18. In Which Juniper Does Not Call Anyone Papa #3
Is it a mother thing, I wonder—that instinct that something is wrong? Or is it a human instinct? The human brain is incredible. One theory is that gut feelings and intuition are actually our subconscious mind connecting dots and spotting patterns that our conscious mind is unaware of.
What patterns is Tonya von Meller spotting? Which dots has she been connecting in the dead of night when she can’t sleep?
The three of us jump when Tonya’s phone rings.
“Excuse me for a moment,” she says, her perma-smile back in place. She looks relieved, frankly, to have an excuse to take a break from this conversation; she shoots up out of her chair with surprising dexterity and hurries to the marble-top desk, where a landline is stationed.
“Hello,” she says, her voice breathless. She listens for a second or two and then says, “Yes. ”
More listening—both by her and by Aiden and me. I have no shame. If you are the in-denial parent of a girl I know to be dead, and you are on the phone in the same room as me, I will eavesdrop with every ounce of listening power I have.
“Yes,” she says again after a stretch of quiet.
“Any time today would be—” She breaks off, her eyes darting over to where Aiden and I are sitting on the world’s least comfortable couch, watching her with rapt interest. Then she turns her back on us and says, in a much lower voice, “Now would be perfect, actually. Head on over now. Yes. See you in a few.”
Aiden looks at me; I look at him. It seems we’ve officially overstayed our welcome.
When she returns to the sitting area, Tonya doesn’t even bother pretending she’s sorry to see us go.
“Unfortunately,” she says through the first genuine smile I’ve seen from her thus far, “I’ve got a rather important guest who needs to swing by for a few things.
It’s terribly rude of me, but I’m going to have to ask if we can wrap this up a bit early. ”
“Of course,” Aiden says, his voice desert dry. “Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
“So kind of you to understand,” she says.
“If you will?” She gestures to the door, her bracelet jingling with her movements.
A ray of sun catches the massive diamond on her ring and reflects right into my eye, rendering me blind for probably the next hour.
But I stand anyway, Aiden following in my wake, and together we see ourselves out.
The door shuts behind us with an awful air of finality. I don’t think she’s going to be willing to meet with us again.
“Was it necessary to attack her?” I say, rounding on Aiden.
“I didn’t attack her,” he shoots back. “I just asked questions that someone should ask?—”
“But not you,” I say. “Can’t you tell she’s worried? She knows something is wrong. She just doesn’ t know what or why, and she doesn’t want to admit it. Especially since she’s the one who let Sandy go off by herself.”
“It’s not her fault her daughter was killed?—”
“I know that,” I say gently. “But I have to assume that she would still feel responsible. I think that’s a parent thing.”
Aiden grunts but doesn’t respond further, which is probably for the best. This is not a conversation we need to have right here or right now. I head down the path instead, making my way back to the driveway as I watch a shiny black town car pull up to the front curb.
Fancy, fancy.
I continue walking, keeping my eyes on the ground mostly so that I don’t trip in these heels.
That would be the icing on the cake here—falling on my face in front of Tonya von Meller’s VIP guest. When I look back up, though, it’s in time to see a large figure unfolding from the back of that fancy-pants town car.
I freeze in place, my eyes narrowing as I try to get a clearer look. Aiden steps up from behind me, nudging me lightly with his elbow.
“Come on,” he says, crouching down to tie his shoe. “Why’d you stop?”
“Aiden,” I hiss, tapping him on the shoulder.
When he doesn’t respond, I tap him again.
My heart has dropped to my stomach, and there’s a zoo’s worth of hyped-up animals rioting in my veins—stampeding masses in the strangest fight-or-flight dance my body has ever done.
I’m somehow both frozen in place and full of purely adrenal energy at the same time. “Aiden!”
“What?” he whisper-yells, finally standing up again. “Stop poking me—” But he breaks off when he sees what I’m staring at.
Or rather, who I’m staring at.
“Aiden,” I whisper as my eyes catalog every inch of Lionel Astor I can see. “That’s him. ”
“It is,” he says, sounding dazed. Slowly he reaches into his pocket.
