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“Oh, come on. He’s a psychopath. Just, just tell him you’re gone and he can put on his big boy pants about it, Rav,” Robert said dispassionately. He didn’t even falter as he continued slicing lemon wedges for the water pitcher.
Rava’s brother had never particularly liked Kendall, and the easy dismissal of him from Rava’s life hinted at how much further her ex-husband had fallen from Robert’s already low level of esteem. Rava leveled Robert with a challenging look, brows raised and mouth tight as if to silently tell him it was easy for Robert to say that in the safety of his home without Kendall Roy screaming in his ear.
“Okay, okay, okay. Fine. Uh, how about just shoot straight with him? And when he throws a hissy fit, tell him you’re sorry for his loss and goodbye. In and out, Ravs,” Robert offered, ending with a sad smile.
“Yeah, maybe,” Rava agreed absently. The phone was weighty in her hands, but her eyes were fixed on the glass sliding door that separated her from where her children and Travis, Robert’s husband, played two-on-one badminton in the yard. Iverson’s smile at Travis’s dramatic swing made Rava’s heart ache.
“Time to stop thinking and just…get it over with, yeah?”
Robert didn’t answer one way or another but did rise from the barstool across from her at the kitchen island and then escape through the sliding glass door to join the others. She lifted the phone, screen lighting with the sudden movement to reveal Kendall’s contact information, and pressed the call button.Over the sound of the phone ringing, Rava could hear Robert call out from the other side of the door, “I told you two to take it easy on the old man!”
Travis feigned offense. Sophia and Iverson laughed, but it was barely audible to Rava.
The ringing stopped. A click, a shuffle, and a voice:
“Hey,” Kendall answered.
Rava’s stomach turned. She reached out and picked up a lemon wedge from the abandoned pile.
“Hey. Hey, Ken, um…,” Rave hesitated. She squeezed the lemon into her water but held onto the wedge, now more malleable in her fingers. “Listen, I... I’ve been concerned, okay? Everybody's saying that there's gonna be major disturbances today, and after what happened to Sophie–”
Kendall cut her off, quick and efficient.
“No, yeah. Rav, it's... it's rumors.”
Rava couldn’t help scoffing. She had obsessively watched news coverage of the election for the past several days. She saw footage of the protestors, the angry crowds, the unrest. Someone had set a flag on fire not far from the cathedral where Logan Roy’s service was to be held.
Kendall continued, assuming she’d been placated by his lie.
“Okay. I'm with Fikret. Uh, I'm gonna go with the sibs, but he'll pick you guys up, and then–”
Rave mashed the lemon together, feeling the slick insides sliding underneath the waxy rind.
Years ago, her voice might have surprised her in its firmness and exhaustion, but it was the only tone she’d taken with Kendall in months: “Okay. Yeah, no, Ken. Listen. I need to tell you we headed upstate last night. We’re at Travis and Robert’s, and this is, is my decision, okay? I'm... I'm really sorry.”
For a moment, there was silence. Rava wished Kendall would hang up on her, though she knew he wouldn’t. Leaving a conversation first was analogous to losing in Ken’s mind. She could hear him shifting again in the car so many miles away as he spoke.
“What? What are you even talking about?” Kendall pushed, anger just beneath the disbelief.
“Ken, it... it just... It does not feel safe today. Okay? This is just what we needed to do. All right?”
Rava disliked how pleading her voice sounded. She disliked even more that it wouldn’t matter to the man who was her husband not so long ago.
“What do you think you're doing? The fսck is going on? This is hysterical bullshit.”
Rava dropped the lemon wedge into her glass and brought the heel of her hand to her forehead. Kendall went on, amping from incredulity to fury.
“You're not bringing the kids to their grandfather's funeral? Are you insane?”
Rava thought of the million different retorts she might have thrown out once upon a time. They were so young when they met; they didn’t know how to handle one another. But they figured it out, for a time. They figured it out until they didn’t, she guessed. She didn’t think there was any way to handle Kendall now; there was only damage control.
“I don't consider it safe,” she said simply.
She could imagine Kendall’s dark eyes shifting from entreating to dismissive.
“You're... you're... You're too online, okay? You've lost context. Everything is fine.”
Rava gave a humorless laugh; she wanted to scream and drag her nails across his face.
