I decided I didn’t like Aunt Sophie.

  It wasn’t anything obvious. She was a smart and educated woman, she paid enough attention to Steph to warm any big sister's heart, and she kept the dinner conversation lively—a good thing since May was tightly wound and Carl’s jokey humor had mostly vanished. Part of my dislike was that she got May so wound up. From May’s mentions of Aunt Sophie, I’d assumed they were close and I’d imagined anyone May would be close to in her family would be a lot like her. That when the two of them got together it would be the easiest, friendliest atmosphere imaginable.

  Instead, Aunt Sophie’s presence at dinner felt like a challenge, like May had something to prove.

  And as dinner went on, Sophie subtly belittled Carl. She implied that May’s accounting practice would be a successful accounting firm if she hadn’t worked it part time while taking a couple of years to help Carl launch his cybersecurity company—and implied that May’s social networking had gained him half his clients. She’d pondered briefly (without asking outright) whether Carl had considered being a stay-at-home dad while May pursued her own business career.

  Carl never lost his smile, but May’s tightened with every veiled shot.

  It was when Aunt Sophie remembered that May and Carl had married just out of college, and that she’d advised against it—“In my mind a woman needs time to know herself as an adult first if she’s going to be an equal in a partnership,”—that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore.

  “Do you think men know themselves quicker, then?” I asked. “Or that they just don’t need to?”

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  I swallowed my mouthful of spinach salad. “You didn’t say men and women need time to know themselves as adults. You make it sound like a female requirement, like men have already done it and if women don’t take the time to do it then they won’t be equal.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I misspoke. And I was under the impression that you never married. Do you have an opinion about what makes an equal partnership?”

  I opened my mouth to say Do you? and closed it.

  Taking another forkful of salad to give myself time to choose my words (and to bother her), I shrugged. “Not really,” I said once I’d cleared that mouthful. “But I didn’t have a partnership in my business, I had subordinates. And there sex wasn’t a factor one way or another.” On my left May had frozen like a deer caught in a car’s headlights.

  “It wasn’t?” Sophie asked with arched eyebrow. “So, you employed both sexes equally?”

  Gotcha. I grinned. “Nope. Never even tried.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When I needed to hire somebody new, I went through a hiring firm. They removed all names and gender references from my prospective employee’s applications. Also race and age, so all I saw was education, credentials, experience, and referrals. The firm did the background checks and verifications on the ones that looked promising, I’d pick the one I wanted without an interview, then invite them in and explain the job and my expectations and offer them a one-year contract with benefits and the option for me to fire them for any reason that first year. I only had to fire someone during the trial year twice, neither of them were women.”

  “And what about promotions? Pay raises?”

  “Strictly merit, confirmed by an HR review in reverse, scrubbing all the personal information again.”

  “And what was the result?”

  I shrugged. “Only two female managers. Most weren’t willing to put in the ungodly hours. The ones who were, though, did their jobs just as well as any male hire.” My hiring and promoting strategy hadn’t been my own brainchild—I’d carried it out under my father who’d been huge about fairness and then carried on with it after he was gone—but I was willing to lean on it for this.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “So sex was a factor.”

  I smiled innocently. “No, personal choices were a factor and every Title IX review proved it.” I wasn’t going to tell her that I’d sold the business to one of those two women, who had been my marketing manager at the end. She’d had big ideas on how to expand our market share and I’d sold to her for a bare valuation of the property and equipment so she’d have a bank loan small enough to pay off in a decade just assuming zero growth. My bet was she was going to grow the old business fast enough to retire the loan in five years.

  A bad deal on my part? Maybe, but I’d already had enough money. More than enough to outlast me.

  Ignoring Aunt Sophie’s stare I took another forkful of salad, feeling pretty good. It was the kind with walnuts and raisins and creamy balsamic dressing, and I’d loaded up on it more than the pot-roast. “We can throw down on whether the gender pay gap is due more to structural sexism or women’s aggregate life-choices or both if you want. More things in life than the dollar and all that.”

