Matthew caught Andee's eye across the dinner table and offered her a quick wink. It was a silent act of comfort, a reminder that someone was on her side. He knew his quiet little sister could never match Ruby in a verbal spar. Ruby was a force - quick, calculated, and undeniably brilliant when she set her mind to something. Andee didn't stand a chance, and Matthew knew it. The way her lower lip quivered made his chest ache.
He wasn't thrilled about the move either, though he wouldn't admit it. At fifteen, Matthew took his role as the eldest seriously - stoic, responsible, ever ready to step into manhood. He was steady, a natural counterpart to Ruby's fire. He loved both sisters, even if Ruby's sharp edges made it harder to show. Andee was different. There was a softness to her. A gentleness. And beneath that, a hidden power. Matthew believed, with quiet certainty, that when she did choose to speak up - it would leave a mark.
Ethan, sandwiched in the middle of the family lineup, watched the whole scene unfold with his signature smirk. To everyone else, he seemed detached, uninterested. But beneath that cool, unbothered exterior was a roiling sea of resentment. Ruby, again, playing puppet master. Ruby, again, escaping scrutiny. He wondered how their parents could be so blind to it.
Of all his siblings, Ethan felt the most invisible. Mischievous and charming, he wore humor like armor. But he saw things clearly - and he often saw through Ruby. He could predict every trap she set for Andee, every sly comment masked as concern. Andee, sweet as she was, walked right into them. Every time.
Then there was Andee. The quiet observer. The wallflower with a riot of thoughts no one ever seemed to ask about. She didn't demand attention; perhaps that was her greatest curse. Her intelligence was subtle, never flaunted, and too often overlooked. What others missed was her unerring sense of people - the way she could read body language, pick up on the tension behind a glance or a pause in a sentence. She felt things deeply. Too deeply, maybe. The move to Hornsey had unsettled her in ways she couldn't name.
That night, she lay in bed with the sheets tangled around her legs, the moon casting long silver shadows across her new room. Sleep felt impossibly far away. Everything familiar was gone. Her friends, her school, her quiet corner of the world. All replaced by something larger, colder. She was adrift.
Mary Spencer barely registered amidst the flurry of emotion surrounding the move. She was the fifth child - the girl who moved through rooms without stirring the air. Seen, perhaps. But rarely heard. She didn't compete, didn't complain, didn't demand. But she saw it all. Every exchange. Every fracture forming beneath the family's glossy surface. And she wrote it down - in her notebook, in the margins of her schoolbooks, in the quiet corners of herself.
And Baby Thomas, blissfully untouched by the turbulence, babbled and giggled as he always did. A red fire truck was his current obsession, and every tumble from the table was met with a fresh wave of laughter. He was joy, pure and uncomplicated. The others orbited chaos; he remained the sunbeam that made everyone pause - if only for a moment.
The move changed everything. The siblings, once a tight unit - bickering, yes, but tethered together - began to spin off into separate orbits. The house was bigger, yet felt lonelier. Dinner at 6:30 still happened, but the air had changed. Traditions lingered, but the soul of them had faded slightly.
The business grew, and with it, the expectations. Ruby and Matthew stepped up, each eager in their own way to prove themselves. But while Matthew seemed destined to inherit his father's role, his heart didn't always seem in it. He did what was asked - dutiful and composed - but somewhere deep down, he questioned whether this life was truly his dream.
Ruby didn't. Ruby knew. She could see the future as clearly as the stitch lines she'd learned to master. She wanted it all: the influence, the legacy, the control. Not for vanity, but for conviction. She believed she could lead them into something bigger. She believed she should. And though she would never say it aloud, it burned her that no one else seemed to believe it too.
And so, unspoken, the race began.
One ordinary Tuesday, as Andee meandered home from school along the cracked pavement and hedged lanes of Hornsey, something caught her eye - a large bus parked just past the corner house, its sides boldly painted with Travelling Library in cheerful script. It looked almost magical, like something out of a storybook she hadn't yet read. Drawn by curiosity, she tiptoed closer, peering through the open door with hesitant wonder.
"Go on in, if you want," came a gentle voice. She turned to see a man with a kind smile and a cap bearing the same logo as the bus. Encouraged, Andee stepped aboard.
The air inside was tinged with paper and possibility. Shelves upon shelves lined the interior, crammed with spines in every color imaginable. Her fingers drifted along them in awe, brushing the edges as if afraid the books might disappear. She paused beside a row of well-loved romances, her eyes lingering on the elegant fonts of authors she'd only overheard her aunt whisper about.
"How does it work?" she asked softly, afraid the spell might break.
That afternoon marked a quiet revolution. When she climbed off the bus, her arms were heavy with six Mills & Boon romances and her heart was lighter than it had been in weeks. She'd already promised the librarian - whose name she learned was Geoff - that she'd be back Friday.
Bursts of excitement propelled her up the front steps. "Mum, Mum, you'll never guess what just happened!" she cried, barely touching her mum's shoulder with a kiss before launching into her story.
"Well, hello Andee," her mother replied wryly, not looking up from the sewing machine. But Andee continued breathlessly.
"There's a bus - next but one, on the road - it's a Travelling Library. It comes every Tuesday and Friday from two to five-thirty. I joined! And look - look what I borrowed!" She pulled the books out one by one, stacking them triumphantly on the side table.
Her mum gave a half-smile. "Oh Andee, will you really manage all those by Friday? Maybe just one or two would've been enough."
"Oh no, Mum," Andee breathed, her eyes sparkling. "I couldn't leave them. They're the best - I can just tell."
She drifted into the kitchen, then to the lounge, her voice following her like sunlight through a hallway. "Hey guys! Look what I got - books from the Travelling Library!" She waved the stack high like a prize.
Ruby barely looked up from her magazine. "You're such a bookworm," she said dryly. "No wonder Mum says you're unsociable. Because you are."
Andee stiffened just slightly. Then she looked down at the novels in her hands - stories brimming with promise, of hearts laid bare and destinies rewritten. Let Ruby say what she liked. The books didn't care if she spoke too softly or preferred her own company. They welcomed her in without condition.
"Give it a rest, Ruby," Matthew interjected, his voice sharper than usual. "Mum never said that. You just made it up."
"She did say it," Ruby snapped, her gaze locked on Andee like a challenge, daring her to speak, to deny, to break the silence that cloaked her like armor.
Andee stood frozen, the accusation striking deeper than expected - not because it came from Ruby, but because it might be true. Or worse, because she feared it might be what their mother actually believed. Her chest tightened, heat pooling in her eyes. Without a word, she turned and headed for the stairs, her books clutched to her chest like lifelines. Her room offered the only safe harbor.