Short fiction

Sun Burn

You have brought the sun in with you. It is in your hair and your skin and in your eyes. It is warming you in the cool of the kitchen. You are glowing on the flagstones.

When I see the way Robert looks at you I want to strike your already flaming cheek. He tries to catch your eye, a shadow of a grin on his features, but you studiously avoid his gaze, too open to have prevented a laugh from bubbling from you at this slightest provocation.

You are like two children caught out at school. He is as red as you, illuminating the lie. No, not quite as red as you because you are beginning to blush.

You seem to have swallowed the sun; it is shining through the cracks. You have stolen the sun’s warmth and light and now you are stealing mine. I am filled with a darkness that colours my judgement.

I resent you, your strong bones and thick ankles. The flesh on your arms, your full cheeks and belly. Standing solid in my kitchen as if you owned the place. You and Robert. 

But this is about a lie and promises unkept. Broken, like the shards of the bowl that slipped through my fingers as you came up behind me. I asked you to stay. I needed you to stay. But you went as soon as he called, to spill your secrets, like the blackberries rolling across the floor. I run my thumb lightly over a sliver of glass. You and Robert. Lies. I leave the kitchen, the glass and the stains, the two of you.

Robert. Robbie. I test the word out in my mouth. Rolling the unfamiliar familiarity of it around my tongue. You bounce it out lightly. Does it sound too sharp when I call out Rob? Does Robert sound too formal? You manage not to sound silly when you call him Robbie but even here, alone, it sounds silly from me.

When I return to the kitchen much later you are standing in your nightdress holding a glass of water, quenching the fire that burns your skin. Again you are open, your lips parted in my name, and a smile that comes from your eyes. I feel a rush of warmth, you are giving me your sunshine, but I cross my arms over my chest as though I feel a draught.

Your cheeks are painfully crimson now and I wonder if I place the back of my hand against them whether you would scald me, despite the smile and your whole manner. They are red as blood, and I know blood now, as you do not, you who have not bled in five months. I know how it floods and stains skirts and sheets leaving loss.

You are my sister, alone, in a way that I have not been alone since Robert and I whispered yes to each other on a windswept beach that is miles and years from this old grey house. But you are so sure of yourself, standing so tall, your hand gently on your stomach. Do you question? Who? Where? No, of course not. These are our questions, yours are altogether different, and I won’t ask them. You are not afraid of being alone and what do you have to be afraid of? It is I who am afraid. It is I who tries too hard to catch his eye and doubts. What is it, this, that makes me think, you and Robert?

Alice Woodward