WRONG SIDE OF THE FAMILY
Chapter One: House Rules
The drive from Portland took three hours and twenty minutes, which was enough time to prepare for almost anything.
Almost.
Erin Walsh had prepared for the awkward conversations, the ones her mother would engineer at the dinner table because Sarah believed proximity created family, the way planting seeds close together in a garden created community rather than competition for light. She had prepared for her stepfather's careful kindness, the way David Walsh always stood slightly too far from her when they shared a room, still calibrating the correct distance after two years. She had prepared for the house itself: the Seattle craftsman David and Sarah had bought together after the wedding, which she had visited exactly twice, and which still felt like someone else's idea of home.
She had not prepared for Connor Walsh to be standing in the kitchen when she opened the front door.
He was at the island with a mug and a book, wearing a grey henley that had seen better days, looking entirely comfortable in a house that was not his either. He glanced up when she wheeled her suitcase through the door. Took her in with a look that was neither warm nor unwelcoming. Simply assessing. The way a person might read weather before deciding whether to bring a coat.
"Hey, sis," he said.
She stopped walking.
Of course that's the opening line.
"Don't call me that," she said.
He looked at her for a moment. Set his mug down with a small, deliberate click against the tile.
"Okay," he said.
Just that. Okay. As though she'd made a reasonable point about traffic patterns and not drawn a line in the first thirty seconds of what was apparently going to be an entire summer.
Erin looked around the kitchen. It was nice, properly nice, white tile and open shelving and a window above the sink that looked out over the garden where her mother had, predictably, planted a herb bed. She looked back at Connor, who was still sitting at the island, apparently unbothered that she remained stranded in the doorway with her suitcase handle sweating in her palm.
"Are they home?" she asked.
"Dad's at the office. Finishing something before the weekend." He lifted his mug again, unhurried. "Your mum went for groceries. Back around six."
"Right."
"Your room's the one at the end of the hall. The blue one. She put fresh towels on the bed."
"Thanks."
She wheeled her case past the island, past Connor and his book, down the hall to the blue room. It was a good room; the afternoon light came through at an angle that made everything look warmer than it was, and her mother had set a small vase of lavender on the windowsill because Sarah believed lavender was calming and thought Erin needed calming. She was not wrong. Erin sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the vase and thought about three months.
Three months. Twelve weeks. Eighty-four days.
It had been her mother's idea. David's too, by extension, or at least he'd agreed to it with the enthusiasm of a man who genuinely believed family was something you built deliberately, like furniture. We've been married two years, Sarah had said on the phone in April, and you and Connor have met twice. That's not a family, Erin. That's two people who share a last name. Erin had pointed out that she and Connor shared a last name only because David had changed his when he married Sarah, which was the least biological configuration of shared surnames imaginable. Her mother had said that was exactly her point.
The point being: summer. Seattle. The craftsman on Maple Street with the herb garden and the blue room and Connor Walsh sitting at the kitchen island like he owned the place.
He did not own the place. Neither did she. That was the whole problem, really, in miniature.
* * *
Sarah came home at quarter past six with four bags of groceries and the specific energy of a woman who had planned a dinner that would bring everyone together whether everyone wanted to be together or not. She hugged Erin for a long moment at the door, then held her at arm's length, studying her the way she always did, as if checking all her daughter's pieces were still in the right places.
"You look tired," Sarah said.
"Three hour drive."
"Connor made coffee. Did you have some?"
"I just got here, Mum."
"It's a good machine," Sarah said, moving past with two bags. "David bought it last Christmas. Connor figured out how to use it properly. I still just press the button."
Erin followed her into the kitchen. Connor had closed his book and was looking at his phone. He glanced up when they came in, and something in his expression shifted, not quite a smile, but the potential for one, held in reserve.
"I can move to the living room," he said, "if you need the island."
"Stay," Sarah said, setting bags on the counter. "We're all adults. We can share a kitchen."
We're all adults. The sentence landed with the particular weight of a thing her mother was going to say often this summer, each time meaning something slightly different.
