Dear Daughter (9 page)

I nodded, enjoying myself.

She gestured toward my cigarettes. “Could I—”

“No.”

She shrank back and I lit up, holding the smoke in my lungs until I felt the fizzy tingle in the back of my head that always accompanies the first smoke in a chain. The party promptly became more bearable.

“What’s your name?” I asked the girl.

“Maggie,” she said, “Maggie O’Malley.”

“Jesus. Your parents Boston beat cops or something?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Forget it.” I looked her over. A skirt that didn’t quite fit; a halter whose neckline she kept picking at. Along her jawline, a constellation of plump whiteheads she’d tried to cover with concealer. Her red plastic cup clearly hadn’t been touched. “What’re you drinking?”

She hesitated. “Vodka cranberry?”

I plucked the cup from her hand and took a sip; it was strong enough to make my lips curl around my teeth. I set it on a side table. “Are you trying to get laid or something?”

“What? Oh my god, no. Gross.”

“Then don’t accept mystery drinks from strangers. If you’re going to be stupid, be stupid on purpose.”

Maggie pushed back her hair and lifted her chin, and I wondered with some horror if she might be about to ask me to the seventh-grade prom.

“Are you really dating Tobey Maguire?” she asked instead.

The rest of the girls found their voices all at once. “No way,” one said. “I heard she’s with Pacey—”

“—that guy from that movie—”

“—Leonardo DiCaprio—”

“Leo totally only dates models.” This from Maggie, who shot me an abashed look immediately thereafter. But I didn’t take offense. I just sipped my whiskey and admired my boots and let them speculate. They’d come up with taller tales than I ever could.

I had long since stopped following the conversation when I realized a guilty silence had fallen over the group. I opened my mouth to say something, but then I caught sight of a blond weave and enough body glitter to blow a pupil. Ainsley. I stretched my way to the sideboard for a refill.

Ainsley’s hand was wrapped around the bicep of a guy with the oily good looks of a serial adulterer. She was wearing an outfit so relentlessly hideous I refuse to describe it.

She stood just outside the door to the study, examining the girls and toeing the threshold like it was quarantine tape. “I didn’t realize we were throwing a charity ball,” she said. She turned to her escort with a plump smile (p.s., her lip liner was a blue-based red that was totally inappropriate for her skin tone). “Remind me which charity we’re benefiting again—is it Save the Children? Or Special Olympics?”

The girls drew in on themselves, chins caving in. Maggie hugged her purse, a vintage Kelly bag that had seen better days. I had a sudden, unwanted vision: Mrs. O’Malley pulling the purse from the depths of her closet—a look on her face I’d heard about but never seen—and placing it in Maggie’s waiting arms, all in honor of her having been invited to a real teenage party even though she was ginger and fat. They’d probably taken pictures.

I swirled my drink, thinking. Then I settled back in my chair and lit another cigarette. At the strike of my match, Ainsley spun around, her sneer shifting to something toothier when she recognized me.

“Jane! I didn’t think you were coming.”

I puffed three very deliberate circles of smoke. “
Touched by an Angel
’s in reruns.”

She had the same look on her face she always had whenever she tried to sit down in a miniskirt. It made me smile. Ainsley was desperate to convince the world we were BFFs. She probably thought it could help her acting career.

“Why don’t you come outside?” she asked. “The crowd there is more
our
kind of people.”

“Friends of yours?”

“Of course—”

“Not interested.”

Her face paled under her bronzer. “But—”

I crooked my finger at the arm candy. “You. What’s your name?”

He looked at Ainsley with a panicked expression, because even a dog can sense danger. “I don’t think—”

“Grant’s with me,” Ainsley said.

I hummed and recrossed my legs.

“Why don’t you just come outside with us?” she asked again, with a whiny undertone and an artless pout.

“Because,” I said, “I’ve no interest in idiots unless I’m fucking them.” I turned to Grant with a smile that was not, I’m sorry to say, particularly nice. “So,
Grant
—what do you say?”

When, not sixty seconds later, I left the room with Grant trailing obediently behind me, such a happy, astonished smile broke over Maggie O’Malley’s face that I almost forgot to dig out my Clé de Peau concealer and toss it her way.

“For the freckles,” I said.

But of course the joke was on me. Three months later each and every person in that room testified against me.

