“Rowan?” a venture capitalist said when someone mentioned Boston. “Darius Rowan? He and Forester had quite the rivalry years back. Forester backed the right startup. Rowan backed the competitor. Forester made millions. Rowan nearly went under.”
Later, I asked Zevian about it.
He was quiet for a moment. “I knew who you were when we met. Not the details, but I knew you had been engaged to Rowan.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wanted you to know me as myself, not as a man attached to your past.”
I should have been angry. Instead, I felt something like symmetry. The man my sister had stolen belonged to a world where men like Zevian had already surpassed him. And yet Zevian had never used that fact to impress me, never turned my wound into his victory.
Two years into our marriage, we began trying for a baby. Month after month, nothing happened. Then specialists. Tests. Procedures. Hope rising and falling until I hated calendars. Zevian held me through every disappointment and never once made my body feel like a failed project.
Then Mom got sick.
Stage four pancreatic cancer. Eight months from diagnosis to goodbye. Zevian and I flew to Boston immediately, and I took leave from work to help care for her in the house where Odora and I had grown up. Mom faced death the way she had faced life, worrying more about us than herself. Even in pain, she asked whether Dad had eaten, whether I was sleeping, whether Odora had called.
Odora did call sometimes. She visited too, though she and I moved around each other like strangers sharing a narrow hallway. Mom watched us with sorrow she tried to hide.
One evening, while I adjusted her pillows, she caught my hand. Her skin felt paper-thin.
“Wendy,” she whispered, “promise me you’ll try with your sister.”
My throat closed. “Mom.”
“Not because she deserves it. Because you deserve peace. Life is too short to carry a stone in your chest forever.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Try,” she said. “For me. A little.”
Three days later, she died holding my hand.
I called Odora myself. She answered on the fourth ring.
“Mom’s gone,” I said.
For several seconds, there was only her breathing. Then she broke. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
Planning a funeral with a sister you have hated is a strange kind of torture. We chose flowers, hymns, readings. We sat at the same kitchen table where she had once declared victory over my ruined engagement. Neither of us mentioned it. Dad moved through the house like someone had removed all the air from him.
The morning of the burial, rain darkened the windows. I dressed in my childhood bedroom, hands trembling as I fastened my earrings. Zevian stood behind me in the mirror.
“I’m right beside you today,” he said. “Whatever happens.”
At the funeral home, I greeted relatives, neighbors, Mom’s church friends, women who smelled like powder and grief. Dad leaned heavily on me. Then Odora arrived with Darius, and the room changed.
She looked expensive, composed, almost triumphant. Darius looked less certain. His eyes found Zevian once, then darted away before recognition fully landed. I thought perhaps I had imagined it.
After stiff greetings, Odora asked to speak privately. I followed because I would not make a scene beside my mother’s casket.
In the side room, she closed the door and looked me over. “You look thin.”
“Grief does that.”
She twisted her ring. “Darius and I bought a summer house on Cape Cod. Eight bedrooms. Private beach access. We’re thinking about starting a family. His company just acquired two startups.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “Was that what you needed to tell me?”
Her smile sharpened. “I thought you might want to know how well we’re doing. Poor you. Still alone at thirty-eight. I got the man, the money, and the mansion.”
The old pain stirred, but it could not stand. I almost pitied her. All that effort, all those diamonds, and still she needed me to look wounded for her life to feel real.
I smiled. “Have you met my husband yet?”
I opened the door. Zevian stood just outside, speaking with the funeral director. I called him in.
Darius stepped into the hallway at the same moment, and when he saw Zevian clearly, his face drained.
“Forester,” he said.
“Rowan,” Zevian replied, polite and cold. “It’s been years.”
Odora looked between them. “You know each other?”
“Business circles,” Zevian said.
Darius swallowed. “You two are married?”
“Two wonderful years,” I said, slipping my hand into Zevian’s.
Odora stared at him. “Zevian Forester. Forester Investments?”
“The same.”
For the first time since we were children, Odora looked as if someone else had taken the toy from her hands.
Darius tried to recover. “We should catch up. I’ve been meaning to reach out about possible collaboration.”
“My schedule is quite full,” Zevian said. “But you can contact my office.”
It was not cruel. That made it worse.
Before anything more could happen, the funeral director announced the service was beginning. We returned to the main room under a cloud of whispers. Then Dad grasped his chest.
“Dad!” I cried.
Zevian called for help while several people rushed forward. A doctor among the mourners checked him in a private room and said it seemed like stress, not a heart attack, but my fear burned through every other feeling. Odora followed us, pale and shaken.
“Should we call an ambulance?” she asked. “Is he okay?”
For twenty minutes, we sat in tense silence, united only by fear for our father. When Dad insisted on continuing, we returned to the service changed in some small way. Grief had stripped away some of the theater.
I gave the eulogy first. I spoke of Mom’s kindness, her strength, her handwritten lunch notes, the way she could turn an ordinary kitchen into the safest place in the world. When Odora stood after me, her voice failed halfway through a childhood story. Without deciding to, I rose and stood beside her, placing a hand lightly on her back.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Take your time.”
She finished through tears. At the cemetery, rain fell softly as we lowered Mom into the earth. Darius stood apart, checking his watch. Odora stayed close to Dad.
The reception at the house was crowded with casseroles, coffee, and memories. Darius drank too much. Zevian was pulled into conversations by business people who clearly knew him, and I caught fragments about Darius’s struggling company, risky acquisitions, debt dressed up as growth. I began to wonder if Odora’s mansion was less a home than a stage set.
The next day, Zevian had to return to Chicago for a board meeting. “I can reschedule,” he said.
“No,” I told him. “Dad needs help with Mom’s things. I’ll stay a few days. I’ll be okay.”
After taking him to the airport, I returned to the house and found Dad in Mom’s garden with a photo album on his lap. “She labeled everything,” he said, showing me her careful handwriting beneath each photo. “Said we’d want to remember someday.”
That afternoon, I sorted through Mom’s closet. Every dress carried her. The blue one from my college graduation. The floral one from Sunday brunches. The gray one from my engagement party, when she had watched Odora watch Darius and known before I did.
In her nightstand, I found a leather journal. She had written for years. There were entries about Dad, recipes, church events, and many about her daughters. Her pain over our separation filled page after page. The last entry, written two weeks before she died, said, My greatest regret is leaving with my girls still estranged. A mother wants to fix everything. I could not fix this. I pray they find their way back somehow.