Page 39 of The Princess and the P.I.
“Fiona, just tell him you can’t do it,” Esi said. “Tell Maurice to let me go. Let me try.”
Fiona didn’t know what to say here. She didn’t want to bow out and let her sister take over, as comforting as that had been in the past. She didn’t want comfort, safety, and sameness. She wanted her own thing.
“Esi, you sound like you want to do this instead of your practice.” Fiona chuckled. When Esi looked away, Fiona furled her brow.
“Esi. What?”
“Fiona, I paused for a moment to come see you, and honestly, I’ve never felt lighter,” Esi blurted out.
It felt wrong.
“Esi…it’s been three days. You probably just needed a vacation,” Fiona said.
“Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be going back. So why not learn a trade? You see that I have an aptitude. And you all need a medical consultant.”
Fiona’s smile was fading. Something was very wrong.
“So big sister is here to help.” Esi spread her arms and shook her hands in the ta-da motion.
“I could work with Maurice, but he’d hate it,” Esi mused. “Men like him are terrified of their intellectual equal. That’s why he likes you. No challenge, you know?” She saw Fiona’s face and amended, “Not that you can help it. You just haven’t seen that much of the world.”
“But you are a doctor…you loved being a doctor.” It was all Fiona could think to say. Esi was solid in the family WhatsApp. Grades never slipping, face so beautiful every elder called her father blessed. Why does she want this too?
“Maybe I loved the praise,” Esi said, shuffling though a box of evidence. “Shall we?”
Fiona’s smile was pulled across her face—tight and uncomfortable.
I was just getting a sense of myself that felt real.
Sometimes Esi had a way of telling Fiona and everyone around her who Fiona was.
The danger was that it felt true. Everything Esi said about her—even when it was terrible—felt right.
But Fiona was becoming something else, too—something new, shell pink and pulsing—that she was excited about.
I don’t want to give it up.
After a silence that felt too long, Esi scoffed in astonishment.
“Well, don’t sound too excited, you might choke.” Esi pulled back to look at Fiona.
“Esi, I think you’re a good doctor…and—”
“It’s not about being a good doctor,” Esi snapped. “What was Maurice whispering in your ear before I came in? Was he asking me to leave?”
“Esi, of course not. It’s just that we have a way of working—”
“And so, you or, more likely, Maurice wants me out of your little love den,” Esi said, exhaling dramatically.
She shook her head like she couldn’t believe she even had to spell it out.
“You think this thing with Maurice, where you let him grope you at two a.m. and he hides your face in a paper bag during the day is ‘a way of working’? I love you, but someone has got to be straight with you. You are overreaching.”
She held up her hand, fingers poised like she was about to lay down commandments.
“One.” She jabbed her index finger. “His sister? She’s Oprah rich. Not like has-a-nice-house-in-Bowie rich. Rich rich.”
Fiona didn’t exactly understand why that counted as her overreaching.
“Two.” Middle finger now. “He wants nothing more than Dad’s head on a spike. Nothing. It’s his entire personality.
“Three.” Ring finger. “He’s drank, smoked, snorted, and popped more things than I can even pronounce. You, meanwhile, called red wine ‘ginandjuice’ like it was one word.”
“That was ten years ago!” Fiona defended herself.
“Finally.” She brought her pinkie up. The most casual, the most devastating. She pressed it home with the kind of certainty that made Fiona’s stomach twist before Esi even spoke.
“Four. No new dress from Ross is gonna convince that three-headed Hydra running interference on his love life that you deserve their boy king.”
Fiona blinked the dampness from her lashes. Her sister’s words were aimed to devastate. And they had stung. But Fiona watched Esi, the way her eyes scanned Fiona’s face. She wanted a sign of retreat.
The realization came swift and certain.
She needs me to stop.
Fiona felt the weight of Esi’s circumstances settle in her chest: her sister’s practice temporarily shuttered, her unexpected return home to the constant clash with their father. She doesn’t want to be here. She has to be here.
“Esi.” Fiona looked into her sister’s nervous eyes. “When did the church start blackmailing you?”