Chapter 6

The rest of the album captured more personal, unguarded moments.

There was a photograph of their fingers intertwined at the movies, one of Amanda tucked into Eric’s arms during a skydiving trip, another of them barefoot and leaning against each other on the beach, and one of Amanda sitting behind him on his motorcycle with a helmet on and her arms wrapped around his waist.

What surprised me most was the sheer number of close-up selfies they had taken together.

Sometimes, Eric looked at the camera. Sometimes, he did not.

Most of the time, his expression remained unreadable, but every now and then, he smiled, especially when Amanda used one of those ridiculous filters that distorted both their faces.

There was also a candid photograph of Eric alone. He was sitting on a bench in the hallway outside Amanda’s laboratory, waiting for her to finish work.

Amanda must have called his name just as the photograph was taken. He had turned toward her with his gaze lifted beyond the camera. There was a tenderness in his smile that I had rarely seen before.

As I flipped through the photographs, I did not know what to think. If all of it had been nothing more than Eric gritting his teeth and playing along, then his performance had been almost frighteningly convincing.

For a long time afterward, I remained certain that Eric did not dislike Amanda. What he resented was not Amanda herself, but what she represented, which was another part of his life that Dad had chosen for him.

Eric opposed everything Dad supported and fiercely defended everything Dad opposed. They had always been determined to take opposite sides.

Amanda herself had never been the problem.

There was something else. When Amanda first married into the family, I took her shopping almost every day. She had taken a few weeks off after the wedding. We often spent the entire day out together.

She could analyze a virus using everything from case-control and cohort studies to retrospective and prospective research, producing a stack of reports thick enough to stun someone with.

Yet she could not tell an eyebrow pencil from an eyeliner pencil.

I bought her makeup and taught her how to apply it step by step, then took her shopping for clothes and shoes. Naturally, everything went on Eric’s credit card.

I even took her shopping for sleepwear. Whenever she first came to spend the night in my room, she had worn baggy cartoon-print pajamas that covered her from neck to ankle.

The first time I saw them, I hardly knew what to say.

I knew Eric’s taste in women. His previous girlfriends had certainly favored a very different style.

Unable to contain my curiosity, I asked, “Eric has never complained about those pajamas?”

Her entire face turned scarlet, all the way to her ears, but she shook her head without saying a word.

The fact that Eric had never complained was astonishing.

Still, I took her shopping for new sleepwear and found her something a little more flattering than her cartoon sets. I was too embarrassed to choose anything overly revealing.

Come on, the entire situation was mortifying for me too.

At the checkout, however, I could not resist adding one slightly more daring set. Amanda saw it and blushed even harder, but she did not object.

She just took my hand and asked softly, “Do you think he’ll like it?”

Whether Eric would like it, I had no idea. However, the way Amanda looked at that moment was enough to make me question my own sexuality.

Two days later, I was curled up on the living room sofa with an ice cream cone, binge-watching a show, when Eric came looking for me.

With a deep frown, he warned, “Don’t take Amanda to buy any more of that inappropriate nonsense. Stop being a bad influence on her.”

I was not exaggerating to say that I broke out in goosebumps. I had groaned at him.

“Give me a break, Eric. Since when are you such a prude?”

A faint smile crossed his face, but it vanished almost immediately. His expression turned serious, making it clear that he was not joking. “She’s just fine the way she is.”

Tsk. What a baffling man.

All right, the truth was that I adored Amanda. For a long time, I thought Eric had no idea how lucky he was to have married her.

A woman that wonderful ending up with a man like Eric seemed proof that the universe had no sense of justice.

That was not to say Eric was a bad person. He was a wonderful brother and an incredibly charismatic man.

However, he also had every flaw in the book. He had a terrible temper, was incapable of remaining faithful, and could be wildly unpredictable.

Women were constantly throwing themselves at him. He had never been particularly good at resisting temptation.

What made Amanda even more remarkable was that she seemed blind to all of those flaws. She devoted herself entirely to Eric and relied on him completely. She seemed to love him so deeply that even I was moved.

I kept thinking that Eric had struck gold. If he ever mistreated Amanda, I would be the first person to make him pay.

Ha. That little liar deserved an Oscar.