?” Alex pulled me in front of him, wrapped his arms around me, still holding his whisky, and I melted back into his embrace. In the midst of this storm, I was safe in his harbor, but I could not say the same for his sister. “This woman here, who has been nothing but lovely to you, I’m sure. I’m sure, because she is unfailingly kind to people, even people WHO DO NOT DESERVE IT, ungrateful little shits, like you and Julian.” Fenn flinched, drawing her knees even closer.

Alex raised his glass and pointed at Fenn again, never letting hold of me. “This woman was almost destroyed by that savage who paid for your flights, and your hotels, and who wants to squire you around Beverly Hills and LA and wherever, buy you new clothes and jewelry like you’re fucking Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Well, fuck you. You’re not, this isn’t a film, and he’s not Richard fucking GERE. WAKE UP. He will use you up for whatever he wants. And when he’s done with you, he won’t pick up the phone. He’s not going to set you up out here. He’s not going to start a relationship with you, even at a distance. He’ll fuck you and dump you.”

I had to say, that sounds pretty accurate, but Fenn wanted none of it. She started pulling her hair out of its twist, weeping pitifully. I started to move towards her, but Alex stopped me. “Let it sink in with her. Let her realize what she traded. She could have asked me, for fuck’s sake! Oh, maybe I wouldn’t have flown her business class, or arranged for a fucking private jet for her, or put her up at the NoMad, but she would have been comfortable. But no, no. Our MOTHER put her up to this.”

I turned to face him, astonished. My mouth sagged open a little. “Cora did this?”

“Oh, she left that detail out?” The single cube pinged off the wall of the glass as he drank another mouthful. “Yes, our SAINTED MOTHER suggested that my idiot sister call Julian FUCKING Cranford before she called me. ‘Oh, Julian can afford it more than your brother, now that he’s going to be marrying that Mel, and she won’t have any money to bring with her.’ Mum couldn’t miss an opportunity to drive that point home again.” (Again, again?)

Fenn wailed. “I would have asked you if I thought you could afford it. I promise!”

“Had a nice long chat with Mum today,” Alex barked at his sister, as he finally let go of me. I hesitated at first, but decided to join his sister. I sat on the floor beneath her, and reached a hand up. I was furious with her, but she looked so scared, so in need of a friend. Fenn gripped onto my wrist and forearm like a swimmer grasping a lifeguard, hoping to be pulled to safety.

Al continued: “Mum said she thought it was all terrific, and she hoped Fenn would turn Julian’s head this time. She asked me — Mel, listen to this — she asked me if I didn’t think Fenn and Julian would make a beautiful couple. She’s lost her mind. She’s lost her mind, or she’s just as venal and mercenary as I always wished she wasn’t.”

As distasteful as it is to admit, Cora has been fundamentally amoral when it comes to her children’s happiness in marriage. What was important was bringing in money. Enormous pressure was placed on Alex to marry Minty, even though he wasn’t in love with her, just to keep that horrible old home upright. Cora told Al he’d grow to love his wife, and I suppose he did in a way, after Lucy came along. It appeared Alex’s mother wanted to set her other child along a similar path, one that might be even more lucrative, without realizing that Julian never handed out money to anyone without the strongest of strings attached.

Fenn sniffled. “Mummy only wants what’s best for us. It’s not my fault you don’t agree with her. I agree with her: Julian wants to help me, so I’ll take his help. I’m an adult and I can make these kinds of decisions for myself. I don’t need you buggering this all up because you think he was mean to you or Melissa. No offense.”

Wow. I peeled her hand off me in disgust.

“MEAN?” Alex roared. “MEAN? Do you know what he did to her?” Alex pointed at me. “He stole her SOUL from her, convinced her she was nothing, she was stupid, and silly, and vacuous and always, always WRONG.”

“That’s what you say,” Fenn mumbled. “That’s not what happened.” She tilted her body towards me, hand on her chest, eyes damp with tears. “You know what happened. You were happy for years. I saw it myself, every year when you visited, Melissa. I saw how much you loved each other. But then you drifted apart, you wanted different things.”

