Upstairs, the girls were at one another again: Skye, almost sixteen, in so many ways a replica of herself, but she was—what?—a bit too round about the hips, too fleshy in her arms, and so high-strung, but a promising academic, if she continued to apply herself; Aran, two years Skye’s junior, was, well, a disappointment, too much her father’s daughter, with a… determined?…no, stubborn set to her brow, the copper hair of Rennie’s (half-wit—to be honest, that’s all she was, now, really, wasn’t it?) mother somehow an affront, and, like her father, as well, insufferably lazy. What was he doing now? Tinkering in the basement, no doubt, or out wandering the laneways with that malodorous dog. Why did it always fall on her to deal with these petty squabbles? Surely her mind should be dedicating itself to more scholarly pursuits than determining who scuffed whose Steve Maddens? Their shoes, scuffed or not, weren’t, after all, purchased with the fruit of Rennie’s meditations—she paused halfway up the stairs to wonder what she had done with her glass of wine. Not that Rennie had meditations. Not that he ever bought anything, either. At least, nothing they actually needed, nothing of consequence.