She had wanted to keep this brief and factual, but she couldn’t stop the outburst at his reckless condescension.
“Nothing is fine. You said things would be okay. You said that Daniel would win. Our daughter is not fine–”
Kendall’s voice boomed over hers, “Do not fսck with me today!”
The intrusion made her stand up from her seat on the stool and brace herself against the island, knuckles going white.
“Nothing is fine,” she hissed into the phone.
Uselessly, Kendall again shouted, ”Do not fսck with me today!”
Rava took a deep breath. He was miles and hours away. A world away.
His father’s funeral was today.
She had loved him once.
“You need to stop. You need to calm down. I do not consider it safe. Okay?”
Kendall was still a live wire on the other end. He’d loved her once, too, in his way.
“That's bullshit– you're trying to hurt me. It's my fսcking father's funeral.”
Rava wasn’t sure if he believed it or if it was just the next blade he pulled from the block.
“There will be a memorial, and we will go to that–”
“He didn't want a memorial–”
“I'm sorry, Ken. I’m sorry,” Rava forcefully spoke over Kendall’s attempted intrusion.
“This is, uh, fucking kidnapping, Rava, you know that? Maybe not in a legal sense, but in court, you know what this is gonna look like, right?.”
Rava shook her head to herself at the impotent, veiled threat, and tears blurred her vision without warning.
“Okay. Do what you need to do, Ken. This is– this is what I needed to do.”
She heard him take a sharp breath.
“You, you needed to take the kids away from me on the day of my dad’s funeral? Their grandfather’s funeral? You needed to do that, Rava, really?
Rava wiped the silent tears away. She wasn’t sure whom she was crying for, but it wasn’t herself. As she spoke, she moved away from the island and wandered toward the glass door to watch the four playing badminton on the lawn.
“I’m not doing this, Ken. I’m not. You can come see them after if that’s what–”
“That is, just, so out of touch,” Kendall immediately cut in at the offer, superiority dripping from his voice. “The funeral, the board meeting, the election…this is– it’s a global event. I’m global right now, Rava, and I need you to hear that, okay?”
Iverson and Robert were on a team now, as were Sophie and Travis. Rava watched Sophie stumble back to try to return her uncle’s serve. She managed to make contact with the birdie as she went down into the grass. Rava could see her smiling on the ground; her opponents were laughing too hard to attempt to hit the shuttle back over the net. She could almost imagine a Kendall-shaped ghost extending a hand to help Sophie to her feet.
Almost.
“The kids need you to be their father, Ken.”
She knew he hadn’t really heard her even before he answered.
“And I’m trying to do that, if you’d let me. He was their grandfather.”
“He wasn’t—” Rava caught the words. Standing there between worlds, she had begun to feel like a tourist in both the one sprawling in technicolor before her and the one that lived in her memory. Detachment, it seemed, loosened her tongue.
“He wasn’t what, huh?” Kendall questioned. She swore Roys could smell a fight like blood in the water, and it made them just as hungry. He urged again: “Go ahead.”
Rava admittedly hadn’t planned on bringing Logan Roy into the discussion of why she took the kids out of the city, but that man couldn’t seem to remain absent for long. It was careless, maybe, but there was never going to be a better time to tell Kendall what he needed– wanted, it seemed– to hear.
“He wasn’t really a, um, a grandfather to them, Ken,” Rava softly answered. “Logan was good at a lot of things, but he didn’t have space for that– for them. I’m sorry, I really am.”
Silence settled between them, cold and hard.
“He wasn’t their grandfather,” Kendall intoned emotionlessly. “You’re saying my dad, Logan Roy, wasn’t their grandfather, that’s what you’re saying.”
Rava was so very tired. She had been tired for a long time now.
From a distance, she heard her former brother-in-law’s voice: “I mean, technically–”
And Shiv quickly admonishing him with a curt “Rome.”
Roman must have been talking loudly, perhaps for Rava’s benefit, because she distinctly heard him say in his flippant way, “Hey, Dad’s the one who said Thanksgiving looked like United Colors of Benetton. The file clerk’s name was like Brett or Kyle, though, so pretty sure he was just a plain ol’ WASP.”
Rava’s ears began to ring as she heard Shiv say, “Shut the fuck up, Roman, I swear to god.”
Kendall said nothing to his brother, and once again, a heavy silence filled the distance between them.