You know when someone says, “the red mist descends”? No? Jen says it’s a British saying, but I’ve said it enough that I’ve forgotten if it truly is. I’m sure you can tell what it means. Well, the red mist descended on Alex, clouded his eyes, made him ball up his fists, his jaw clench, his face turn crimson under the remaining vestiges of tan and freckles from last month. And despite the anger scribbling itself rapidly over his body, Alex’s voice was clear and poised: “Julian lies. He lies when he needs to cover up and when he’s bored and when he needs to get ahead and when he’s embarrassed. And that is one of his lies coming from your mouth.”

“IT’S TRUE!” Fenn bellowed. “If she didn’t want to stay with Julian, then why did she STAY?” (Excellent question, Fennella, one I don’t even know the answer to yet.)

Ms. Bob pounded on the wall. A faint shout of “Shut the fuck up!” wafted through the barrier; Alex screamed in reply, “No, YOU shut the fuck up, you filthy COW!”

He took a moment to compose himself, contain the rage a little. “Julian tried to mold Mel into some grotesque of a housewife, built to serve him, and it nearly broke her. He bullied her into believing she had to stay in order to survive. Imagine what it would do to you. You’re wilder than Mel has ever been. Imagine him trying to break your spirit, tell you you can’t paint or draw, can’t go where you wish, when you wish, wear what you want or do your hair as you please. And while you’re at it, hope you want a baby RIGHT NOW because that, Fenn, that is what Julian is looking for. A perfect wife and a perfect mother. And you are too beautiful and free and untamed to ever be hemmed in like that.”

“Bollocks,” Fenn gritted out.

“Oh, bollocks? Bollocks?” The red mist started to turn up the volume in Alex’s voice again. “Do you know what he’s been doing? Do you even know why he was so happy to pay for you? He’s trying to destroy me, just as he’s been trying to cripple me for years. He cannot abide by me ever having more than him, ever having more happiness, or love, or freedom, or friends, or anything. I have so much more than him now because he ruined his own fucking life by being so bloody-minded in his pursuit of more and more and more money and control. He fucked up his marriage and he fucked up his friendship with me, even though I gave him chance after chance. He wants me to lose everything because he drove his wife away from him and towards me. He wants me to lose Mel. He wants me to lose you.”

Fenn sat up, walked away from the sofa, over to the kitchen counter where another, less impressive bottle of whisky stood unopened. She tore off the metal seal viciously, pulled out the cork and took a massive slug of it from the neck. This family is mad, just like Julian told me — the thought crossed my mind — what am I doing?

Alex pursued his sister into the kitchen, snatched the bottle from her and took a large swig himself. He loomed over her, the four or five inches’ difference in height between them looking double or triple that measure. The fury driving Alex changed his entire physicality in my eyes — taller, broader, larger, dangerous. Not the Alexander who was so careful in making a sandwich, not the Alex who tickled my sides and brushed my hair, nor the Al who lay still in my bed on a Saturday night, explaining macroeconomic theory and the Boer War and why American beer is shit. This man was terrifying. I’d seen this iteration once before, when he faced off with Miranda at that very first party, and I’d worried he’d snap. He didn’t then, and I trusted that with age, he was even less likely to do so now.

The black look began to fade from his face, the red mist started to scatter, the muscles relaxed. My Alex returned. “Fenn,” he finally said, tenderly. “Fenn the Hen.” He pushed a curl away from her face and kissed her cheek. Fenn didn’t move, except for the tears that dropped on the granite counter she had turned around to face and was now grasping for support. “Let me pay for it. Let me pay for you to fly down tomorrow, for your hotel room down there. Wherever you want to stay, stay at the Ritz or the Four Seasons or wherever. I’ll buy you a new ticket back to Scotland when your time with Charles is up. I have the money. You deserve your meetings and a chance to get your work seen.”

I could scarcely move as I watched the two from the living room floor through into the kitchen.

“No.” Fenn’s voice was low and calm. “No, Al. No. You need to let me be an adult. You need to let me make my own decisions about my life, and what I want it to be like and who I want to be in it.” She lifted her head and looked at me. “I don’t want to have anyone be able to say of me, oh, she never was allowed to do this or that, because her mother or her brother thought they knew better. How is what you’re offering not control of me? How am I any different from Melissa if you forbid me?”

