Page 38 of These Summer Storms

Forty years, and still consumed by the rules of her youth, determined to be the good child, the best behaved, the one who stayed close and gave all she had to the family. Raised from birth to be Elisabeth’s shadow, her only concession to her own desires the gap year she’d spent at nineteen in Geneva between her freshman and sophomore years at Brown, from which she’d returned rail thin, obsessed with Kierkegaard, and with a habit for Parisienne Jaune cigarettes that she’d never confess.

Now, Greta lived in a 1920s bungalow on the East Side ofProvidence, where she hosted fundraisers for uncontroversial nonprofits and milquetoast political candidates, and scheduled biweekly lunches with her mother, all while keeping the most important part of her life the kind of private reserved for airtight NDAs and offshore accounts.

And even now, with their father gone, Greta couldn’t see that she might finally make a break for it—that she could escape the heavy weight of his control. Instead, she grieved, cloaked in secrets that were barely visible, like the new freckles on the backs of her hands. Impossible to see, unless someone was looking.

Someone like Alice, whose chest went tight with anger and sadness at the realization that none of them would be able to easily escape their father’s ghost—new to the job and already exceptionally good at haunting.

But maybe they could lighten each other’s loads. “If I left,” Alice offered to her sister’s profile. “If I didn’t stay the week—you wouldn’t have to do it.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Greta whipped around to face Alice, gaze sharp and dangerous. “You can’t leave.”

“Why not?”

“Because we all have skin in this game.”

Alice shook her head. “I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. We all do. We’re all Storms. Even you. Whatever happened between you and Dad, or you and Mom, or you andus. And all that other stuff you console yourself with—the real job and the real partner and the real life and real friends…what about us?” Alice didn’t misunderstand thatus. Greta. Sam. Emily. “You owe us, Alice.”

Alice’s eyes went wide, any lingering sympathy she might have had overcome with indignation. “Ioweyou?”

“Yes. You oweme.” Greta’s voice rose. “Everything is always about you.Where’s Alice? How’s Alice? Has anyone heard from Alice?For once in your life, maybe you could think about the rest of us.”

“MaybeIcould think ofyou? What were you thinking about when heexiled me?”

“Alice.” The word was clipped and full of that firstborn arrogance that had always made them more rivals than friends.

Alice looked to the ocean, anger coming in hot. “Not one of you ever came to my defense, because all you cared about was this. Being here. The warmth of his approval.” The words whipped between them, surprisingly sharp. “And let’s not forget—the promise of an inheritance that suddenly isn’t a guarantee.”

“You love that, don’t you? Literal billions, and we could lose it all, at your whim.”

“Fuck the billions,” Alice said. “I wouldn’t pay the price for them then, and I cannot believe you’re even considering it now.”

Greta didn’t reply, and Alice spoke to the ocean. “But of course you are. You were raised to.”

“We’re not all as perfect as you are,” Greta said. “Standing in your convictions.”

Alice whirled on her sister. “That’s rich, coming from Mom’s carbon copy. If you got any more perfect, you’d be up for sainthood. Someday, you’ll climb out of Mom’s purse and let yourself make some choices on your own.”

“You’re such a bitch when you want to be,” Greta snapped, her mask slipping. Silence fell between them. What was there to say? After a long stretch, she asked, “Why do you hate it so much? Being here? What’s so hard about being with us?”

An impossible question with an impossible answer, full of words likebetrayalandfairnessandlove—and all the other things Alice wanted to say and prove and resist, and far more complex than what she was willing to share. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t stay.” She sighed and turned away. “But if I didn’t…maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

“For you.”

For us,Alice thought.

Wanting the last word—a prized possession in their family—Greta changed the subject. “I thought Griffin went to NYU.”

What did Griffin have to do with anything? “He did.”

Greta lifted her chin in the direction of the T-shirt Alice wore. The one she’d forgotten about for the last few minutes. She tugged on the hem. “Sam stole my clothes, the asshole.”

“Sam went to Harvard,” Greta said, the observation carrying a clear question.

One Alice ignored. “And how proud they must be to have him on the alumni roster. Are you done?”

Greta wasn’t done. “You know who went to the University of Delaware?”