The Better Sister - Alafair Burke Page 0,1

disapproved.

These days, if I treated an assistant that way, I’d worry they’d take to Twitter or call in a blind item to Page Six. But in the early aughts, a young writer like me considered it a privilege to do the grunt work for those who had earned their spot at the top of the masthead. I was the designated silent purse-holder.

The first call to the phone stashed in the very expensive pocket of my designer dress came as dinner was being served. My parents. I let it go to voice mail. Stupidly, I actually assumed they were calling because they were proud to have a daughter at such a lavish event. They had never heard of it, of course, but I tried to explain to them when I first got the invitation that it was highly unusual for someone at my level to be included. But when they called five minutes later, and then again an hour after that, I knew it wouldn’t be about me at all.

I had two options: leave while Catherine was holding court at the City Woman table, or let it all flow into voice mail. It was possible something was wrong with Mom or Dad, but in my gut, I knew it was probably something with Nicky. It was always Nicky. I stayed put in my seat.

When another call came in during dessert, I snuck a peek at the tiny screen of my Nokia. This time it was from Nicky’s house. Yep, as suspected, it was my sister’s drama once again, perfectly timed with one of the most important opportunities I’d been given since moving to New York City to pursue a writing career. This time, I turned off the phone before stashing it in my pocket.

Catherine glanced at me as she rose from the table, which I interpreted as an invitation to follow. When she broke off for the ladies’ room after what I deemed to be an uncharacteristic smoke break outside the tent, I finally powered up my phone to check my messages. Three from my mom: “Call me,” a hang-up, and “Damn it, she’s still not answering.”

That left the most recent call—the one from Nicky. It was just like her to pick this night to implode.

When I pressed 1 to listen, it wasn’t Nicky’s voice that I heard. It was her husband, Adam.

This wasn’t the first time Adam had reached out to me about my sister, but this one was different. I’d never heard this kind of emotion before in his voice—anger, mixed with exhaustion and fear. The message itself was short. “Call me when you can, okay? It’s important.” He left me the number of the cell phone he used for work. I repeated it over and over again in my head until I dialed it.

When he picked up after two rings, he laid out the facts like a lawyer, not a husband. Nicky was at the Cleveland Clinic. As he spoke—while A-list actors and socialites mingled around me—I pictured my sister. Her long, honey-brown hair plastered against her shoulder blades. Pool-soaked clothing clinging to her thin frame. And the baby—I still called him a baby, at least—spitting up chlorinated water from his tiny lungs.

“I can’t keep going through this with her, Chloe. Not with a child in the picture. She could have really hurt him. If I hadn’t walked outside . . .”

I started to protest that Nicky would never hurt her son, but realized I had no way of knowing if that were true. Nicky would never intentionally harm anyone, but she had a way of damaging everyone who entered her orbit. She always had.

“Just tell me, Adam. Tell me why you’re really calling.”

“I need your help.”

How many times had I noticed that Adam had more in common with me than with his own wife? How many times had I held my tongue, not wanting to be accused of sabotaging the only (sort of) healthy relationship my sister had ever had? Now here we were, five hundred miles apart, connected only by a cell phone signal, and it was clear whose side I would take. Adam needed me.

Our story—independent of Nicky—would develop later, but you could say that night marked the story’s beginning. It was the moment I chose Ethan over the rest of my family, which meant I was choosing Adam.

I had no idea that four years later, I’d become the second Mrs. Adam Macintosh, or that ten years after that, I’d be the one to find