I couldn’t argue with this assessment. For as much as Julian could hurt her, even if he didn’t snare her, to assume that Fenn would not have any say in how her visit unfolded would be to rob her of her agency. “Let Fenn make this mistake,” I cautioned him.

Alex’s own tears began to leak, slowly. “If you go, you’ll be putting your heart on the line. We can’t have what happened last time –“

“Quiet,” Fenn interrupted, and a look I could not decipher passed between them. “Thank you for your offer, it was very kind,” she continued primly. “I don’t suppose we have much more to speak of this evening, so I’d like to go back to Berkeley now.”

“Fenn, please don’t. Don’t go. We have all this food and I’ve barely seen you.” Alex’s voice quavered, cracked, splintered in the middle and fell apart at the end.

Fenn shook her curls out and lifted her chin, wiping at her nose, cherry red from all the tears. “You’ll see me in eight weeks, you daft cunt.” Good god, of course. Alex and I still had to see Cora and meet Andrew Kil-whosit after Bex and Jamie’s wedding. “We’ll have all the time in the world ’cause there’s fuck all else to do up there except avoid Mummy, watch EastEnders and go to the pub.”

Al’s shoulders sagged even as he allowed himself the very smallest of smiles. “Go then. Take the food with you. No wait,” he blurted as I gathered up the bags. “Leave me the General Tso’s and the potstickers.” (Now that sounded like my Alex.)

After another round of trying to get Fenn to stay for dinner, and pleas to guard her heart, Al eventually relented and I piled his sister into a Lyft with me to return to Berkeley. Back in the studio, we had a mostly silent dinner, though Fenn did ask me if Alex’s moods were like that frequently. (Thankfully, the answer is no.) I set her up in the sleeping nook and she was snoring by 11 pm, the exertions of the day having taken their toll.

Me? Couldn’t sleep, not least because Al kept texting me for updates every 20 minutes. Had he made the right decision in letting her go? (There was no decision to make; he could not keep her.) What if Julian broke her heart? (Good thing she has a loving brother and a burgeoning career.) What if Julian decided to keep her in LA, even (horribile dictu) marry her? (I’d point her towards the family law attorney who drafted my prenup.) It was so… odd to be the practical one, the one less fanciful and squirming in anxiety’s grip.

***

Still jetlagged, Fenn rose well before I did on Saturday morning. She’d apparently remembered enough of the directions I’d given on how to use the Keurig machine to fix herself coffee, and the scent of the brew stirred me after a fitful few hours of sleep. I found her hunched over and pecking away at her bashed up Chromebook at my kitchen table. From the Murphy bed, tucked beneath the Frette linens, I observed her, as I remained unobserved. Black curls, ordinarily below her shoulders, snatched up in a red lacquer chopstick removed from my silverware drawer. Dark blue men’s pyjama bottoms, tattered at the hems where she’d been accustomed to treading on them as she crossed the creaking parquet floors at home. A plain black silk camisole, stark against her creamy skin. Around her shoulders was Alex’s disgusting wool blanket, a corner of which she occasionally and absentmindedly chewed on. Steam from the mug fogged the reading glasses on the tip of her long nose as she guzzled the coffee. She was so sublimely lovely, and so unconscious of that. She is far, far more dazzling than I will ever be, in looks and talent and charisma, and the jealousy stung hard.

Fenn stretched in the white Eames kitchen chair, stifled a yawn with one hand wrapped in the blanket, and rose to shuffle to the Keurig, mug in hand. As she approached the cubby where I keep the K-cups, she caught my open eyes and gave me a shy wave. My own hand crept over the duvet to echo the greeting.

“May I join you?” Fenn set her mug on the countertop and crawled into bed with me without waiting for my permission. I couldn’t exactly refuse her; I made room for her instead. We lay face to face, our heads just above the duvet’s hem, no words passing between us.