  Carl’s face was red like he was trying not to laugh and May looked ready to start babbling, or to throw herself across the table to defend me from a rabid Sophie. The woman didn’t attack me, and I finished my salad and smiled at Carl and May. “May I be excused?”

  ******************************************

  “Why did you do that?” May asked, brushing my hair. I’d gone up to my room to study—and really had; I’d lost hours today on Aunt Sophie. May had come up long after the woman left, looking pensive.

  Aunt Sophie planned to stay at least the week. She was retired now; she could go where she wanted to when she wanted to and was determined to do it. And that actually made a better story for why I was with Carl and May now than “medical issues” the old girl didn’t have.

  “She’s a bully,” I said sleepily, relaxed under the strokes. “She pushes your buttons because you don’t stop her.” I didn’t understand why she didn’t, but I figured Carl let Sophie dig at him because pushing back upset May. The brushing paused, resumed.

  “Aunt Sophie . . . would give you the shirt off her back if you’re family. She’d also tell you that you were an idiot for losing your shirt. And she’s had to fight everyone all her life. Like Mama, she wanted the best life for me. She just has different ideas about what’s best.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I was feeling too mellow to argue that good intentions didn’t excuse her, but . . .

  I picked my words carefully. “You’re right about my parents, you know? I missed something. They loved me, I know they did. But they weren’t loving and they didn’t teach me to be, they really didn’t. But before all . . . this, I was learning, with you and Carl and Steph. And you’re absolutely kind. Aunt Sophie might be a good person—she helped you and your mom, she’s helping us—but she’s not kind.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” May abandoned brushing to hug me from behind, cheek pressed to my hair. I reached up to grip her enveloping arms.

  “I have a hard time saying it,” I whispered around the sudden lump in my throat. “My upbringing and all. But I love you. And Carl. And Steph. I don’t like how she makes you feel and she’s lucky I got out of there before she asked some stupid question like ‘What do you miss most about being a man?’”

  May laughed against my back. “Oh? What would you have said?”

  “Being able to open the mayonnaise jar, Carl screws the lid on too tight. Also, peeing standing up. And having to adjust my big ol’ elephant-trunk of a dick every ten minutes. Is that weird?”

  May’s laugh turned into a laughing fit as she squeezed me until I was laughing too.

  With a final hug she slid off the bed and I scooted back so she could “tuck me in.” I’d told her that most of the time it wasn’t the end of my night, and she’d just said “It’s the end of our night, so I’ll do it anyway if you’ll let me.” I hadn’t been able to argue with that. I hadn’t wanted to. “Goodnight, honey,” she whispered now and with a forehead kiss she was gone, putting the brush on the dresser before turning out the light and softly shutting the door with a last look.

  I listened to her footsteps in the hall and on the stairs, spreading out on my back.

  Tomorrow I’d finish boxing before the movers got here, then get out of the way and just study. My head felt crammed full enough to burst, but . . . I can do it. I think. Aunt Sophie was a distraction and Wednesday was Judgement Day, but thinking of distractions, with nothing else to occupy me, my eyes turned to the dresser drawer I’d tucked A Pillow Book into.

  I’d barely glanced at it, but after dinner I’d looked up Pillow Book on the internet because the name sounded vaguely familiar from somewhere. The Pillow Book was a collection of essays, anecdotes, poems, and descriptive passages never meant to be read by anyone else, written by a Japanese lady of the emperor’s court a thousand years ago. Pillow books in general though, were collections of erotic images and texts of an educational nature, intended to instruct and inspire young ladies in performing their conjugal duties—possibly because they hadn’t learned anything about it until their wedding night. They’d gone away with the sexual revolution and modern sex-ed, and I’d blanched to think of what a hardcore feminist rebel like Aunt Sophie would make into a Pillow Book and left it alone.

  Now I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  I was going to look at it.