Erin took the barstool across from Connor and pulled out her phone while Sarah unpacked groceries. David arrived at seven, dishevelled in the specific way of a man who had been at a whiteboard rather than a desk, and he greeted Erin with the careful warmth he always managed, the kind that said I am trying, in every particular, and clapped Connor once on the shoulder in the easy way of a father with a son.
Dinner was salmon, roasted vegetables, a bottle of white wine Sarah opened with ceremony. Questions were asked that had clearly been prepared in advance. How was the design work going. Good, three clients through the summer. How was Connor's project. The infrastructure contract ran through August. Were they both settled into their rooms. Yes and yes, though Connor hadn't unpacked, because he travelled light and saw no reason to unpack for three months, which Sarah took as an opening to discuss the wardrobe, because clothes needed to breathe.
"It was already wrinkled," Connor said, of the linen shirt.
Erin looked at her salmon and could feel the exact shape of the summer settling around her shoulders like a coat two sizes too warm.
After dinner, David and Sarah took their wine to the back garden, and Erin cleared the table because she was a person who cleared tables, and Connor helped because he was apparently that kind of person too. They stood on opposite sides of the counter with plates between them, in the specific silence of two people placed in proximity by other people's decisions.
"How's Portland?" he asked, not looking at her, rinsing a glass at the sink.
"I like it."
"Three years now?"
"Since I finished my degree."
He nodded. "Freelance."
"Yes."
"Works well?"
"Well enough." She stacked plates beside him. "Tunnels, you said. Not bridges."
"Mostly tunnels. This contract's a highway extension." He turned off the tap. "Not glamorous."
"Is infrastructure glamorous usually?"
Something, not quite a smile, but leaning that direction. "Not usually."
She handed him the last plate and became aware, with a small jolt low in her stomach, that they were standing very close in a kitchen that was actually quite generously sized, which meant she had moved nearer without deciding to. She stepped back and picked up a dishcloth like a shield.
"House rules," she said.
He looked at her, waiting.
"Kitchen schedule. I work early, usually by seven. I'll need the kitchen before then. Coffee, quiet. I'll be out of your way by nine."
"I work late. Usually until midnight. I'll be at my desk."
"Good. That's... that works."
"Bathroom?"
She blinked. "What?"
"Shared bathroom between our rooms," he said. "If you have a preference."
"Mornings. Before eight."
"I don't need it until nine. No conflict."
"No conflict," she agreed, and found herself faintly disappointed there was nothing left to negotiate.
He studied her for a moment with that same weather-reading quality from the doorway.
"Anything else?" he said.
Yes, she thought. Don't call me sis. Don't sit there looking that comfortable in a house that isn't yours either. Don't have a voice like that, gravel wrapped in patience. Don't look at me like weather I need to plan around.
"I'll let you know," she said.
She hung the dishcloth on its hook and went to the blue room, sat on the bed, and listened to her mother's muffled laugh carrying from the garden. Eighty three more days, she thought, and felt her own pulse in her throat for reasons she declined to examine.
* * *
The first week settled into a rhythm they established without discussing it.
Connor was at his desk when she came downstairs at six forty five, the door to the converted spare room mostly shut, a stripe of lamp light under it. She made coffee, sat at the island with her laptop and client files, in the particular quiet of a house not yet fully awake. By nine he was in the kitchen making toast, not making conversation, and she had usually drifted to the garden or the study by then. They did not intersect except at the edges.
It is, she told herself, exactly the arrangement I asked for.
On Friday she was working late on a restaurant rebrand, mockups and font choices and a colour palette the client had changed three times, and she didn't notice the hour until the kitchen light shifted and she realised it was nearly eleven and she'd been at the island for four hours. She stood to stretch and found Connor suddenly in the doorway, also apparently finishing something, in the grey henley again, the air of a man who had spent all day staring at engineering drawings.
He stopped when he saw her.
"Still up."
"Deadline. Sorry, I'll move."
"You don't need to move." He went to the fridge. "Do you want anything? I'm making something."
"It's eleven."
"I eat late. Bad habit." He pulled out eggs, cheese, something leafy. "Keep working."