Finally: “I do like him. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.” She pushed her glasses on top of her head. “And he’s always been so generous to me, always helped me when things were at their most grim. Paid for the Priory, twice. Made sure I saw the best psychiatrist in Edinburgh, found me a therapist in Perth. Bought me that Volvo estate so I could move my larger works around. He’s never, never asked anything of me in return. I wouldn’t have taken the money if I didn’t trust him to treat me as he always has.”

What if Julian had been like that with me? I mean, he had been like that with me, generous, courteous, polite. He had been like that in the beginning, only asking in return for some love, a little attention. He was so very hungry for those things, and his appetite hasn’t lessened over the years. It was almost comforting to hear that he could still affect those virtues convincingly, though I’d seen a few flashes that afternoon in his apartment before he’d torn the mask from his face.

I stroked her curls, so much like Alex’s, and let my hand rest on her jaw. “You could be me. You could have been me. He was so lovely to me at first. And I drowned myself in his loveliness, his protection, and care, so that I didn’t have to think any longer. I was so tired of thinking, of nurturing myself. Julian was so good at stopping all the buzzing in my head that made me think I wanted something I couldn’t have. Because he was everything I wanted, and he was mine. And then one day, I didn’t know who I was any more, but he knew. He knew I was lost to him, that I’d always fear losing him, and my fear became a weapon against me.”

Fenn moved my hand from her face, held my hand in her own. “He’s so kind to me. So attentive. There’s never been any strings attached to any of the gifts. He’s different with me, I think. Why would he have to be the same with every person?”

That might have been true had I not known what Julian was like as a friend to Alex, that he tried — and succeeded in — controlling him with money and affection just as he had me. “I want to believe that’s true. You say all you know is what you’ve seen of him. Well, I can say the same thing, and it’s not a pretty picture under all the money and smiles.”

Closing her eyes, Fenn took a deep breath. “You know he and I were together once. I know you know, and I know you know when. I hated you for so long when you took him back. I hated him, too, just a little. One day he was with me in my room and my studio and the Blue Room and the library, and the next he was back in London with no notice. Told me on the phone that he loved me — he loved me — but I was too perfect and beautiful to be his wife, too delicate to be a mother to his children, and he didn’t want me to ever be hurt again. He told me he was sparing me from all the tiresome nonsense of being his wife because he loved me so much.”

(That did sound something like Julian would say, a great big lie.)

“And now? Maybe now we have a second chance, just like you and Al. Maybe we can make it work. Maybe he doesn’t even want me that way, I don’t know.” Fenn let go of my hand. “But I want to see. The only time he ever hurt me was when he left me for you, and he’s spent years saying he’s sorry. Years! Every year you visited us, he told me.”

“In your studio,” I muttered.

“Yes, in my studio.” An image of Julian and Fenn making love in that crumbling greenhouse slid before my eyes. “But he never — we never, you know. Not after you married him. He said he’d never disrespect his marriage vows, that adultery was the very worst sin in a marriage, and he loved you very, very much.”

Julian’s lies and truths were so often woven together it was nearly impossible to sort them into different strands. His professed affection for me might have been love, or obsession, or avarice. He might have thought adultery for his wife was a mortal sin, but not for himself. I could not tell. Any or all of it might be true, or not.

And there was simply no way of convincing Fenn of her folly. She might have to be hurt so that it was all behind her. It had been as true for me. None of Alex’s admonitions stuck with me long. Jen and Jenn’s warnings about Julian were frictionless, had slipped so easily off my skin. My love, I thought, was too tremendous and Julian wasn’t like what everyone else thought of him.

I sighed for my younger self, and for Fenn, too. I asked her if she wanted to see Alex before she left, and she declined. “Wouldn’t do much of anything except make me cry,” she explained.

We spent the morning going over her portfolio — not just the new pastorals, but the two-color portraits that had earned her a little money over the years, and the intricate botanical watercolors that reminded me of Elizabeth Blackwell’s, if Blackwell’s captions had been written about death and despair instead of the names of the plants and their constituent parts. There were charcoal studies of her mother reading or gardening or mending clothes, less morose than her current gothicky tendencies. She was so brilliant, like Jenn was brilliant — she outshone us all, made us all look horribly dull, but wasn’t a braggart about it. It was simply what she did and she knew no other way. Being talented wasn’t a strange thing, it just… was.

