“I want you at my wedding. For real. Not because of the money. Because you’re my sister and it’s my wedding day and you should be there.”
Owen had not said anything. He was watching us carefully, the way he watched things when he was making sure he had the full picture.
I said the thing I had told Owen I would say if this happened: that I accepted her apology, and that I had my own to make.
I told her about the job contact thing, because I wanted to name it. I told her I’d been the handler for a long time and that it had been easier to keep handling than to figure out how to just be her sister, and that I thought the Christmas comment was a symptom of that pattern, not a coincidence.
“I don’t think I always let you be the expert on your own life,” I said. “And your wedding is your life. Your vision for it is yours. I should have been asking what you needed, not reassuring you that the thing you cared about wasn’t that important.”
We looked at each other.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re both bad at this.”
“In different ways.”
“In different ways,” she agreed.
Owen got up and brought more coffee without being asked. He has good timing.
## Working the Numbers in the Living Room
After the emotional piece, which was the necessary piece, we shifted to the practical piece. Owen had a notepad. He and Claire had apparently spent time before I arrived working through their finances, because he had a breakdown written out that was more organized than I would have expected from a conversation they’d framed as casual.