•   •   •

My mouth opened to tell Rue exactly what I thought about her—

“Rue? Are you in here?”

I turned. An auburn-haired woman with Rue’s face was standing in the front hall, kid-leather-clad hands on her hips. A strand of fat black pearls peeked out from beneath her scarf, which, unless I am very much mistaken, was cashmere.

So this is the money. Or, at least, someone close to the money.

I told my heart to settle down. Just because she was rich didn’t mean she’d known my mother.

When she saw Rue, the woman threw up her hands. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“Well, congratulations,” Rue said, “you’ve found me.”

“I thought Shandra was working tonight.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Why didn’t you call? We’re about to sit down to dinner—you know it’s our last dinner party before the festival starts. We’ve been expecting you.”

“If you wanted me to be at your beck and call, then you shouldn’t have forced me to take this stupid job in the first place.” The older woman primmed her lips and made to hold up a finger, but Rue spoke first. “But that’s beside the point, Mother,
dearest
, because in case you haven’t noticed, we have a guest.”

If I hadn’t already been watching the woman, I might not have caught the near mechanical efficiency with which she modulated her expression, a child prodigy manipulating a Rubik’s Cube. “Oh, you must be Miss Parker! You’re early!” Her voice dripped with an unfamiliar, syrupy sweetness I eventually translated as pleasure. A memory clicked into place. This wasn’t Tessa. This was the inn’s owner.

“Ms. Kanty?” I asked.

She waved her hand. “Call me Cora.” Her eyes crow’s-footed at the corners when she smiled; had they not, I might have believed that she was still in her late twenties. Her hair was in a charming little braid, a bit wispy and pinned in a coronet to the top of her head. The style should have been too young on her, but it complemented her ruddy cheeks, which were flushed not from cosmetics or the cold but from what appeared to be—high spirits?

Second-generation rich
, I decided. Conditioned to her privilege but still delighted by it.

“—is going to be particularly special this year,” Cora was saying, “and I really think you’ll—”

“Is anyone else joining you?” Rue asked.

I started. “I beg your pardon?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Really, Rue,” Cora said, sharply.

“What?” Rue said. “I just need to know how many chocolates to put on the pillows. I mean—I can probably guess, but I just thought I’d check.”

“Rue, that’s enough.” Cora twisted her smile back into place before turning to me. “Teenagers,” she said. I nodded sympathetically, even as part of me spat and scrubbed its tongue at the realization that I was siding with someone’s mom.

Cora grabbed me by the elbow and led me into the foyer, away from Rue’s little smirk, and my body’s focus narrowed down to the ten or so square inches of contact between us. Even through three layers of clothing it felt like she was running a bristle brush over a half-healed burn. It took all my concentration not to pull away.

“We have nothing planned tonight for the festival, I’m afraid,” Cora said, “but if you’d like, we’d love to have you join us for dinner.”

I’d rather fuck a Christmas tree.

“I’d love to.”

She clapped her hands. “Wonderful! Now why don’t you let Rue show you to your room, and then we’ll all head over together.” She reached over and tucked my hair behind my ear. “And don’t mind Rue. So what if you’re single? Who knows—maybe you’ll meet someone here.”

Rue was already halfway up the stairs by the time I started after her. She looked back at me over her shoulder with a vulpine twinkle. “You’ll be up in the attic,” she called down cheerfully. “Just like Bertha Mason!”