And soon enough it was time for me to accompany Fenn to the airport — an unexpected blip in that day’s schedule that left me scrambling, as I’d planned to work that day from noon. “It’s no bother,” Fenn protested. “I know how to call an Uber. I’ll let myself out.” But I knew Alex was counting on me to get her settled on the plane, so I called in a favor with Molly to stay until 3. And even though Fenn was adamant that I was making too much of a fuss, Alex’s comfort was worth more to me than a few hours at minimum wage.

It wasn’t until we were outside of Walnut Creek that the gravity of her decision truly revealed itself to Fenn. “What am I doing, Mel? Alex only wants me to be happy, like Mummy wants me to be happy, so why am I not listening to him, too? He knows me better — no, he knows me too well. He’s always in here,” she pointed to her head, “telling me how to do things right when I know I’m doing something wrong. But I don’t know if I’m wrong. Oh fuck, I’m not making any fucking sense at all. I just think he’s wrong this time. He’s full of shite and I’m done with his meddling in my life. For now.”

We were sitting side by side in the back of a Camry, alike in our floral sundresses and sandals and braids, alike in our love (past or present or maybe-maybe) for the same callous, charming, awful man. I felt like a madam of some elegant 18th century whorehouse delivering up a tender morsel to a particularly vile customer, a customer I had once serviced myself and whose moral depravity was well-known to me. (I need to stop watching Harlots on Hulu.) Ashamed, really, and it occurred to me that Julian had engineered this nasty bookend to Fenn’s visit: either Alex offered his sister up as a sacrifice to Julian, or I did. The brother or the ex-wife, one of them would feel the pinch of humiliation. Even if we had somehow never figured out, Julian would have the satisfaction in knowing it was one of us. Foul, truly filthy and debased.

And then… she was waving good-bye, blowing me kisses as she wheeled her suitcase and portfolio towards the entrance of the airport, curls already springing free from her braid. “See you in eight weeks! I’ll text you when I get to LA, I promise, love.” She’d refused to let me walk her in, despite Alex’s insistence that I should.

Since then, Fenn has dropped crumbs of information by text every day or two. The hotel was comfortable and chic, next door to Seven Grand, as it happened, and thus around the corner from Julian. Charles and his wife gave her a splendid welcome, took her to lunch at the Ivy on the first Monday, a real “only in LA” experience. She was meeting with agents and a few other gallery owners, all of whom loved Fenn’s newest bloody landscapes and her older, dark botanicals. The weirder, the bleaker, the more menace and decay, the better. By Friday, she’d secured representation; a show with other British artists was going up in early spring at a small gallery off Mateo Street, and the botanicals would be part of it. She’d also started planning out a series of insect studies, sort of analogues to her botanical watercolors. Every text seemed breathless, buoyant, full of kisses, and curiously absent of any reference to Julian.

I am not proud to admit it, but I was stalking them both on Instagram. Julian had posted nothing since Fenn arrived, but he’s not a prolific poster. For her part, Fenn had new pics and stories up at a maddening pace — street scenes in the Arts District, mural after mural, shopping on Melrose, selfies on the Santa Monica beach; tacos and Venice and rows and rows of the macarons at Bottega Louie; the aisles of craft supplies in Moskatels and the vendors at the flower mart at 3 a.m.; getting an mint green pedicure at Kure Spa in Silver Lake. No Julian, not even a glimpse of his apartment.

By Friday afternoon, my curiosity blunted any sense of reason I had left. While Alex must have asked me three times a day if I’d heard anything about how Julian was treating his sister, Fenn pointedly did not respond to any texts on this topic. So I did what I knew was unwise, and playing directly into Julian’s tired little fancies: I called him. Feigning cramps, I slipped off to the office downstairs, closed the smoked glass door and took a deep breath before calling his number (still embarrassingly saved in Favorite Contacts).

One ring, two, three. “Well, isn’t this a lovely surprise, Melissa,” Julian drawled. “I almost thought you were ignoring me.”

