Page 14 of These Summer Storms

So they tucked their truths away and retreated to their respective appliances.

“She’s pissed,” Sam said.Truce.

“Mom?” Alice scooped coffee into the pot. “That’s normal, no? Stages of grief stuff?”

“Please. Like we didn’t all know he’d die in some kind of hot-air-balloon-sky-diving-submersible-travel-to-space shit.”

“Jesus, Sam.”

“Like it’s not true?”

Franklin Storm had died in a gliding accident, which the Internet was surely already calling not only the most billionaire death to ever billionaire, but also the most Franklin Storm death to ever Franklin Storm. Her father had never found a way to defy death he didn’t immediately attempt, and usually for cameras.

“Yeah, but it’s not like we expected it to beyesterday.”

He took a bite of his English muffin. “Fine.”

“Try to have some…”

“Some what?”

Humanity? Empathy? Alice shook her head. Empathy wasn’t a family trait for the Storms. It had never been rewarded. “I don’t know. He’sdead.”

“And it’s a big fucking deal, big enough to bringyouhome,” he said before crunching into his muffin again, loud and extravagant, making one of those points that brothers loved to make, as though they meant something.

The teakettle screamed.

“Yeah. I know. Big enough to make you talk to me,” she said, knowing it was futile to point out that her siblings had watched her leave and never said a word. Franklin might have been the catalyst for her leaving home, but it was the rest of the family that kept her away, too afraid of how he might punish them if they did anything else.

“That reminds me…I have an NDA somewhere for you to sign.” He meant it to be funny. It wasn’t.

Alice poured boiling water into the coffeepot, saved from filling thesilence that fell between them when the kitchen door opened, letting in a wash of early morning sunlight and Greta, the eldest of the Storm siblings. “Oh my gosh!You’rehere!” Greta said, sounding more shocked than Alice would have liked.

She swallowed her irritation and opened her arms, playing unflappable. “Surprise,” she said.

“I mean, of course you’re here.”

Silence fell, just long enough to be awkward before Greta crossed to Alice and hugged her, so fast it almost didn’t happen.

When they pulled apart, Alice filled the weird silence with, “How are you…doing?”

“I’m fine,” Greta said, unsurprisingly parroting their mother as she ran a hand through her long sandy-blond hair, a perfect match to Sam’s, and down the billowing fabric of the tank she wore over black yoga pants. “I was”—she waved to the door—“taking a walk.”

It was a broad lie, one Greta had told a thousand times over the years. Everyone knew exactly where the eldest Storm sibling went in the evenings after she thought the whole house was asleep, but now wasn’t the time, so Alice elected not to comment.

Sam had no such tact. “You know, Greta, now that he’s dead, you don’t have to hide it.”

“Hide what?” Greta said, her voice rising an octave as she fiddled with her diamond tennis bracelet.

Alice pulled a mug down off a large open shelf. “I think he means you and Tony.”

“What about me and Tony?” Greta asked before she realized she’d broken the cardinal rule of the Storms—never accept the premise of a question. She struggled to recover, spine going impossibly straighter. “Tony, Dad’s Tony?”

“NotDad’sTony anymore. I think it’s fair to say you get him in the will.”

Alice looked up. “Sam!”

“Come on! It was a joke!” He spread his arms wide. “Like we aren’t all thinking about it.”

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