Read Split for Free Online

that her sister seemed so damn rational and perfect in their father’s eyes? Married, with child. More often than not their father was worried about Mak, not happy for her, whereas Theresa was always the stable one. Predictable. Makedde was what one might politely refer to as “feisty”. Always flying off somewhere. Always getting into trouble.
    Theresa and her family made their way into the living room with Dad at their heels. Mak followed a fair distance behind, still trying to psyche herself up for the visit.
    Would she ever find herself wandering into that living room with her own baby and husband, and her father smiling like a schoolboy at the sight of it all? Not anytime soon, it seemed.
    Back when Mak was twenty, the family had encouraged her to marry a local boy named George Purdy. When she found out he had cheated on her, Mak dumped him and flipped his engagement ring into a bagful of milk cartons and baked beans in the Safeway supermarket checkout.
    They were forty-five minutes into baby pictures before Theresa started in. That was almost forty-five minutes longer than usual.
    “Dad tells me you aren’t doing too well,” she said.
    Mak blinked and looked up from a stack of photos of Breanna with a polka-dotted pink and yellow bow in her hair, just to check. Yes, the comment was directed at her. “Excuse me?” she said.
    “Apparently you were up all last night, pacing.”
    “Insomnia,” Les muttered under his breath from the safety of his easychair on the other side of the room. He had the album of Breanna playing with an orange ball.
    “Dad, I don’t have insomnia,” Mak said. “I just have a little trouble sleeping sometimes. It’s no big deal.” If he brought up the thing about the shrink, she’d strangle him.
    Theresa had Breanna on her knee and was bouncing her gently. Her adorable little face turned to Mak and broke into a two-hundred-watt smile. It was contagious and Mak couldn’t help but smile back. Breanna was very cute; there was no denying it. The toddler had soft white curls crowning her head, and ears that stuck out a little. Breanna’s mouth was like a plump cherry, and her inquisitive eyes were the optimistic colour of blue skies, and just as wide.
    “Doesn’t ‘having trouble sleeping’ mean that you have insomnia?” Theresa asked.
    Makedde’s smile dropped. She looked back to her sister, who, incredibly, was just getting started.
    “I just can’t understand why you would still want your damn PhD after that whole nightmare in Sydney. Not to mention the incident with Stanley. I mean,Forensic Psychology? No wonder you’re not sleeping. Always reading about psychos and rapists…”
    Low bloody blow, sis.
    The tiny hairs on the back of Makedde’s neck bristled. The incident with Stanley was years before and he was in jail now. It had nothing to do with her PhD. It was totally irrelevant. And what the hell did “damn PhD” mean, anyway? She never bugged Theresa about her aspirations to be a house mom. If it wasn’t about modelling not being “intellectual” enough, it was about Forensic Psychology not being “nice” enough. It seemed that Theresa just had to be negative about whatever her older sister was doing.
    “It’s not safe at university these days, you know. Especially a big campus like UBC.” Theresa aimed her comment to the whole room as if it were an important public service announcement. “What did I hear the other day? One in three female students have been sexually assaulted or harassed there! I mean, one in three !”
    “I think that particular report said one in six, which is shocking enough without your exaggeration,” Mak said softly. “And those figures have since been disputed.”
    “One in six. Whatever.” Theresa took a deep breath.
    Oh no, she’s not finished crapping on yet.
    “And that missing girl…What is it? Walker? Susan Walker? She was a student at UBC, you know. Lived on campus. I saw her fiancé on the news the other day,