Tangled Thoughts (28 page)

“I know. I'm sorry, by the way. About Lainey. I never got to say that before.”

“It doesn't matter anymore,” I said, though it still did. Just not as much as it used to.

“No, maybe not. I mean, I'm pissed at her too. But I wanted to say it anyway. She texted me the other day, you know? Out of the blue, after not talking to me all that time.”

Seemed Lainey was contacting a lot of people. I didn't mention the card, though. “
I'm
sorry about that. That she stopped talking to you. Because of me.”

Brooke shook her head. “No, it wasn't you. I don't think anyway. I think it was just…
her
.”

“Maybe you're right.” I glanced over Brooke's shoulder, but saw no sign of Lex. I did, however, see an opportunity to investigate a resource I hadn't considered before. Besides me, Brooke had been Lainey's
only
real Sententia friend. Would that make her a confidant? “Since you brought her up…can I ask you something possibly strange?”

Brooke's eyebrows rose an inch. “Man, you have
no
idea how much I want to check what you want right now! But I won't. Sure, ask anything.”

“Did she—” I forced myself to say her name. “Did
Lainey
ever say anything to you, anything at all, about my Uncle Dan?”

“Senator Astor? Um.” She considered. “
Say
anything? Nothing specific I can remember, but I swore she was really freaked out when she first saw him. At the art thing, with her aunt? And then…on SAT day, I saw her, with a note from him. She was weird then too, but I know she wanted him to like her.” When a Sensor like Brooke said things like that, she meant it. That was her talent, knowing what people wanted, at one particular time anyway. What people wanted often changed. “Why? Did something happen?”

“I don't know,” I said, but thought,
What note
? Uncle loved to send them, said they were more personal and powerful than anything else. Except Lainey had never mentioned one to me. To Brooke I said, “It's probably nothing. But thank you for playing along.”

“Now I'm curious. So. Should I text her back?”

I chuckled. “Depends. Are you a glutton for punishment?”

Brooke's eyes gleamed as she picked up her mug and looked me up and down while she sipped from it. “You look good, Carter, you know?”

I smiled. “It's the champagne. Brings out my eyes.”

“Seriously though. If someone asked me a year ago if I'd be sitting in New York with you and Lex, like this, I'd have
laughed
. And when I saw you at Homecoming, I never would have
said
any of this to you. But today when you smile, you mean it. This was fun. I think, right now, you just want to have fun.”

“I thought that's what girls wanted?”

“What do girls want?” Lex said, appearing behind me and slipping her arms around my neck.

I grabbed one of her hands and kissed it. “More champagne?”

“Duh,” she said, and we all laughed again.

Happy
, I thought.
This is what it feels like
.

Lainey

M
y aunt glowed. I thought that was like a metaphor or cliché, or just something people said to make pregnant women feel better, but seriously, she glowed. I couldn't get over how beautiful she looked, her skin dewy and bright with color, her belly turning rounder every day. I swore her hair was even thicker, which I wouldn't have thought possible.

I watched as she ran and splashed in the ocean, playing with her little cousins with more enthusiasm than ever. I wondered if pregnant women were supposed to do that, run and play like they were little kids themselves, but Abuela didn't stop her, so it must have been okay. She was so happy.

What, I wondered, was I?

Happy
had been an elusive state since…May. Sometimes it snuck up on me; sometimes I was so busy I forgot I was looking for it;
sometimes I faked it. But that night with Jack—for a while, happiness was right there.

It was here, now, lurking, tangled with pain. Could I be happy
for
my aunt, despite everything? And if my
aunt
could be happy, with the constant baby sickness and half the world's media calling her a
whore
—why couldn't I be happy too?

Still laughing, she ran back to her chaise next to mine, kicking sand on my feet as she lay down. She put her hand on her belly. “Whew! One second you're having a good time, and the next you can't decide if you need to eat lunch or throw up.”

“But your hair looks awesome,” I said. “So at least there's that.”

