Fidelity Read Online Free Page A

handful of times in the interim, the phone buzzing while she was fast asleep, looking over at the alarm clock groggily and seeing the little red LED lights blinking 3:37 or 2:18 or 4:25, sighing miserably and picking up anyway. The voice at the other end of the line slurred or talking much too quickly, despondent or upbeat depending upon the moment’s drug of choice, begging apology for past failures or full of enthusiasm over some new plan that would never come to fruition. He had not visited since she’d moved to Baltimore. Kay had no idea how he got her address.
    And yet, when she saw Christopher sitting on the stoop of her house in Fells Point, a small, quaint, lively neighborhood a few blocks from the water, Kay felt no hint of surprise. Because that was the way it always was with Christopher. He had a strange way of showing up when you least expected him. He was wearing a beat-up pair of jeans and a gray hoodie. He stretched himself up from his seat, smiled and waved her forward with his fingertips. “Hey there, little sister.”
    And just like that, every other time was forgotten, because there is such a thing as family, thank God, and Kay didn’t have enough left anymore to pick and choose. Embracing him, shewas saddened but not quite shocked at how thin he had gotten—she could feel his shoulder blades through his T-shirt. “Brother.”
    â€œThis is a nice place you got here,” he said. “Got an extra bedroom?”
    â€œThere are three things to love about Baltimore,” Kay told him. “Seafood, the Ravens, and for the cost of a one-bedroom in the East Village you can pay off the mortgage on a mansion.”
    â€œI hate the Ravens,” Christopher said.
    â€œThere’s probably a bridge somewhere you can sleep beneath,” Kay said, but then she unlocked the door and waved him inside.
    â€œYou eat yet?” Christopher asked.
    Kay had not given any thought to dinner. It had not been that kind of day. She had given a lot of thought to drinking, however; had planned on walking down to her neighborhood bar and seeing if the day’s sorrows couldn’t be drowned in a few cans of Natty Boh. But as a rule she did not drink with Christopher, not since they’d been kids cribbing beer from the local bodega with fake IDs, not since it had become clear that her brother was not a casual drinker any more than he was a social imbiber of cocaine. “Not yet,” she said.
    â€œPerfect: me neither. I’ll whip something up.”
    â€œI don’t have much,” she was saying, but he had already dropped his faded duffel bag in the living room and found his way into the kitchen.
    Kay couldn’t really cook. Kay couldn’t really draw, Kay couldn’t really sing. Kay wasn’t much good at making small talk or at winning over new friends, at flirting with her preferred sex, at living enthusiastically in the moment. Fate had given these qualities to Christopher in abundance, however, by that curious process by which two siblings, formed from the same strands of genetic material, arrive in the world separate and distinct andsomehow seemingly entirely alien creatures. He buzzed about in her cabinets for a while, came out with a frozen chicken and a selection of condiments accumulating dust in her refrigerator and was well on his way towards whipping up a feast by the time Kay had finished changing her clothes.
    She took the opportunity to inspect him silently for a moment and did not like what she saw. He’d been beautiful back in the day, dark and sharp and always smiling, the first person you looked at when you walked into the room. How many girlfriends of hers back in high school had blushed and giggled and asked if he ever asked about them, Kay doing her best to explain that her brother was a person best stayed away from as one stays away from a bonfire or a sharp knife or a pool of furious piranha. Fifteen years of hard living had