Chapter 20 #2
I drift along the edge of the room, nodding when people look my way, tuning out their conversations. My thoughts running rampant.
Uncle Silas. Uncle G. Penelope.
My TA. My target. The woman I want. The woman who looked at me like I was too young and too much, then grabbed me in a closet because she needed an escape and my hands happened to be there.
I want to be mad at her. Really mad. Every time I think she lied, my brain flips to her saying she didn’t know. She didn’t know who they were. I believe that. I hate that I believe that.
All of it is a giant mess.
My family is a giant mess.
I know that. I’ve always known that.
I just didn’t realize how deep it went.
I finish my water and set the glass down on a tray. I’m about to slip out to the back balcony to breathe when Mom brushes past me again, muttering something about taking a call.
Her face is stretched tight, and she doesn’t notice I’m close enough to hear.
“I’ll be ten minutes,” she tells a passing server. “No interruptions.”
She heads toward Chad’s office. It used to be his and his previous wife’s library. Now it is half office, half shrine to her.
Curiosity pricks at me. I angle my body, wait a beat, then follow quietly down the hall.
The door to the office is mostly closed. Not all the way. A soft wedge of light spills onto the hallway rug. I hover just around the corner, far enough not to be seen if someone walks past, close enough that I can hear if Mom raises her voice.
At first there’s nothing. Just the murmur of the party behind me. Then I hear it. The clipped, icy version of her voice she uses when things are not going her way.
“I told you not to call me tonight,” she says.
Whoever is on the other end has pissed her off royally.
My mom snaps, “No, you listen to me. We had an agreement, and if you can't handle one girl, I will find another facility that can.”
A cold chill slides down my spine.
One girl.
My brain jumps straight to Minxy.
Mom’s heels click softly against the floor as she paces.
“She’s not coming home anytime soon,” Mom says. “I don’t care what she told you about wanting to see her brother. She stays where she is, do you understand? There are expectations. There are rules. If she is here, she runs her mouth, and if she runs her mouth, we all lose.”
My stomach twists.
Mom laughs, sharp and humorless. “Don’t say you are worried about her. She’s fine there. She has classes, structure, and supervision. It’s more than she would get here with Chad tripping over himself to be liked and my son trying to play bad boy.”
I clench my fists.
My sister wants to see me. Of course she does. I’ve been back for how long and I haven't seen her once, and every time I ask, she feeds me some line about schedules and test days.
Mom replies to something the other person said.
“She saw too much. You remember that, or do I need to remind you of what happened with my first husband?”
The words land like ice water dumped over my head. My heart trips. I press harder against the wall, suddenly afraid she will hear it pounding.
She continues. Her voice has dipped lower now, but there is a manic brightness threaded through it.
“I’m not going to repeat history,” she says. “I cleaned up that mess, and no one has ever connected me to it. Minxy does not get to walk around repeating stories she doesn’t understand. She’s safer where she is, and so are we.”
My skin prickles all over.
Cleaned up that mess.
That mess.
My first husband.
For years the only version I got was he died, suicide, he couldn’t handle the marriage, he ended it. There were whispers, sure, but nothing I could ever pin down. Any time I edged closer, Mom shut it down with tears or anger, depending on the day.
She never once said anything that sounded like she had to “clean up” anything.
Mom scoffs. “No, you do not give her my number. You don’t let her call. If she writes, those letters stay with you. The only thing I want from that school is reports. Grades. Behavior. You send me bills, I send you money. That is the arrangement.”
There it is again.
School.
But it doesn’t sound like a school.
It sounds like a facility. A place you keep problems, not educate them.
I press my head back against the wall and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment.
Minx saw something. Something big enough that our mom is still scared years later. Big enough that she thinks her own kid is a liability.
What did you see, kid?
Mom’s voice goes higher, impatient. “I don’t care if you think she’s lonely. She made this bed. She poked her nose where it didn’t belong, and now she has to deal with the consequences. Children don’t get to throw around accusations and then go live a normal life.”
If there is a world record for how fast a person’s blood can turn cold, I think I am close.
Children. Accusations. Consequences. First husband. That mess.
Something ugly slides into place in my mind and refuses to move.
I hear her sigh then. “Look. Just keep her there. I’ll send the next tuition payment on Monday. That should keep your board happy. She stays quiet, we all move on. If she doesn’t stay quiet, and she tells anyone what she thinks she saw, then we all have a problem. You included.”
I’ve heard enough.
I push away from the wall as quietly as I can and slip down the hallway, each breath feeling too loud. The party noise grows again as I move toward the main room. People laugh and talk like the world is normal.
Nobody here knows there’s a girl locked away somewhere in a school that doesn’t feel like a school, because she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. Something to do with a man who died and a woman who just told an administrator she “cleaned up that mess.”
I drop into a chair near the back balcony and stare at an empty glass on the table in front of me.
I knew my mom was cold. I knew she liked control. I knew her story about my father never added up. I didn’t know it scared her enough that she would stash her own daughter somewhere and force her silence with tuition payments.
Heat crawls up the back of my neck.
“Fuck,” I breathe under my breath.
For the first time since Penelope pulled me into that closet, my dick is not the organ screaming the loudest. It’s my brain. My gut.
Something is wrong. Worse than I thought.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and stare at the screen.
I could text G. Tell him what I heard. Tonight, while it’s fresh. He would be horrified, and would want to fix it, but he has enough on his plate already.
I open a new message and stare at the cursor for a long moment.
I type.
Delete.
Type again.
Me: No rush. Take care of Penelope. But we need to talk about my mom.
I hover over send, then hit it before I can second guess myself. The message hangs there, delivered, a little check mark mocking me.
Silas will hear about it. Of course he will. He and G do not keep this kind of shit from each other. That’s fine. For once in my life, I don’t want to handle this on my own.
I scrub a hand over my face and lean back in the chair, imagining my mother gliding through the room, shaking hands and kissing cheeks and laughing at all the right moments.
She pretends she’s a woman whose life is perfect.
All I can picture now is the way her mouth would tighten as she said Minxy saw too much and how easily the words I cleaned up that mess rolled off her tongue. I want to see my sister. I want to look her in the eye and hear from her what she saw and what they did about it.
I also want to make sure my TA does not get steamrolled by the same woman who stuffed her own kid in a gilded cage to keep her quiet.
I don’t know how yet, but I know this much.
Tomorrow is the first step in cracking my family open.
And I’m not running from it this time.