Fucker, I was. “Hi, Jules. Just checking on Fenn. She seems to be having a productive visit, but I wanted your take on things. And thank you for taking care of her.” (Why the hell did I even say that?)

“Oh come on. I know why you’re calling. Your fiancé wants to know if I’m fucking his sister.” I didn’t know what was worse — his bluntness in leaping to the question that was certainly harrying me, or the dismissive way he referred to Alex, as if our new status (or almost-status) was false.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” I seethed. “Any of that. If you can’t be civil, I’ll just assume she’s doing well and end this call. Now. Bye.”

“Oh darling, that was a joke!” It did not sound like a joke. “No need to ring off, it’s been too long. Fennella is her usual odd and beautiful self, enjoying Los Angeles from what I can tell. Haven’t seen her but for a handful of times. She’s either running around with Charles and his wife, or she’s holed up in that hotel room working and will not come out for dinner. A bit infuriating, really.”

Good on you, Fenn, I thought. Take his fucking money and have some fun on your own terms. “When’s she going home?” I asked. “She was a bit vague, and Cora had no clue. Alex just wants to know –“

“If Alex really wanted to know how his sister was doing, he might not have charred all those bridges with her last weekend. He’s really quite hopeless, Liss. Don’t know why you want to marry a man who can’t hold onto money or keep control of his temper. Fenn told me all about how he made her feel… threatened.” Julian made a tsk with his tongue. “His own sister. I never thought he’d sink that low.”

The red mist began to descend on me. “You asshole.” Jesus, did I just swear at Julian? I thought.

“Ha!” he exclaimed. “Oh, I guess I’ve touched somewhere very tender on you. Used to be I knew exactly how to touch you to get you to respond, seems I still do.” I could hear the smirk over the phone. “You can tell him she’s leaving on Wednesday morning, I have to be in Miami later that evening and I don’t want her in this city without having a friend to turn to. See? I’m no, oh, what does he call me? A monster! A villain! So melodramatic, the both of you. Maybe you do suit after all.”

I was done with him, done with his drubbing of Alex and done with his casual recall of our sex life. “Go fuck yourself. I thought we could be polite but I guess we can’t. Goodbye.”

“Wait.” That panicked tone again, the one I’d heard in June, the one that said he knew he’d stepped too far, too fast. “Mel. I’m sorry. After hearing how he behaved last week, the shouting and the drinking, I’m worried for Fenn, and for you. You know, if you don’t feel safe, you can always come to me.”

I snorted. “That lie again. I heard it from Rachel’s mouth, too.”

“Fenn told me all about it over dinner at Nobu.” Our place. “Didn’t sound very kind. She knows him better than you and she was scared. Mi casa es su casa, as they say around here.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you for letting me know Fenn’s well, and leaving on Wednesday. That’s all I need to know.” I was ready to put down the phone, but I couldn’t resist prying. “Nobu?”

Julian laughed, no rancor or bitterness this time. “Color me predictable. She loved it. Took her to Bestia last night, it’s near Charles’ gallery. Wish you and I’d had a chance to go there together. Quite remarkable.”

His voice dipped a little as he continued. “Fenn is lovely. Clearly mad about me, she’s been so for years, though I always told her no. Can’t say I’m not tempted to go there again.” (Again.) “Nothing has happened between us, but I won’t promise it won’t. We’re both adults and we’d like to see what happens. Might be nothing at all. She’s beautiful, I won’t lie. But she’s a bit feral like her brother. Unpredictable. Not wife material. Not like you.”

I’d asked. I’d found a little key and opened this tiny haunted room, only to find Julian leaning over Fenn seated in that faded velvet chair, poised to kiss her. A tableau vivant, their bodies quavering as they held still and prolonged the moment of contact. But they were so, so close, his lips a hair’s breadth from her own, her head tipped back, her black curls tumbling over the back of the chair. The light streamed in through the gauzy curtains, the motes floated silently through the air. They were the ghosts of a time before I bound myself to Julian for good (there would never be a full unshackling, I realized). This was a scene that even if it hadn’t really happened, something close had. They had been lovers, and they might be again. The lives of others, past and present, not my own, no realm in which I might interfere.

It was enough to know it might happen, or not, though it probably would.