Page 30 of Sweet Ruin

“You sure? I don’t mind.”

Ten years of marriage and he has never offered to help me haul a tray. Now, he’s got a whole courier service running.

There’s an ulterior motive here. Has to be.

He wants to know where I am and what I’m doing. That’s all this is.

“I’m sure,” I tell him. “You’d only rearrange my trunk and then I’d have to redo it.”

I click the photo into place. My sister’s naked waist, dead center, black background. Undeniable. I can even see that stupid heart tattoo just above her hip bone.

“Did your mother say what time dinner is?” he asks.

“Seven.”

“Gotcha. And then what, the whole thing after? Dessert, coffee, the slideshow?”

Ah. There it is.

He’s asking about the schedule. Because he wants to know when the gap opens up for another edition of Sneak Around Behind Delilah’s Back. When fifty people will be busy looking at graduation photos so he and Vivian can go find a coat closet to bone in.

I keep my voice bored. “Yeah. Dinner at seven. Slideshow after. Same as every year, minus one person.”

“Yeah. First one without him.” I can hear him wince. “You gonna be alright filling his shoes?”

Bitterness pours out of me. “Gee, I dunno. My dad’s dead, and it’s Christmas, and I’m currently slaving away at the shop by myself. So if that’s ‘alright,’ then yeah, I’m alright.”

The awkward pause that follows is too much—as is the risk of me saying something even more scathing—so I decide to wrap it up.

“I gotta go, Conn. I’ll see you at my mom’s.”

I don’t know or care what he’ll say to that. I just hang up and get back to work.

Little by little, it all starts to come together. It’s painful to relive these memories now because they’re all so tainted, but I bite down and white-knuckle my way through.

Here’s 2017, my mother’s fiftieth. Two dozen people in the photo, and there’s Viv, dead center with her chin up and her hand on her hip like the photographer flew in for her.

Here’s Easter. Viv is on the arm of Dad’s chair and I’m somewhere behind the ham.

Here’s my own wedding. My own actual wedding. And there’s my sister, front and center in the family picture, in a dress the same shade as mine.

I keep finding myself at the edges of the life I thought was mine. Half a shoulder. The back of my head. A glimpse of dirty blonde hair.

If you flipped through this deck fast enough, you’d think the Dorseys had a beloved family ghost who existed only from the wrist down.

Once the family stuff is in place, I start getting the Vivian-specific items queued up. Well, the even-more-Vivian-specific items.

One by one, I load all the images from the Dorsey Sisters shared album.

And I do mean all of them.

From Cannes to Tulum, from nightclub outfits to hippy-dippy sundresses, from manicured nails to puppy dogs in thousand-dollar outfits.

It’s excessive, which of course is the point. I can already feel the growing tension in the room as my family members will start to ask themselves, What’s the deal here? Yes, it’s Viv’s world and we’re all just living in it… but isn’t this a little much, even by her standards?

Yes. Yes, it is a little much, isn’t it? It’s way too fucking much.

It’s just Viv, Viv, Viv, all the goddamn time.