If You Knew My Sister by Michelle Adams

Author:Michelle Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

21

‘We should look into the number. The number has to mean something,’ Antonio insists, not for the first time since we came downstairs. The radiators are kicking in and I can hear them clanking in the background as I sip on a glass of red. There is a chill in the air, and the house feels smaller than it once did, like Antonio and I are stumbling over each other. He reaches for an oversized sweater draped over the edge of the couch. A light drizzle whips at the windows.

‘I don’t even want to think about the number. I just want to forget about it.’ If I am entirely honest, what I want to do is get drunk, pass out, and wake up tomorrow as a different person. Again. I settle for saying, ‘I don’t want his money, or his house.’

Antonio nods, but seems less than certain. He tries to hide his displeasure at my unwillingness, but he doesn’t do it well. I have known him too long for him to be able to mask it, and I know what he is really thinking. He believes this document creates a connection to my family. That he can exploit it, heal my wounds, and finally I will give him what he wants. He tries to settle next to me on the couch for a while as we watch some inane show about the mating habits of the dung beetle, but it doesn’t take long for him to get the fidgets. He sets his wine glass down untouched, heads over to my desk. I can see him working on the Internet, typing the number from the back of my father’s will into different search engines.

After a couple of hours and another bottle of Merlot, I am feeling better and he has finished his research. He begins giving me options, possible solutions as to what the number means: telephone listings in Egypt, Fibonacci sequences, and a television show called Number Alert. He reassures me that the television show has already been discounted as a dead end. Next up, details about how to calculate an international banking code, instructions on how to create a Swiss bank account, and notes about the instability of the human genome. All from the number scrawled on the back of my father’s will. It pisses me off that he seems to have been enjoying himself, creating a treasure hunt out of irrelevant Internet finds, like this is all part of a game.

‘This is not a conspiracy theory,’ I say, snappier than I intended. ‘What is this shit?’ I push his pile of handwritten papers away, and when he doesn’t take them, I dump them on the coffee table. He looks offended. But I am one too many glasses in, and I cannot string together a convincing charade about how his research is useful. Fucking Fibonacci. Trust an Italian to come up with an Italian solution.

‘We have no idea what this number is. We should try to work it out. It’s obviously important if your father gave it to you.

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