PAIN

What Sisters Are For

Mina Park had inherited exactly one thing from their mother, and it was not the china, or the modest house in Wilmington, or even the stubbornness that had defined Grace Han right up until the last week of her life. It was the ability to look at Sera and know, within about four seconds, whether she was actually fine or simply performing fine for an audience that included herself.

She used that ability the moment Sera opened her apartment door on Thursday night, take out bag in one hand, wine bottle tucked under her arm like a football.

"You've been crying," Mina said, by way of hello.

"I have not."

"Your eyes do this thing. They get shiny and a little swollen at the inner corner. You've had it since we were kids. You cried at that documentary about the whales and tried to tell me it was allergies."

"It was pollen season."

"It was February." Mina pushed past her into the apartment, set the takeout on the counter with the efficiency of a woman who had done this exact routine more times than either of them cared to count over the last five years, and started unpacking cartons without waiting for permission. "Sit. Talk. I brought the good wine, which means I already know tonight is not a one glass night."

Sera sat, because there was no version of resisting Mina that had ever actually worked, not once in thirty two years, and because some small stubborn part of her had been waiting all day for exactly this, someone to sit across a counter from her and not require her to have her feelings organized before she was allowed to have them.

"He's back," she said again, the same two words she'd used on the phone two nights ago, as if repetition might eventually make them smaller.

"I know. You told me. Working on Whitfield Hall, structural consultant, forced into each other's orbit indefinitely." Mina poured two glasses without asking whether Sera wanted one. "You also told me that was the only thing that happened that day, which I did not believe for one second, because you have never once in your life sounded like that over a work assignment."

Sera wrapped both hands around her glass and did not drink from it.

"There was an accident," she said. "On the way home. Nothing happened. The car's fine. I'm fine."

Mina went very still in the particular way she went still when something mattered more than her face was letting on. "What kind of accident."

"A truck merged. I overcorrected. The car spun out, clipped the guardrail, that's it. I wasn't hurt."

"That's not an answer to what I asked."

"It's the whole story, Mina."

"It's the outside of the story." Mina reached across the counter and put her hand over Sera's, stilling the restless motion of her thumb against the stem of the wine glass that Sera hadn't even noticed she was doing. "I've known you our entire lives. You don't shake like this over a fender bender. What happened in the car."

Sera looked down at her sister's hand over hers, small and warm and so much like their mother's hand it sometimes ached to look at directly, and felt the careful architecture she'd built around the last two days begin, very quietly, to give way.

"For a second," she said, and her voice came out smaller than she meant it to, "I don't think I tried to stop it."

The apartment went very quiet. Somewhere outside, a car alarm chirped once and went silent.

"Sera."

"It wasn't— I don't mean I wanted to. I don't think I wanted to. It was just this half second where the wheel felt heavier than it should have, and some part of me was almost curious what would happen if I let it stay heavy, and then instinct took over and I pulled it back and it was fine, it's fine, nothing happened, but I keep thinking about that half second and I don't know what to do with it."

Mina did not say anything for a long moment. She had the particular stillness of someone deciding, in real time, whether to be frightened or careful, and choosing careful, because she understood her sister well enough to know that fear, offered too visibly, would only make Sera retreat further into the fine, I'm fine, nothing happened performance she'd been running since childhood.

"Have you told anyone else this," Mina asked finally.

"No."

"Not Dad."

"God, no."

"Have you thought about talking to someone. A professional. Not because anything is wrong with you," she added quickly, seeing Sera's face close over, "but because you buried Mom, and then you buried your entire relationship with Nathaniel without ever actually processing either thing, and now both of them are apparently sitting in the same car with you when you drive home in the rain, and that seems like a lot for one person to carry without help."

"I don't need help. I need him to tell me the truth."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

Sera pulled her hand back and picked up her wine glass properly this time, drinking enough to give herself something to do besides answer. Mina let the silence sit for a moment before trying a different angle, the way she always did, patient in a way that looked like changing the subject but never actually was.

"Tell me about him," Mina said. "Not the leaving. Him. What was today like, actually, before the part where you almost drove off a bridge."

"I did not almost drive off a bridge."

"Sera."

"Fine." Sera exhaled, and something in her shoulders came down half an inch, the way it always did when Mina refused to let her keep performing calm. "He found the actual problem with the east wing in about ten minutes. Everyone else had been arguing about whether the building was even worth saving, and he just looked at it and found the one thing that was actually wrong, instead of the thing that looked wrong on the surface. He used to do that with everything. Not just buildings."

"With you," Mina said. It was not a question.

"With me." Sera turned the glass slowly on the counter, watching the wine catch the light. "He always knew what was actually going on with me before I said anything. It used to feel like the safest thing in the world, being known like that. Now I keep thinking about how a person who can read you that well had five years to decide exactly what to say and what not to say when he finally showed his face again, and somehow what he chose was nothing at all."

"Do you still want him to explain it? Or do you just want to be angry at him without complications?"

The question landed harder than Mina probably intended, and Sera looked up sharply, ready to be defensive, and found instead that she did not have a fast answer.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I've spent five years being angry because it was simpler than the alternative. If he actually tells me why, I don't get to be simple anymore."

Mina nodded slowly, like this was the most honest thing her sister had said all week, which it probably was.

"For what it's worth," she said, refilling both their glasses without being asked this time, "I never believed the version where he just stopped loving you. I watched that man for two years before the wedding. Nobody fakes looking at someone the way he looked at you. Whatever he's hiding, I don't think it's that he wanted to leave."

"Then why did he."

"That," Mina said, "is apparently the whole book you're stuck inside of right now. I can't write the ending for you. I can just make sure you're not doing it alone." She glanced toward the window, where the rain from two nights ago had finally cleared into a hard, clean autumn night, stars actually visible for once over the city glow. "Which reminds me. Dad called today."

Sera's stomach dropped half an inch, purely reflexive. "About Daniel."

"About Daniel." Mina made a face that fell somewhere between apologetic and amused. "He wants to have him over for dinner Sunday. Officially, quote, because it would be nice for the family to properly get to know him, unquote. Unofficially because Dad has decided Daniel Ahn is a sign from the universe that you're finally moving on and he would like to encourage that sign as loudly and as often as possible."

"Daniel's a good man."

"Daniel is a lovely, boring accountant who has never once in his life had a half second on a bridge where the wheel felt heavier than it should," Mina said, not unkindly. "I'm not saying don't go to dinner. I'm saying don't let Dad talk you into settling for steady just because steady feels safer than whatever's happening with Nathaniel. Those are two different kinds of decisions and you deserve to make them separately, with your eyes open, not because you're trying to outrun a feeling."

Sera didn't answer right away. She thought instead of Daniel's careful, pleasant hands, always folded the same way on the table, nothing underneath them she would ever need to go looking for. She thought of Nathaniel's hand flat against old plaster in a condemned east wing, finding exactly what was wrong before anyone else even knew where to look.

She was still thinking about it when her phone buzzed on the counter between them, screen lighting up with a text from a number she had deleted five years ago and somehow still knew on sight.

Did you get home safe the other night. I heard about the roads by the river.

Mina, reading upside down without a hint of shame, went very quiet.

"How does he know about the accident," she said. "You said no one else knew."

Sera stared at the screen, at the ten plain words that should not have been able to make her chest go tight like this, and realized, with a cold drop of understanding, that she had never actually told anyone the accident happened near the river. Not Mina. Not her father. No one who could have passed the information along.

Which meant either someone had seen her that night and mentioned it to exactly the wrong person, or Nathaniel Cole had been keeping closer track of her than five years of silence should have allowed.