Mid-afternoon the storm abated and the plows slowly started making their way through the city. Wet snow clung to the branches and trunks of trees, to cars, to house windows. The last of the piercing light was fading fast, now blocked by the roofs of the rowhouses to the west.
Kate sat opposite her brother with a chess board between them. Julian watched from the kitchen, pasta on the stove, butter and garlic sauce in a pan. "Five more minutes," he called.
"Oh!" Kate jumped up. "Salad! Let me do the salad."
Tom groaned. "Nooo. No vegetables. Finish the game."
She ignored her brother, pulling lettuce and carrots and cucumber from the refrigerator. "Oh! I'm sorry," she said, bumping Julian. "I'm sorry."
"It's fine."
"Get a room!" Tom shouted.
Kate and Julian glared. He didn't notice.
Dinner was fine. Kate and Julian both had a habit of putting their best faces forward, independently of one another. Any issue that arose between them was just that, between them, and neither would say or do anything to allude it in the presence of another person. It was understood; a silent pact.
There was one point, a stolen moment when Tom trekked out to the shed for firewood, that Julian acknowledged the night before.
"Can we talk? Later?" He whispered it, as if Tom could hear them through the closed door and howling winds. "Please."
"If you start with an apology."
"You know as well as I do that isn't going to happen. I told you my feelings -- that was my only regret, Kate, letting you think I didn't love you. The rest? Well, you know me. You've known me for years. When you told me how you felt--" he lowered his voice again, just in case, "you knew what you were getting yourself into. We both know that. I told you to get away but you didn't. I hurt you, you came back. I hurt you again, you came back. If you don't love me anymore, fine, just say so. But you have to say it. If you say it, I'll back off. If you do love me in spite of all this, everything I've done -- and I think you do -- I'm considering that consent. Just like always."
Tom came back in, the door banging behind him. "Woo! It's freezing. Help, I can't see. Julian take some."
Kate stood back as the boys fumbled with firewood, fuming only because Julian got the last word. He always did. What he said was reasonable enough. She did knew him. Not only through her brother, but in high school when he spent the night but couldn't sleep she stayed up with him to play video games, watch movies. They spent hours upon hours confiding things to each other; Tom was not only oblivious to the time spent, but also the secrets they shared.
Once, in early fall, when Julian was in his senior year, he confided a particularly hefty secret.
"I knocked her down," he said, telling Kate of a softball game in gym class. "It was an accident, but I slammed right into her and knocked her down." He shook his head, remembering. "You have to swear you won't tell anyone."
"I won't," she whispered, fifteen years old, enamoured.
He lay his hands, palms down, fingers spread, on the carpet in the basement. "I liked it."
Kate was confused, only slightly. "Because you don't like her?"
"I like her just fine. I think she's pretty, even. I just...would sometimes rather knock a girl down than, you know."
Kate nodded, her stomach in knots, half out of jealousy, half excitement. "I would..." She stopped, blushing a deep red. "Nevermind."
"What?"
"I'm embarrassed."
"Tell me anyway."
Burying her face in her arm, she admitted, "I would sometimes rather get knocked down than...you know."
Julian nodded, taking note. He was eighteen and still thought of Kate as a little sister, but in the future, he realized, this information might come in handy.
And now, over a decade later, it had.
Hours later, Kate lay on the living room floor, asleep, beside her brother. Tom, yawning repeatedly, squinted at his cards. "Do you have a...two?"
"Go fish."
He scowled and took a card.
