PART 1 — THE DISH
Ten years married. Two children. I would have put my hand in a fire for Callan Wick.
My sister Sasha has been doing it since about 2016.
How did you end up with somebody like Callan? I’m jealous. I want one.
Always with a laugh on the end so that minding it made you the problem.
When she married Bram Prewitt in the September before last I was relieved in a way I did not examine, because he is a good man and he was mad about her.
We drove over for the anniversary weekend. Dinner on the Friday, the party in the garden on the Saturday.
At dinner Callan pulled her chair out for her, which he does for everybody, and she sat down and said:
“If I’d met you first I’d have picked differently.”
I had a mouthful of water and nearly went into it. Bram went scarlet.
And I waited for my husband to say something, and he smiled into his glass.
“Sasha. Don’t. He’s my husband.”
She laughed like I had said something mad. “Oh, relax. You know I’m joking.”
She was at his elbow for the entire evening telling him what a good husband he was and barely saying eleven words to Bram.
Upstairs I said, “Why are you letting her do that?”
And Callan said, “I love you, sweetheart. I’ll have a word.”
I wanted that to be enough and I let it be enough, and that is the first of my own decisions in this.
The next day the rest of them came. My parents, an aunt, cousins. About thirty in that garden.
Bram and I were carrying food out of the kitchen and I had a serving dish in both hands when there was a noise outside.
I came through the back door and stopped.
My sister was kissing my husband in her own garden in front of thirty people.
In front of our mother.
He came out of it when he saw me.
“It was a dare.”
And Sasha stepped back, still smiling.
“Sorry, sis. He kisses better than Bram. I might keep him.”
I could not move. I had that dish in both hands and I honestly could not work out what to do with it.
So she came across and took it out of my hands and put it down on the table.
“Give me that before you drop it. It was a joke.”
Thirty people. My father four feet away.
Nobody said one word.
And then, from behind me, Bram Prewitt laughed. One short laugh with nothing in it at all.
I could not see what he was doing because he was at my shoulder.
But I watched my sister’s face stop, and I watched my husband go grey.
“Actually,” Bram said. “I’ve got a present for you.”
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