Eventually, over the sound of her own blood rushing, Rava heard Ken’s voice.
“You never wanted me to be a father.”
Roman said things because he was Roman and that was what he did. Rava and Kendall both knew this. A voice in the back of Rava’s mind asked why Kendall would hear this awful, absurd thing when he rarely heard anything else his brother said.
It was too outrageous to take seriously, yet with Ken, that was all she could do.
“What? I…just…what are you saying, Kendall? What the fuck are you saying?”
A dry huff that might have been a laugh answered her sputtering questions, and the vise in Rava’s chest tightened.
“How didn’t I see this?” Kendall asked. His tone was almost wry, like he’d been the butt of a very good joke and couldn’t quite muster up any ire for it. He was threatening like this– when he wasn’t rushing to action and botching his next move in his own blustering eagerness. Kendall spoke again, still unbothered if not amused: “I fell for it. You got me, Rava, you fucking got me, yeah? Bravo, seriously, bravo.”
She heard a clap, though she wasn’t sure if it was Kendall or Roman.
“Ken, you need to get a grip,” Rava stated, measured and cool in a way she didn’t feel. “Think about what you’re saying– what you’re saying about your children, okay?”
Kendall sighed, a bored hum.
“Take the kids, Rava. Keep cashing my checks, okay? But take your kids wherever is safe enough, yeah?”
A choked noise caught in her throat, breaking any pretense of composure.
“Ken, they are our children,” she whispered harshly into the phone. “They are your children.”
But Kendall had begun speaking again almost as soon as Rava did, and he had never been able to listen to someone else when his own voice was so loud.
“...’cause you know what, Rava? My children and my wife would be at my father’s fucking funeral, not pulling this goddamn bullshit.”
Rava swallowed a sob– she wouldn’t give him that. Outside, Sophie and Iverson switched teams. She closed her eyes and again tried, unsuccessfully, to picture Ken jogging from one side of the net to the other, unworried about the calls he missed.
“Ken…it’s too dangerous. Ken,” Rava implored. Pride was the Roys’ sin, not hers– not now. She didn’t have that luxury. “Please.”
He inhaled, then exhaled audibly. It was the displeased noise he made when a driver was late due to traffic or a favorite restaurant was fully booked. It expressed a mild disgruntlement at the inconveniences of the universe external to oneself.
“Is there anything else?” he asked. “I don’t have time for this, though, uh, I guess I should thank you for the clarity. I understand now, so really, uh, thank you, yeah? Thank you.”
Rava opened her eyes. Her children were still playing in the backyard with their uncles. Robert caught her eye before returning his attention to the game. The memory of when she was pregnant with Iverson drifted into her consciousness: Ken had been nervous to touch her stomach. In private, brief grazes and the occasional brush to feel kicks were all that was offered; in public, Kendall avoided even acknowledging her growing form. Rava had accepted that pregnancy scared Kendall, and she didn’t push him to admit it because she knew he wouldn’t. After all, she loved him.
Numbly, Rava replied with the first words that came to mind: “Ken, I’m sorry for your loss. Goodbye.”
As she pulled the phone away from her ear, she caught Kendall’s parting words–
“Fuck off, Rava.”
Hours later, Rava, Robert, and Travis were sprawled on the couches in the couple’s den while Iverson and Sophie played a video game upstairs. On the coffee table sat two empty bottles of wine and a third that was halfway to joining its compatriots.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Travis said for maybe the fourth time since Rava had recounted the sickening conversation with her ex-husband. “Make it make sense, Rob.”
Robert huffed sardonically into his wine glass, fogging it up. The momentary look of consternation on her brother’s face as he considered the condensation before he tipped the glass back made something tight start to loosen in Rava’s chest. It wasn’t a feeling she trusted anymore.
“The. Man. Is. A. Psychopath. He’s fucking insane. It’s never, ever, ever gonna make sense,” Robert proclaimed.
He did Rava the courtesy of dropping his voice even though it was doubtful the kids could hear them from the upstairs bedroom.
“Yes,” Travis agreed so quickly it seemed like the psychopath part of the discussion was a foregone conclusion, “but he’s always been this way. Kind of, I mean. He’s worse, yes, definitely. It’s just…”
Travis trailed off, took a sip of his wine, and leaned forward conspiratorially. He didn’t immediately continue, though, which made Rava nervous. She, too, took another sip of wine, enjoying how the glass felt against her desensitized lips.
