I made a face. “If you had to listen to him barking orders at you every day, you wouldn’t find him good looking. Plus, he’s old. Uzel told me Melu was almost forty.”
She laughed. “That’s not old.”
“He could be our father,” I said.
“No, he couldn’t. Besides, I’m older than you.”
“Only by two years. Do you seriously want to bang Melu?”
Inara shook her head. “No, I’m just saying that he doesn’t look the way I’d pictured in my head based on your description of him.”
“What did you talk to Galan about?”
“Nothing, really,” she said. “Yoga.”
“Yoga,” I repeated.
“Yeah. Apparently, the King’s Guard practice yoga.”
I had an instant vision of Galan in the downward dog pose. Christ, was my mouth watering?
Inara poked me in the thigh. “You ever gonna admit your crush on Galan to me?”
I drank some juice and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Having a crush on Galan is pointless. As soon as the war between Emira and Cillade ends, I’ll be living my best life in an Earth prison.”
Inara scowled. “I hate it when you joke about that. It’s going to be so dangerous for you, Ellis.”
“Yeah, I know. But if you can’t joke about your impending death, what can you joke about?”
We lapsed into silence. Inara looked pale and the freckles that went across the bridge of her nose were as visible as if I’d gone over them with a marker.
“It’s fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “Maybe the war will go on for years. Candy said that Evelyn told her the last one was nine months.”
“Maybe,” Inara said.
I was being totally selfish. Inara only wanted to be here for a year and if the war continued longer than that, she’d go crazy with worry about her sister.
“How was your day?” I said. “Did you talk to your sister?”
“Yeah,” Inara said. “She had a good day. Mom was actually sober for once and she took Wendy to a movie and out for dinner.”
“What about your dad?”
Inara made a face. “He was out doing whatever drug dealers do.”
She bit at a nail. All of her nails were ragged and chewed, and I’d learned quickly over the last week or so that a sure-fire way to have her nibbling on her nails was bringing up her parents.
“Sorry, Inara, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I just hate constantly worrying about Wendy. But I didn’t have a choice about leaving. This is my best chance to give her a better life. Mom usually drinks away any money Dad gives her, and Dad doesn’t give a shit about me or Wendy.”
She chewed away at a second nail. “Wendy looks thinner to me. She says it’s just the hologram, but I don’t think she’s getting enough food. Maybe I shouldn’t have left. I could have found another job on Earth. It wouldn’t paid as well but it would have been enough to at least keep Wendy fed.”
“Are you forgetting that you had a brain tumour?” I said. “You had no choice, Inara.”
She sighed, her hands dropping into her lap. “Yeah, I know.”
“Your sister will be okay,” I said.
“You don’t know that!” Inara’s usual sweetness had suddenly disappeared. “My parents are terrible, okay? And every day that I’m not with her, she’s in danger. Every goddamn day, Ellis! You don’t have a sister, so you have no idea what I’m going through or how -”
“I have a sister,” I said.
Inara stared at me. “What? You’ve never mentioned her to me.”
“Her name was Esther,” I said.
I could see Inara’s fingers tighten around her glass of juice. “Was?”
“She died when I was fifteen.”
“I’m so sorry,” Inara said. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper or said -”
“You didn’t know,” I said. “It’s fine, Inara.”
I waited for her to ask me how Esther died. People always asked. They couldn’t help themselves.
“What was she like?” Inara said.
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.
“What was Esther like? Was she older than you or younger?”
I swallowed past the golf ball size lump in my throat. “She was younger. She was sweet… so goddamn sweet. Everyone loved her because she didn’t have a mean bone in her body, you know? My parents they… they were disappointed in me a lot, but Esther… she was their perfect angel.”
I swallowed again. “I wasn’t jealous of her if that’s what you’re thinking. Esther deserved to be my parents’ favourite. I was – well, let’s just say I gave my parents a lot of grief from the time I was