My brain whirs, tying itself in knots, until one crystal-clear thought emerges: this man might be my father.
Unfortunately, somewhere between my mind and my mouth is a disconnect. So instead of commenting that Lionel Astor might be my father, what pops out is this: “Should I go introduce myself and call him Papa ?”
Aiden snorts as he pulls his phone out, holding it up. “I would pay good money to see that.” Then he starts snapping photos of Lionel.
“What are you doing?” I say, my body still buzzing unpleasantly.
He zooms in, his brows furrowed as he concentrates. “Gonna blow one of these up and use it as a dartboard later.”
I almost laugh out loud at this, catching myself at the last second and slapping my hand over my mouth instead. “He might be completely innocent in all this.”
Aiden raises one skeptical brow. “Sure, he might be,” he says, though I can tell he doesn’t actually mean it. “Probably going to do it anyway. He just has one of those faces you want to punch.”
He’s not wrong there. “Your brain works in mysterious ways,” I say with a little smile.
Aiden’s finger, just about to snap another photo, pauses briefly over his phone’s screen. He shoots me a sideways grin. “Yours is pretty interesting too.” Then he turns his attention back to the pictures he’s taking. “He’s heading this way,” he says. “Are you gonna say anything?”
“Yes,” I say, taking a deep breath. And normally I have no problem breathing, but currently the air feels clunky, difficult to find—I keep wheezing and pulling until enough oxygen has toppled down my throat like a child’s falling tower of blocks. “I’m going to talk to him.”
“I do need to tell you, though, that if you call that man Papa , we can no longer be friends.”
“Are you sure we’re friends? You don’t even like me, remember?
” I throw the jab with zero hesitation, and I don’t feel bad about it, either.
It was a harsh thing for him to say, yes, but more than that, I want to see how he responds.
If I’m going to broach the subject of my feelings later, I need to know what I’m getting into.
But he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t say a single thing.
I swallow, take a deep breath, and give myself permission to worry about it for exactly five seconds. Then I put all those concerns about Aiden somewhere where I can look at them later. Right now I have other things to focus on.
Time slows to a molasses crawl as Lionel approaches us.
He moves up the driveway and past the sidewalk that leads to the front of the house, heading instead for Tonya’s home office just like we did—he’s obviously the one Tonya told to come over straight away in order to get rid of us.
His shoes make a pleasant sound on the pavement, his tan peacoat pulling this way and that in the crisp autumn wind.
My eyes narrow as I study him more closely.
He’s impossibly tall, with thick, black hair and an icy blue gaze. I do see the resemblance between him and his brother, but where Rocco is warm and smiling, the man heading toward me is not.
He is arctic. Smiling, yes—it appears as soon as he makes eye contact—but cold.
That unnaturally white smile begins to fade as he zeroes in on me, though, his eyes sharpening.
I tilt my head, approaching him slowly. I don’t know what I’m doing or how smart it is. My body can certainly tell that something’s going on; it’s hovering between fight and flight, and I can feel my hands shaking, my legs wobbling as I stare down the man in front of me.
We come to a stop, mere feet apart, in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Do I look familiar to you?” I say to him.
I don’t know why this is what I lead with. A greeting would probably be more standard. From behind me, I hear Aiden sigh. I imagine he’s also rubbing his temples again. He really has no faith in me.
“Yes,” Lionel Astor says. His eyebrows, two dark slashes, climb ever so slightly as he looks me over. Then those icy shards return to meet my gaze once more. “I imagine you must be Nora Bean’s daughter. You look very like your mother.”
I nod, little more than a shaky wobble of my head. “I’m Nora’s.”
Lionel’s head tilts to the side, and I swear I’ve never felt more like prey than I do in this moment. But when he speaks again, it’s accompanied by another glacial smile. “I do have to be going, but it was lovely meeting you, Juniper. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again soon.”
And then he brushes past me, not giving Aiden so much as a passing glance, and I’m left to wonder how he knows my name—and, more concerning still, when he plans to see me again.