Chapter 42 #2
“Viv,” my mom says in greeting. Her entire face shifts when she sees the black eye Deacon gave me. It’s better now than it was days ago, but the swollen, tender flesh around my eye socket is still as colorful as a peacock’s feather. “What happened to you?”
“I tripped on a curb.”
My mother shakes her head, fingers pressed to her lips. “I wish you’d take better care of yourself.”
“You look like a Hells Angel,” Nora says, studying my eye. “Or a bounty hunter.”
Fiona’s sitting at her desk, closing out a few windows on her computer. She doesn’t even look up at me.
“Hey, Fiona,” I try.
She doesn’t budge. It’s like a gut punch.
I know how upset all three of them are with me for missing the exhibit.
There’s a part of me that wishes I could just come clean.
Something about my conversation with Peter—the way he blames his eight-year-old self for not saving his mom, all that he’s too afraid to tell Sophia—makes me want to be brave.
To tell my family everything. From why losing my dad hurt in more ways than anyone ever understood up to how I wasn’t at the exhibit because I was too busy fighting the wrong battles, alienating my closest friend, and taking out years of anger on the only person who has ever understood why it’s so damn difficult to be what I am.
Since Fiona refuses to acknowledge me, I redirect to my mom and Nora. “What are you guys doing here?”
“We’re taking Fiona to dinner at Maison. To celebrate the success of the exhibit.”
I nod, pursing my lips. “Congratulations, Fiona.”
Nada.
And for whatever reason, it’s the hurt in her eyes that gets me. Not the disappointment, not the expectation, not the anger. I didn’t just let the Windsor down, or my mom, or Nora. I let Fiona down. I always got the sense Fiona kind of believed in me.
“Fiona,” I say, ignoring my mom’s and Nora’s curious eyes. “I’m really sorry. The night of the exhibit I was trying to help someone who I thought was in danger. It’s no excuse, but you can rest easy knowing I’ve been sufficiently punished.”
Finally, she looks up. “That’s kind of the point of being fired.”
“Yeah, and I basically got dumped too, and Penny won’t talk to me…”
“Dumped?” my mom echoes. “I thought you and James broke up last month?”
Whoops. I’ll tackle that nightmare conversation later.
Fiona takes her oversized glasses off and rubs her temples until her eyes close. “I don’t ask much of you, Viv. I was fine with the break you needed, even if it was a lie. I’ve never dinged you for coming in late or leaving early.”
My mom scoffs at that, and I set my teeth against the sound.
“I know how much pressure sits on your shoulders. You’re doing the best you can, and for me, Viv, that’s enough. Really, it is. And you can joke all you want and say this job was a waste of time, but I think you enjoyed it.”
I fight the unfamiliar pang in my chest. “I do—I did.”
“Part of growing up is understanding there are consequences to our actions.”
At that, my mom can’t help herself. “I fear Viv may never understand that concept.”
It’s a gut-wrenching combination—baring my soul to Fiona only to have my mother mock me and knowing she’s right and I just keep messing up and never learning.
And still, I’ve tried so hard for years to make up for the consequences of one action—or inaction, I should say—that upended my entire life and made my mother look at me the way she is right now.
Maybe Reid was right. Maybe my desire to save Harker was rooted in thinking it might somehow make up for not saving my father.
In that ridiculous pursuit, I lost almost everything that mattered to me.
And I’m fed up. And tired. And sick of dancing around it all. I turn to my mom and ask her point-blank. “What have I done to make you hate me so fucking much?”
Nora’s jaw practically unhinges from her mouth. Fiona’s eyes snap to mine. My mother’s face twists—just a split second of pain—before she schools her features, stands from the couch, and says with utter, perilous calm, “Will you two give us a moment?”
Nora and Fiona—adult women—file out of Fiona’s own office like scolded schoolchildren.
Their absence makes the entire room feel like it’s yawned open wider than the Chasm itself. My mother might as well be light-years away, but I don’t take a single step toward her.
For long, torturous moments, we just stand there. Her in her winter-white dress pants and cashmere cardigan. Her neatly cut nails with their cream polish. Her razor-blunt bob and dermatologist-friendly skin.
And me in a miniskirt and no coat. Black eye. Heart bared on my sleeve.
“How could you think that I hate you?”
I don’t say anything, though my hands have begun to tremble. Something about this conversation is scarier than any deviant I’ve fought.