She lifted all the awesome hair off her neck then dropped it again. “It's just more to hold out of the way when I puke,” she said and I wrinkled my nose. I idly rubbed my ankle with my foot, brushing sand off the broken noose that circled it.

“Oh, sweetie,” she sighed. She dipped her toes off her chaise and kicked sand at me again. “I'm sorry, but you know I just hate that tattoo.”

I sighed too. This argument was already old. “Then you'll have to draw me a better one.”

“It's just, what's it even mean? Is it—”

“It's about my migraines,” I lied, a pretty freaking great lie, too, I thought. I'd had to come up with some explanation, because like the tattoo artist, people kept thinking I'd been in an abusive relationship. “I had this debilitating thing and I broke free.” The bitterest part was that I hadn't, not really. I'd just been roped in a different way.

“But why
that
symbol? It's so macabre. Why not, I don't know, a butterfly emerging from a cocoon?”

“We can't all be butterflies, Auntie.” She was. She had more than one in an elaborate garden on her back. To end the conversation, I said, “So, what do you think? Do you want some—Hey!”

The sleek, black sanate trying to steal from our lunch plate had only one foot, the other leg ending in a rough white stump on which he hopped, seemingly unaffected. He wasn't even afraid of me.

“He's a determined bird,” Auntie said.

“Determined to eat your lunch!”

She waved her hand and the bird hopped closer. “Give it to him.”

I frowned. “You don't want anything?”

“Oh, I
want
lunch.” She rested her hand on her belly again. “My stomach says no.”

I stood and swept up the plate, the bird cawing at me angrily. “I'm going to take it inside, or he'll never go away.”

“Bring me a seltzer?” Auntie called and I felt guilty about the bite I'd just stolen from her sandwich.

Once inside, I deposited the plate in the kitchen and, sure that no one else was around, slunk to my bedroom like a thief, or a fool. Quietly, I closed the door and slipped my contraband out of the drawer where I'd buried it. I pretended I wouldn't be tempted to look at them, my phone and my necklace, if they were out of sight. I lied to everyone all the time, so might as well lie to myself too.

I lay on my narrow bed and held up the necklace, watching the diamond glimmer in the sunlight. It felt cold, not having been resting against my skin. I wanted to put it back on; I wanted to be able to put it away for good. For now, I dropped it back into the drawer and turned over my phone.

Blinking—a message! I nearly dropped it, my fingers were so clumsy and desperate. I wasn't even sure what I was hoping for most, but there was no reason to rush. It wasn't a text from Carter or an email from Jack. I'd done terrible things to both of them; neither was going to contact me, no matter how many times I checked. It wasn't even from Amy. It was from Natalie.

Hope you had a good Christmas. I just wanted to let you know that my parents and I talked and I'm not coming back. I'm transferring to Richmond. I'll miss you.

I kept up my lies when I texted back how I'd miss her too, though I was afraid I actually would. Nat had been challenging, but she wasn't all bad. I felt guilty for not trying harder, and guilty for not feeling worse. Could this break, I wondered, get any worse?

By the time I went back outside, Daniel Astor had arrived.

Later, his shadow fell across my beach chair. “May I sit with you?”

Manny was around somewhere, but for the first time since he'd almost killed me, Daniel Astor and I were as alone as we'd probably ever be again. I even welcomed it, because we needed to talk.

“When are you going to tell her?”

“I'm sorry?” He settled comfortably on Aunt Tessa's chaise, crossing his ankles and shading his eyes with his hand. I hated looking at him, so I watched the ocean instead.

“What we are. What her baby's going to be. When are you going to tell her?”

He smiled. “Ah. I'm glad you asked. When were
you
going to tell her?”

I opened my mouth to snap at him then registered what he said. “What?”

He folded his hands across his stomach like he was the most content man in the world. I hated him. “As you just said, this is
your
secret too. Isn't it a courtesy I should afford you, discussing when it will be revealed?”

Two waves crashed before I said, “The answer is never. I planned to tell her never. I didn't want her to be part of this. She deserves to live a normal life.”