She sat back down, pulse ticking strangely, and watched him make an omelette with the unhurried competence of someone who did this often. The kitchen filled with butter and herbs, and she looked at her font choices and tried to remember what she'd been thinking before he walked in.
He put a plate in front of her. Half the omelette, slightly more than half.
"I didn't ask for that."
"You've been at that laptop since seven thirty," he said. "I heard you come down." He sat across the island with his own half. "You should eat."
She looked at the plate, then at him. "You heard me come down."
"Sound carries in this house," he said. "Thin walls."
She picked up the fork. It was good, properly seasoned, the cheese melted at exactly the right moment. She ate three bites before she trusted herself to speak.
"Thank you."
"Mm."
They ate on opposite sides of the island, the lamp making everything amber, the garden dark through the glass. Her laptop screen had gone dim. She didn't wake it.
This is fine, she told herself. Two adults sharing a kitchen at eleven at night. Nothing more.
Connor's jaw moved when he chewed, a slight tightening at the hinge, and she noticed it and then made herself stop noticing it, with real effort, the way you'd pull your hand back from something warm before you understood you'd reached for it.
"The restaurant rebrand," he said.
"Yes."
"What's wrong with the palette?"
"They want warm but not busy. They keep saying terracotta but mean something terracotta adjacent that's actually much more muted. I'm trying to work out what they're picturing."
"Send them reference images," he said. "Three options. Make them choose."
"That's what I'm building."
"Good."
"Very helpful, thank you."
The corner of his mouth moved, just barely. "You asked."
"I was explaining, not asking."
"You were explaining to see if the explanation held up," he said. "That's asking."
She looked at him, and something warm and unhelpful uncoiled in her chest.
This is fine, she thought again, with noticeably less conviction.
They finished. She loaded the dishwasher. He held the kitchen door in that way that wasn't quite a gesture, just a pause, a held space she had to walk through.
"Night, Erin," he said.
Not sis. He hadn't said it again.
"Good night."
She lay in the blue room with the lavender on the sill and the street light patterning the ceiling, and thought about the corner of his mouth, the half omelette placed without ceremony, the fact that he'd known exactly what time she'd come down to the kitchen. Eighty one more days, she thought.
The lavender did not help.
* * *
Saturday morning, Sarah decided they should all go to the farmers' market.
"All of us," she said at breakfast, with the emphasis that meant this was not a suggestion. "It's a beautiful morning. We should do something as a family."
The market was on Capitol Hill, cool and bright, the kind of morning that made the city feel like it was trying. Sarah moved through stalls with purpose, collecting radishes and sourdough and a small pot of something she called ceremonial honey. David followed with the tote bag. Erin and Connor fell slightly behind, the way it happened when two people shared the same pace without meaning to.
"Seattle. You've been before?"
"A few times. Dad moved here three years ago." He glanced sideways. "You like it?"
"It's a good city. Good infrastructure." A pause. "That's the professional bias."
"Non professional opinion?"
He considered. "The coffee is excellent. The traffic is not."
"Very comprehensive."
"I'm a comprehensive person," he said, and something in her chest did a small, unauthorised flip.
She stopped at a stall selling succulents in terracotta pots, the colour exactly what her client had been failing to describe, warm but structured, nothing blowsy about it. She crouched to photograph the angle. Connor stopped too, without comment, and waited while she took three more from different sides.
"Reference image?"
"Reference image."
He didn't ask why three. Didn't suggest she'd taken enough. He simply stood in the Saturday market and waited, and she was abruptly, uncomfortably aware that most people didn't do that. Most people shifted their weight and made small sounds of impatience.
"Got it?" he said, when she stood.
"Yes. Thank you."
"Didn't do anything."
"You waited."
He looked at her with that weather reading quality, and something underneath it she didn't yet have a name for.
"Seemed like the thing to do," he said.
Sarah was waving from the honey stall. They walked toward her, close enough that their arms nearly brushed, and did not.
Eighty more days, Erin thought. Then she looked at the terracotta pots glowing on her phone screen, the exact warm structured colour her client wanted, and thought, with a small jolt of alarm: I should stop counting.