Robert rolled his hand, motioning for Travis to get on with it.
“Hear me out, Rav, okay? I might be wrong– fuck, I hope I’m wrong. But his dad just died, and he worshipped the man. Hated him, sure, because he was actually evil, but still. So, uh, his dad dies, and he just decides to totally cut off his own kids, too? And he starts buying this racist, ableist bullshit after branding himself Mr. Vanity Fair Woke CEO Bro? Get the fuck outta here, ya know?”
Travis’s eyes dropped to the wine glass, and he paused.
Robert shifted impatiently in his seat but didn’t prompt his husband. Rava was relieved when he didn’t.
In his own time, Travis continued, “I guess my point is that Ken is a rat bastard who wouldn’t exit without an angle. He’s always got the…the next thing lined up. The new best thing, in his mind, yeah? I just wonder what the next best thing is now.”
Rava cocked her head in thought. Her mind was moving slower through the wine haze, and the comfort of the den had already made the jagged edges of her former life a little bit less cutting.
“Well, the fascist president will probably take up some bandwidth,” Rava offered, musing on Travis’s words. “And the vote. God, he must be insufferable right now.”
Rava took another drink at that thought.
“He knocked someone up,” Robert said suddenly, too loudly. He cringed at the volume of his own voice and mouthed sorry.
Travis shrugged and pointedly did not look at Rava.
“No,” Rava instantly responded. “No…right? That’s…that’s not…no.”
She looked between the two men. Travis was still eyeing his wine glass, but her brother met her gaze.
What would Kendall Roy consider the best family?
Coldly, Rava thought it sure as shit wouldn’t be an ex-wife who couldn’t stand him now along with their one adopted child and one neurodivergent child with uncertain paternity (They were so young, and they weren’t together yet, not really. He had said he didn’t care whose it was. There was never a test, so Iverson was Kendall’s.). She wondered how long he had found them all so damnably lacking in his estimation.
She wondered vaguely what kind of woman would be deemed worthy of carrying the, apparently much-desired, next Roy heir. Because, of course, that had worked out so well for Kendall and his siblings. She imagined Kendall choosing from the molds of women his father left behind: A Marcia, perhaps? Or a Caroline? God forbid if it was a Kerry. Not that it would ultimately matter; the Roys were unknowable. She recognized that now. She wanted to warn the poor, foolish woman who found herself enmeshed in their dynasty, though it would be too late to do so if Travis and Robert were right.
She hoped they weren’t. The world didn’t need another Roy, and she doubted any other line could dilute the Roy blood enough to cleanse it.
Best to let it die.
For the first time, she prayed that Iverson wasn’t Kendall’s son.
Rava realized she had been quiet too long, and her brother and Travis were watching her with worried, regretful faces.
“You know what I’d love to do right now?” she asked. “Watch my father-in-law’s funeral.”
The two men seemed to lighten at her words, and Rava smiled– a genuine smile– at their lightness.
“Well, that can be arranged,” Robert replied while snatching the remote.
Within seconds, he’d opened an app and found a recording of the service live stream. The interior of the cathedral filled the screen, and the low din of distant conversations buzzed through the room. Rava scanned the screen and swiftly found the people she was searching for.
Watching Kendall and the family she’d spent countless holidays with through the view of a camera was surreal. They seemed small, flimsy even. They would have been indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd were it not for the heads of attendees craning to catch a glimpse of the Roy children. It reminded Rava of sunflowers leaning toward the light; theirs, naturally, was a brutal, beating sun, but it occurred to her that might not matter to those who never neared it. To onlookers, maybe, it only glimmered.
As the service began, Kendall and his siblings made their way to the front row, and when coverage switched to a camera directed squarely at them, the family abruptly became much more real to Rava.
She looked down the pew, first finding Connor and Willa. The most remarkable thing about them was that they looked more or less normal, which was more than could be said most of the time. Connor appeared appropriately grave but not stricken. In comparison, Roman looked pale, thin, and unsteady– like he might vomit on the church floor. Rava forgave him, mostly, for his cruelty that morning; it wasn’t his fault Kendall wielded words like knives when Roman only spoke them as pool hall darts.