“If I am hard on you, it’s because I love you. If I pushed you toward James, it’s because he can take care of you. I don’t see you keeping a steady job, Viv, do you?” She gestures to the very office where we stand as if I don’t know why I’m here to collect my things.
“He told me what you said,” I manage. “That he could do better.”
She purses her lips at that. I can tell from her weighing eyes that she’s debating whether to cop to it or not.
My mother is many things, but a liar is not one of them.
“James asked me for advice when your relationship was rocky. He said he could have his pick of women in this city, and I agreed with him.”
A cruel, hurt laugh snaps out of me. “That’s really nice, Mom.”
“But…” she says. “But I reminded him that you are fiercer and smarter and more protective of those you love than any debutante in Astera. And he stayed with you until you broke his heart.”
“Oh, please.”
“You don’t believe he loved you, or you don’t believe I championed you with him?”
“Neither one, actually.”
Her brows pull together. “Everything I have done in my life, Viv, I’ve done for you and your sister to have the best.”
Through clenched teeth I say, “That’s a load.”
“Watch your tongue.”
“You’re dating a soulless billionaire for my sister and me to have the best? Funny, it feels like that one’s for your career, no?”
“I am not dating Caspar Harlock. He’s backing my mayoral—”
“Campaign, I know. I didn’t realize donors took their candidates to Maison for dinner.”
My mother’s face tightens in anger. “He and I are friends. He has a difficult child too. He’s given me great advice, actually, on—”
“A difficult child?” A nasty laugh blasts out of me. “Nora, I’m assuming?”
“Vivienne! You’re going to stand here and tell me you haven’t made my life difficult?
All the injuries and bruises?” She gestures to my ruined eye.
“The missed classes at Belaire and skipping college and the chronic tardiness and the mood swings? Sullen and cold one moment, bursting with anger the next—I’m a human too, Viv.
Being your mother didn’t come with a rule book. I’m doing the best I can.”
Her words hurt so much more than she intends. She’s outlining every reason it’s hard to be my mom, but worse, every reason it’s hard to be me. I didn’t pick this. I don’t want to be this person. In fact, I was willing to brave a deadly spell to change myself completely until…
Until everything happened. With Kitty. With Lyra. With Reid.
My mother sighs, sitting down on the edge of Fiona’s desk. But I don’t say a thing. I’m scared that if I do, I’ll cry.
“I have worked hard—harder than you can imagine—to be a decent mother to you. To give you both a better life. To get you out of the neighborhood that took your father from us.”
I don’t want to argue. Really, I don’t. I may want to fight—to drive my fists or daggers into something—but I don’t want to argue with my mother.
Especially about this. Still, I find myself saying, “That wasn’t for us.
That was for you. Your ambition. Your political career. Nora and I didn’t want to leave Lethe.”
“I couldn’t be in that house another minute!”
I take in a breath. Silence pounds through the room.
My mother’s lips are trembling as she says, “Not after we lost David. And you—you were children. You didn’t know what you wanted. You were children mourning a tremendous loss, and I did what I felt was right. That’s part of being a mother, and I don’t expect you to understand.”
“At least we actually mourned.”
The look on her face might have been priceless to me at one time. Right now, it carves my heart in two. “What did you just say?”
I set my jaw as if bracing for a punch. Tears brim in my eyes. “You didn’t miss him. You never cried.”
“I worked tirelessly to find the men that killed him, Viv—”
“You made me take all his things—”
“I couldn’t look at them!” My mom presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose.
For a moment she just inhales. Only then do I have the horrifying realization that she’s tearing up too.
“I couldn’t look at them for years. Avoiding photos in my own house…
Vivienne, I can’t hear music. I can listen to it, but I can’t hear it.
Losing your father broke something in me. ”
“And you blame me for that. I know you do.”
“No, Viv,” she says, stepping toward me.
“Yes,” I say through my tears. “You wish it had been me, not him.”
My mom’s face crumples. “No—”
But her words are swallowed up by the Windsor security alarm—a jarring, repetitive blast that blares overhead as red lights flash down the hall.
“What’s going on?” she breathes.
A rumble and the unmistakable noise of crashing glass sound in a wing down the hall. Too far for my mom’s mortal ears to hear, but I can tell—someone’s broken into the museum. And with the way my body buzzes, the way my skin grows taut along my bones—I know that someone is a deviant.