Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 147966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 740(@200wpm)___ 592(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 740(@200wpm)___ 592(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
“Isn’t that all the more reason for you to be kind?”
I stifle a sigh. The pair used to be the best of friends. I don’t have siblings, so there is something about the change in their dynamic I don’t understand. The insults, the constant competing, warfare that pivots to an alliance in a heartbeat, but only to suit their purposes.
The only thing I can put the change down to is Felix’s age. The flip side of this is that he ought to know better. To do better. He’s leaving for boarding school soon, and I can’t say I’m looking forward to him being in Switzerland. In fact, it would seem the only person ready for the change is him. It doesn’t seem like two minutes ago he was stressing over his first day in kindergarten.
The thought catches somewhere beneath my ribs. No more breakfast squabbles and bad moods. No more arguments over card games or movies. By the time he comes home for his first school vacation, the dynamic will have changed. And each visit, he’ll seem further away. From her. From me.
“You are older than Sylvie. Bigger, as you were so pleased to point out. But that doesn’t make you better than her. It gives you a responsibility.”
“To what?” His brows pull down.
“To be the person she can rely on,” I say evenly. “There will be enough people in this world willing to make your sister feel she isn’t good enough. Your job is not to be one of them.”
His eyes narrow. “What do you mean? What people?”
I inhale then pause. How to explain this without giving him a lecture so far above his head that he’ll stop listening to halfway through? “People who will assume they know what Sylvie can and can’t do simply because she’s a girl. “
“What people?”
“People who will expect her to be quieter than you. To keep herself smaller, be less ambitious, perhaps. More agreeable. People who might listen to you first even on topics she knows more about.”
“Like llamas?”
“Like llamas.”
“Why would they do that?” He looks genuinely confused.
“Because men have spent an age telling themselves they are superior. And because some ideas are hard to get rid of.”
“Do you think that way?”
“That women are less?” I shake my head. “If I ever did, meeting your mother put me straight.”
“Sometimes I don’t remember her so well,” he says sadly. “Primrose says when we miss Maman, we can close our eyes and think of her, and our hearts will fill with love.”
“Did she?” Something twists strangely inside me.
He nods. “It feels like my chest is filled with sunshine.”
“Love can feel like that.”
“Maman would be disappointed in how I have behaved.” As his eyes brim with tears, I find myself fighting a lump in my own throat.
“No.” I reach out, putting my hand to his slender shoulder. “She would never be disappointed in you.” I touch my hand to his hair. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to do better. We all should.” The strange twist deepens. I should take my own advice. Respect Primrose’s choices and leave her the fuck alone. I haven’t touched her since that morning in my office, though I’ve undressed her with my gaze a thousand times. And she knows it.
“I didn’t mean to tell Sylvie that being a boy made me better. I just mean I am better than her at Uno. And swimming. But she’s better at drawing and horse riding, and she makes people smile with her jokes and silly dances. I can’t do that.”
“Maybe you ought to tell her the things she’s good at.”
He gives a jerky nod. “I will.”
I push on. “In your life, the way you behave towards a person with your words is going to make that person feel this way or that, whether you mean it to or not. You must be mindful of this happening.”
“I will, I promise.”
“And as you grow, how you use your body will make a person feel those same feelings.”
“You mean because I will be bigger than them?”
“Yes.” Physically. Socially. “That goes for your sister and your classmates, the girls in your future you will date. Just be aware.”
His next nod is pensive. “I want to be a good man. Like you.”
I don’t have an answer for that. “You don’t have to fix the whole world, son. But you can make sure you aren’t helping to make your sister feel smaller in hers.”
“May I go and talk with her?” He looks like he’d rather not, and that’s what makes it more important that he does.
“I think she’d like that.”
He stands, then lifts his chair under the table. “I will try better.”
“That’s all any of us can do.”
As he leaves the terrace, Primrose comes the other way. Her smile is a soft thing just for him. In return, he gives a very formal nod. Does she see he’s just a kid? That he will do better? I don’t want her to judge him, I suppose.