Exam of A. Butler, Cont’d

By Mr. Thompkins

Mary Ann Palmiter

Official Court Transcriber

1 MS. BUTLER: I DIDN’T EVEN INVITE HER, FOR ONE THING. SHE JUST

2 SHOWED UP.

3

4 MR. THOMPKINS: AND HOW DID YOU KNOW THE DEFENDANT?

5

6 MS. BUTLER: WE WENT TO SCHOOL TOGETHER. WHEN SHE BOTHERED

7 TO SHOW UP, THAT IS.

8

9 MR. THOMPKINS: AND DID YOU SEE HER THAT NIGHT?

10

11 MS. BUTLER: I DID.

12

13 MR. THOMPKINS: CAN YOU SAY AT WHAT TIME?

14

15 MS. BUTLER: TEN OR TEN-THIRTY, I THINK.

16

17 MR. THOMPKINS: DID YOU SPEAK TO HER?

18

19 MS. BUTLER: YES, AND IT WAS VERY UNPLEASANT. SHE WAS

20 ANGRY AND AGGRESSIVE AND VERBALLY ABUSIVE AND I FEARED

21 FOR MY SAFETY.

22

23 MR. THOMPKINS: WERE YOU SURPRISED BY HER BEHAVIOR?

24

25 MS. BUTLER: NO. SHE WAS A BITCH, ASK ANYONE.

Exam of M. O’Malley, Cont’d

By Mr. Thompkins

Mary Ann Palmiter

Official Court Transcriber

1 MR. THOMPKINS: MS. O’MALLEY, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE

2 DEFENDANT’S STATE OF MIND ON THE NIGHT OF JULY 14TH?

3

4 MS. O’MALLEY: SHE HAD BEEN DRINKING.

5

6 MR. THOMPKINS: COULD YOU GUESS HOW MUCH SHE HAD BEEN

7 DRINKING?

8

9 MS. O’MALLEY: MY IMPRESSION WAS THAT SHE WAS VERY DRUNK.

10

11 MR. THOMPKINS: DID YOU ACTUALLY SEE HER DRINKING?

12

13 MS. O’MALLEY: YES.

14

15 MR. THOMPKINS: HOW MANY DRINKS?

16

17 MS. O’MALLEY: JUST ONE, ACTUALLY.

18

19 MR. THOMPKINS: THEN WHY WOULD YOU SAY SHE WAS

20 “VERY DRUNK”?

21

22 MS. O’MALLEY: BECAUSE SHE WAS ACTING SO WEIRD.

23

24 MR. THOMPKINS: IN WHAT WAY?

25

1 MS. O’MALLEY: LIKE SHE KEPT STARING AT THE FLOOR OR AT THE

2 WALL, AND THEN WHEN AINSLEY CAME IN, SHE WOULDN’T LOOK AT

3 HER AT ALL.

4

5 MR. THOMPKINS: IS IT POSSIBLE MS. JENKINS WAS UNDER THE

6 INFLUENCE OF A NARCOTIC?

7

8 MS. O’MALLEY: I DON’T KNOW. I THINK MAYBE SHE WAS JUST—

9

10 MR. THOMPKINS: YES, MS. O’MALLEY?

11

12 MS. O’MALLEY: NO, YOU’RE RIGHT, SHE WAS PROBABLY TOTALLY ON

13 DRUGS.

CHAPTER NINE

We left the inn in the care of the elusive Shandra, a petulant twenty-something who arrived in a huff after receiving a terse call from Cora.

“Thanks for nothing,” Shandra said, picking at the corner of one eye where her lashes had come unglued. “I was on a date.”

Rue smiled thinly. “Don’t worry. The backseat of Xander Pierson’s Chevy Corsica will still be there when you get out.”

“Rue.” Cora was holding the door open. “If we leave your father alone with the food, we’ll be stuck with nothing but last night’s coffee cake.”

“We should be so lucky,” Rue said under her breath as she swept past me.

•   •   •

The Kantys lived on the very edge of town, in the westernmost house on Main Street. It was another Victorian—in shades of lavender, as far as I could tell from the porch light—and it was as postcard pretty as the inn, with a neat little fence and hedges trimmed just so. I would have bet good money that the handsome handmade autumnal wreath on the front door was worth at least half as much as Kayla’s truck.

A scarecrow was seated on the porch swing, legs crossed and arms stretched out along the back of the bench and pinned in place, a grotesque parody of insouciance.

“Rebecca?”

The bench swayed back and forth, the scarecrow’s face moving in and out of the shadow of the broad brim of its hat. At its apogee the porch light spotlit the red slash of its mouth.

“Rebecca.”

I jumped.
That’s your name now, moron.

Cora was looking at me. “Are you okay?”

Get a goddamned grip. This is easy—it’s dinner
en famille,
not a state banquet.

(But then again—what did I know of
famille
? I only ever ate with my mother when there was no one else for her to eat with.)

I stammered out a smile. “I was just admiring—the door.” I looked at it and cataloged everything I could that might interest someone like Cora. “The hardware,” I said with some relief. “Is that P&F Corbin?”

Cora’s face cleared. “It is! And original, too—took me
ages
to track down.” She tucked her arm into mine conspiratorially. “Let me tell you, Rebecca, you wouldn’t believe the state of this place when I first bought it back—”