Ex wants reconciliation, but I'm already married

*Three years ago.*

The taxi smelled like pine air freshener and the driver's lunch. I sat in the back with two shopping bags between my knees — a cashmere scarf for Dad in the navy he liked, a silk blouse for Mom, a watch for my brother Marcus that had cost me four months of part-time work in London.

"Right at the gate, miss?"

"Yes. The white house at the end."

I paid him in cash and tipped too much because I was happy. That's the part I remember best. I was happy.

The front door wasn't locked. I pushed it open with my hip, bags swinging, and called out, "I'm home — surprise — don't kill me for not telling you the flight—"

The smell hit me first. Garlic. Butter. Something with rosemary.

My mother did not cook. My mother had a chef named Antoine who did not allow other humans within six feet of his stove.

I set the bags down in the foyer.

In the living room my father was laughing. Not the polite three-syllable laugh he used at galas — a real one, head tipped back, paper folded forgotten on his knee. Marcus was leaning against the archway with a wooden spoon in his hand, telling some story with both arms. And in the middle of all of it, at the kitchen island in one of Mom's aprons, was a girl I had never seen before in my life.

She had Mom's mouth. Mom's nose. The same widow's peak I'd spent my whole adolescence hating in the mirror, except hers sat on a face that was softer than mine, prettier than mine, and laughing.

"Oh," Mom said, when she finally saw me. The wooden spoon paused mid-stir. "Fiona. You're early."

"My flight was early."

Nobody moved.

"Who is this?" I asked. I tried to make it light. It came out flat.

Marcus crossed the room. He put a hand on my elbow — not a hug, the hand on the elbow, the hand you use to walk a stranger to a chair — and his face had something in it I'd never seen before. Pity. My brother, who had once held my head over a toilet at fifteen while I threw up tequila, was looking at me with pity.

"Fi. We need to talk."

"About what."

"In the study. Come on."

"About *what*, Marcus."

His grip tightened.

"That's Elena," he said quietly. "She's — Fi, the hospital called us six weeks ago. There was a mix-up. Twenty-four years ago. She's the one Mom gave birth to."

The foyer tile was cold even through my shoes. I looked down at it. There was a scuff near the toe of my left boot from a cobblestone in Edinburgh. I remember staring at the scuff and thinking very clearly, *that scuff is more mine than this house is.*

"That's not funny."

"It's not a joke."

"Marcus—"

"DNA twice. Two different labs. Dad insisted."

I don't know how long I stood there. The rosemary smell got thicker. Somebody — Elena — laughed in the kitchen at something my father said, and my father laughed back, and the sound was so easy, so practiced already, like they'd been rehearsing it for weeks without me.

My knees didn't give. I want to say they did, because that would be cleaner. They didn't. I just stood there with my hand on the strap of a shopping bag containing a navy cashmere scarf for a man who, six weeks ago, had stopped being my father and forgotten to send the memo.

"Does she know," I said.

"Yes."

"How long has she been here."

"Three weeks."

"Three—" My throat closed. I pushed the word out anyway. "Three *weeks.*"

"We didn't know how to tell you. You were finishing your thesis."

"You didn't know how to tell me."

"Fi."

"Get your hand off my arm."

He let go.

---

Mom found me on the back terrace twenty minutes later. I hadn't cried. I'd just been standing there with my palms flat on the stone railing, watching a koi move under the surface of the pond, watching it open and close its small stupid mouth.

"Fiona." She didn't touch me. "We still love you."

"Okay."

"You'll always be a part of this family."

*A part of.* I caught the preposition. I held it in my mouth like a pebble.

"But you understand," she went on, "things have to be — adjusted. Elena has missed a great deal. And there are matters of inheritance, of the family name, that—"

"Just say it, Mom."

She did say it. Not that day. Over the next four months, in pieces, the way you bleed someone slow. Elena moved into my bedroom because the light was better. My allowance was suspended; Elena needed a wardrobe. My name came off the foundation board. And then, in October, my father called me into the study and slid a photograph across the desk.

The man in it was sixty-three. He owned a shipping company in Macau. He had a face like a wet bag of flour.

"He's offered a very generous arrangement," my father said, not looking up. "It would help the family considerably."

"I'm twenty-three."

"He's a widower. He's lonely. You'd be well cared for."

"I'm twenty-*three*, Dad."

"Don't make a scene, Fiona."

I made a scene. I made several. None of them worked.

---

I called Joe from a pay phone outside a bodega on 6th because I didn't trust my own line anymore. My hand was shaking so hard I dropped the quarter twice.

"Joe. It's me."

"Fi? Why are you calling from—"

"I need you to marry me."

A pause. I heard a woman's voice in the background of his end. I heard him say, *one second, babe,* and a door close.

"Say that again."

"Marry me. Now. This week. I don't care how. They're trying to sell me to a man in Macau and if I'm already married they can't, they legally can't, please, Joe—"

"Fiona."

"We've been together three years. *Three years.* You said—"

"Slow down."

"Don't tell me to slow down."

He laughed.

It was a small laugh. Almost gentle. That was the worst part. He didn't sound cruel. He sounded *amused.*

"Fi, baby. Listen to yourself."

"Joe—"

"You think I'm marrying you *now?* When you don't have a dime to your name? When your dad just took you off every account?" Another laugh, shorter. "Sweetheart. Come on. I liked you when you were the Lockwood heiress. The real one. That was a fun look on you."

The receiver got heavier. The plastic against my ear felt like it weighed ten pounds.

"You don't mean that."

"I absolutely mean that. Don't be dramatic."

"Three years, Joe."

"Three fun years. Don't ruin it."

"I'm asking you to *save my life.*"

"You're asking me to ruin mine." His voice flattened. The amusement dropped out of it like a coin through a slot. "Forget it, Fiona. Whatever you thought we were — we weren't. Okay? Go find some other sucker. And lose this number. I mean it."

The line clicked.

I stood there with the dead receiver in my hand. A man pushed past me to use the phone and I didn't move, so he swore at me and went to the next one. The bodega's neon sign buzzed above my head, pink and broken, flickering on the wet sidewalk. *BEER * EGGS * LOTTO.*

I read those three words about forty times.

My stomach turned over once, hard, and I bent at the waist and dry-heaved into the gutter. Nothing came up. There was nothing in me to come up. I'd stopped eating in September.

When I straightened, my vision had little black flowers in the corners of it. I wiped my mouth on the back of my wrist. The wrist was so thin I could see the tendon move.

I had eleven dollars in my pocket. I had no apartment of my own. I had a father who was selling me, a mother who'd already let me go, a brother who looked at me with pity, and a boyfriend who had just told me, in so many words, that I had been a costume he liked the fit of.

I started walking. I didn't know where. I just walked. East, I think, because the wind was at my back and I didn't have the strength to push against anything anymore.