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“He didn’t take the money.”
Buck whipped around to face her. Maddie was leaning against the doorway, something complicated tucked into the corners of her eyes and the crease of her mouth. It was almost a smile, and almost a sob, and Buck couldn’t parse it any better than he could her words. “What do you mean, he didn’t take the money?”
“I mean,” she said, crossing over to sit on the couch next to him, as achingly graceful as he could almost remember their mother being, “he didn’t take the money.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Buck said flatly. “He’s got a kid, he needs that money, what do you mean he didn’t take it?”
Maddie took his hand. It was still a marvel, the impossible familiarity of her touch, the realization, over and over again, that this was his sister, that his sister was holding his hand, that he had a sister who could press her hand to his and give him comfort. “He said that helping you find your way home was payment enough.” She looked at him, deep into his eyes, and he stared at the soft brown of hers, so unlike his and yet so like it was hard to tell how he hadn’t realized that they were siblings, and didn’t understand.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said finally. “Is he still here? I’m going to find him and make him take it. If not for him then at least for Christopher.” He made to get up, but Maddie’s hand tightened in a vice grip. He looked at her, bewildered. “Maddie, you don’t understand. Christopher needs that money. And Ed—and he deserves it. He did what you asked, he found me, he brought me back, and you back to me—Maddie, it’s not right.” He tried to tug his hand out from hers, but she held fast.
“I don’t think he cares about what’s right, right now,” she said. “In fact, I can’t imagine that he’s thinking about anything other than—” and she broke off.
Buck waited impatiently, twisting his wrist slowly in her grasp.
“Did you know how I knew?” Maddie asked suddenly.
He stared at her. “Knew what?”
“Knew that you were him. That you were Evan, my lost little brother, back from the dead?”
It was not what he expected her to say, and if he wasn’t still, in some part of him that wasn’t preoccupied with where Eddie had gone, and when he’d left, and how fast he walked, and what it might take to catch up with him, absolutely enamored with having a sister, having a family again, he might have gotten angry at her wasting the precious time he needed to catch Eddie before he left city limits, and make him take the reward money, by force if necessary.
“My birthmark,” he said finally, when it became clear that Maddie wasn’t going to let him go without an answer, as irrelevant as the question seemed to the matter at hand.
Maddie actually laughed. “Not at all,” she said, and reached up to smooth a hand across the mark over his eye. He leaned into the touch despite himself, and she smiled. “Do you have any idea how many fake birthmarks I’ve seen in the past months? Some of them were quite good, actually, and I think a few were even tattoos, they wouldn’t come off for all the scrubbing in the world. No,” and she shook her head. “No, I knew who you were the moment I saw you light up when you were telling Eddie and Chim about the history of the opera. No amount of memorizing royal family trees or waltzing practice could replace that enthusiasm, to share something that you love with the people that you love. A true Evan Buckley original.”
“But you told me I was a fake, at the opera, you made me answer all of those questions anyway, and you already knew?”
Maddie shrugged. “I’d spent so long hoping, at that point, I was afraid that I was letting myself see things that weren’t there. That’s not the point, anyway.” She stroked a hand absently through his hair, and he relaxed in spite of himself.
“The point is that the happiness that I saw in you there, that true joy that you had in that moment that reminded me so much of my baby brother, I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it in Eddie.” She leaned forward, like they were kids again, sharing a secret in the middle of a crowded ballroom. “I see it every time he looks at you.”
Buck looked at her. It felt like every thought he’d ever had had simply vanished from his brain. The most he could manage was a weak, “What?”
Maddie laughed again, with a lightness that flooded him with warmth. “He didn’t take the money, Buck, it was never about the money. It was about you.”
“But what about you?”
“What about me?”
He could hear the plaintive note in his voice, and he hated himself for feeling like a child, but Maddie and the memories she brought with her made him want to feel like a child again, for the first time in his life. “But I’ve only just got you back.”
She smiled, and pulled him to her chest, dragging him half off of the sofa in the exuberance of her embrace. “Don’t be silly. You’ve still got me, you’re always going to have me, that’s not in question.” Her voice lowered, secret-sharing again. “But don’t you want to have him, too?”
It was like he’d been electrified. She let go of his wrist at last, and he was already halfway out of the door before she shouted, “He went into the gardens,” after him.
He didn’t turn back, but tossed a, “Thank you!” behind him as he ran. Her delighted giggles followed him down the stairs.