He chuckled. “I daresay ‘normal' is not the life she's pursued. In fact, I think she'd consider that an insult. But to answer your question,
I planned to tell her when it became necessary, or whenever you were ready. The baby may not inherit, you know. No guarantees.”

“Did you make her do this?” I asked quietly.
This
is what I wanted to know.

“Excuse me?”

“You know exactly what I'm asking.”

He did. After a pause, he said, “My dear Lainey, even I don't have the ability to maintain such an elaborate ruse. That's not how Thought works.”

“You know if you're hurting her or using her or just with her to torture me, I will kill you.” He had the nerve to chuckle again and I hated him more. In fact, whenever I saw him, I seemed to find new depths to my hatred. “I
will
.”

“That's not why I'm laughing. True, I'm not sure I believe you, since you've had any number of chances. Even now.” He reached out and put a hand on my bare shoulder in a fatherly, condescending way. “You could do it, if you wanted to.”

I stared at him, wishing I really had it in me. But I didn't. Not yet. I was afraid my aunt loved him and, regardless, he was the father of my unborn brother. I. Hated. Him. But I couldn't kill him. I also hated myself for taking the bait. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because, my dear, you know a bit about torture, don't you?” From his pocket he produced Carter's birthday card and I wanted to vomit. I inhaled one, two, three times, to keep the tears from spilling.

“Where did you get that?”

“I relieved the burden from my nephew after I found him at a bar, knee deep in a bottle of Scotch.”

Carter? Drinking? Alone at a bar? I struggled again to keep the tears at bay. “That's not—that's not why I sent it!”

“No? What effect did you think it would have?” I kicked little puffs of sand onto one foot with the other. The problem was I hadn't really
been thinking about
Carter
when I sent it. I couldn't look at Dan, but I could feel that he was grinning. “Precisely.”

Finally, I raised my eyes to meet his. “I didn't mean to hurt him. I never wanted to at all.”

“Yet you're doing a remarkable job. Has it occurred to you that he might be happier if you'd leave him be?” Probably he could have stabbed me and it would have hurt less than those words. But then he added, “Or that I am here to be with Tessa because she's the most amazing woman I've been lucky enough to meet in this lifetime?” Which is when, finally, I did cry. I turned my back to him and mashed away tears while he said, “I'm sorry, Elaine. Eventually you'll learn there are times when it's
not
about you.”

L
ATER
THAT
WEEK
, when Dan had gone to smoke cigars with Abuelo and Uncle Tommy, leaving my aunt and me at the dining table alone, I asked her, “Are you happy, Auntie?” Not that it wasn't obvious, but I needed to hear it, from her, in her own words.

She regarded me for a while before she answered. “Do you know, when your father first showed up at the café where we worked, I was the one who had a crush on him? Julie had a boyfriend, of course. She barely even glanced at Allen, but she'd always talk to him, mostly about me, until one day she realized she'd stopped talking me up and started, simply, talking. The next thing she knew, the boyfriend was gone and it was like your father had always been there, the missing part of her. It was hard even to be jealous, I loved your mother so much, and they were obviously meant to be together.”

“I didn't know that,” I whispered. I had no idea. She'd never included this detail in the story before.

“So,” she continued, “when I met Dan, it was like that moment again, so many years ago, when your father walked in, tall, and
handsome, and radiating success. Something in my heart thumped. In a way it hadn't since probably that day.”

“Were you… were you in love with my father?”

She laughed. “No, honey. I was attracted to him once, before it was impossible to think of him separately from Julie and, eventually, from you. But I did love him. And I miss them both, every day still. When I saw Dan, it just flooded me, the same attraction. I wanted to know him. He's nothing like your father, and yet, so similar. Sometimes in the way he'll tilt his head or wave his hand…” She absently rubbed her belly, while I sipped my wine. “So this is all to say, yes, I'm happy. So perfectly happy.”

“Do you love… are you in love with
him
?” I had to know. I could barely handle the idea that my aunt was carrying Satan's baby, but the fact that she might actually be in
love
with him…It was all too late for me to change, but I had to know.