And there was Kendall on the screen looking like the executioner and undertaker. Rava could read nothing in his expression and posture, which meant it was well considered and possibly even practiced. He was both the absence of emotion and the black hole where it might disappear and assimilate into the matter native to that space. Kendall embodied the immovable object in that moment despite how much he liked to characterize himself as the unstoppable force.
Beside Kendall, their arms touching and hands interlaced, Shiv was all restrained radiance. Wrapped in black with diamonds at her throat, she struck Rava as an heiress to an empire of cities, people, and land instead of one composed of ideas, dollars, and influence. Shiv was dignified yet somber; grave yet soft.
Soft, in part, because it appeared Shiv was pregnant.
Rava’s world faded to pinholes, and she thought she would black out. A grotesque, vulgar sequence played out behind her closed eyes, and she shuddered to know her imagination could conjure such images so easily. She leaned her head back on the couch, grasped the stem of the wine glass firmly to keep it from tipping, and took deep breaths. When she opened her eyes again, color had returned to the space around her. Travis and Robert were both transfixed by the theatrics unfolding on the screen and had not noticed Rava’s episode behind them.
Rava wondered if she was the one going crazy.
It was unbelievable and unfair to Shiv to attach her to Kendall’s chaos, even in intrusive imaginings. The notion of Kendall and Shiv together frayed Rava’s nerves and scraped so deeply it might have touched her soul. She felt dirty for even conceiving of the idea.
Yet, even if such a thing would be a natural disaster on par with a tornado, it wasn’t impossible.
And it should have been.
Rava refilled her wine glass and continued watching, now focusing on Kendall almost exclusively. She tracked his gaze, his hands, his movements, his expressions. As stoic as he appeared, Rava had known Kendall, intimately, for a long time. The drama of Ewan and Roman, both disrupting the proceedings in their own way, made it more difficult to dissect Kendall. An arm on a shoulder or upper back was to be expected as they encircled Roman, shielding him the best they could from the prying cameras.
Still, she kept her vigil as the service played out on the screen, tallying each innocuous motion:
A hand brushing a lower back as they stood in the pews. (Helping her get steady on her feet, Rava countered herself.)
Brown eyes seeking the slight swell of Shiv’s abdomen, time and again. (For God’s sake, he’s looking at the ground, Rava scolded.)
A lingering glance over. (Too ridiculous to refute, Rava thought.)
Hovering close as the family procession exited the pews. (They’ve had enough of the cameras today, Rava acknowledged with a pang of sympathy.)
There were only a few minutes left in the recording when Kendall’s facade slipped for the briefest moment. As the procession moved toward the exit, Kendall had situated himself directly beside Shiv, turning toward her and blocking at least one side of the crowd’s gawking. The pair neared the end of the aisle, almost out of the gauntlet, and Shiv discreetly wiped a stray tear away from her cheek. Before he could stop himself, Kendall reached out. His fingers barely made contact with the rounded curve when he pulled them away as though he’d been burned. He shoved his hand in his pocket, then took it out again and left it hanging taut at his side.
For a few fleeting moments, Rava hated Kendall. She hated him with an ugly, human compulsion that was born of hurt, not reason. She hated the concern, the touch, and the protection (not an undercover SUV but his own flesh); she loathed how different her replacement– because that’s what it was, just like Logan– was in looks, disposition, and birthright. She raged against the knowledge that Shiv had well and truly been there all along and Rava herself– and her children– was quite possibly a long-term stand-in for something better.
The immediate fiery rage ebbed somewhat in the subsequent rush of hot-faced embarrassment at how base her feelings were when confronted with an act that was criminal by any definition. Rava’s thoughts circled themselves: She wondered what had happened, if anything, when they were children to result in this; she found she didn’t care because it changed nothing now. She wondered when it started; she found she didn’t want to know because no answer was better, or less hurtful, than another. She thought about what it might feel like to ruin the life of Kendall Roy; she thought about what it might feel like to ruin the lives of your own children.
Thus, even awash in a bitter sea of contempt, Rava recognized she didn’t want absolute proof because the truth was enough. Proof carried with it the burden of disclosure and scrutiny– or obfuscation and guilt. Besides, Rava knew she simply didn’t possess the violence needed to destroy multiple human beings’ lives.
One more thing, Rava thought, that separated her from the Roys.