Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
EMMA
Mid-February
“What do you think, Mother?” I ask, shifting the new armchair in the parlor. It’s emerald green, with antique gold studs. A true looker. The second I saw it, I knew I had to have it.
It’s a Saturday, a month and a half into the new year, and I’m about fifty percent into my home beautification project. My brother, Rosie, and I had a bonfire with the oil portrait my father had commissioned for his fortieth birthday and toasted marshmallows over it—until Claire, who’d come with Declan, Googled what we were doing and reported that the fumes might be toxic. I had the time of my life jumping on the old beds in the guests rooms before sending them out to pasture. And I hosted a poker night, offering up some of my father’s favorite antique shit as the stakes, with my mother’s blessing.
It's the only time I’ve ever been happy to lose.
I also put up new wallpaper—myself!—after watching several home improvement videos on YouTube. And then hired someone to do the rest, because it’s tedious as hell.
Some of these projects have been rewarding, but the house still doesn’t feel cleansed. It’s as if there’s something rotten at its core—the Smith family curse, maybe. My father’s ghost, not quite exorcised. I passed his office earlier, which no one has entered for a decade other than the cleaning service my mother used, and I swear to Christ I heard something scratching in the walls. Old houses have all kinds of ambient sounds, and I’m guessing it was one of them—old bones, my mother says—but a chill ran up and down my spine.
Or maybe I’m projecting. I have a nagging feeling that I’ve thrown myself into this undertaking to run away from my problems, just like Seamus O’Malley accused me of.
I haven’t spoken to him, but I got his number off Rosie’s phone when she wasn’t watching—for the niece of a former criminal, she’s not overly careful. And I sent him a photo of his flask a couple of weeks ago, in all its bedazzled glory.
It only took him seconds to respond.
Miss me, huh?
That made me laugh, not that I’d ever tell him, and immediately type out a response.
Not as much as you miss this hot piece
I followed up by sending a photo of the back of the flask. I’d replaced the Hello Kitty stickers with a laminated photo of Taylor Swift.
You know, my father gave me that before he died.
For a second, I felt an awful ache of guilt. But then he wrote back—
Just fucking with you, Emma.
Gasping in indignation, I responded—
The only way you ever will.
Truthfully, I’d been seconds away from inviting him upstairs on New Year’s Day. I would have, if he’d said anything but what he said to me.
No one needs to know.
No one had known about Jeffrey and me. In the beginning, I’d liked that—because I didn’t want my mother getting on my case or my brother giving me disapproving looks. But Jeffrey had weaponized that secrecy to make me look like an insane stalker.
Even thinking about it, about him, made me so angry that my fists tightened to white knuckles around my phone.
Seamus’s response rolled through—
Give me time.
How’s your revenge plan working out?
He knew very well that my revenge plan was to seek out peace by retrofitting my mother’s home, so I didn’t respond.
I didn’t respond all night, and all the next day, until finally, at two in the morning, I wrote back a lie:
I don’t want revenge.
He started typing immediately, and then his response bubbled into being on my phone:
I took you for a lot of things, but never a liar. Not a coward either.
Says the man who ran from a scrawny woman with pink hair.
I never said I wasn’t a coward.
Besides, Nicole and I have come to an understanding.
I wish I could say the same were true for me, but she keeps trying to insinuate herself into my business. She came to poker the other night and kept calling my bluffs, which pissed me off before I reminded myself that I wanted to lose.
I tapped the screen of my phone before writing—
Is the understanding that you’re going to hide so she can’t get at you?
You’re changing the subject.
Canny of you to notice.
You’re not a coward. As an outside observer who has zero stake in this game, I think you should stop acting like one. Why wait for your court date? You’re giving him time to prepare.
Like I said, you’re the one who ran from Nicole like she was the big bad wolf.
He’d done it in the middle of the night, too. When Rosie shared the news of his abrupt defection, she’d shrugged and said, “Seamus can be flaky.”
Not flaky as a correspondent, though, because his reply came in quickly:
Nicole is fucking scary.
I googled your ex, by the way. He does NOT look young for fifty-two. You were fooling yourself, sweetheart.
You have lots of lines around your eyes. You could be forty-five. Easy.
Look at you, defending him.
Bite your tongue. I’d never.
The point is that he’s not scary. He’s a middle-aged asshole in an ugly suit. He looks like the father on the sitcom—one of those situations where you find out the sweet-looking actor was a secret perv all along.
Why would YOU be afraid of a guy like that?
It felt like he was poking around in my open wounds and throwing in handfuls of salt for fun.
As if sensing he was getting to me, he added:
You’re a wolf cos-playing a 1950s housewife for your mother. That’s not going to satisfy you for long. Tell me I’m wrong.
He’s not. But he doesn’t understand what it was like, being slapped with a restraining order. Being treated like a hysterical woman. Being tossed aside like a flower whose bloom had wilted.
I gave away the majority of the trust fund I inherited from my father. Although he’d made Anthony jump through hoops, there were no strings attached for me, because he’d figured the money was basically a present for my future husband.
I’m good with investments, and I have plenty of money to live on. If I wanted to, I could go on vacations to Malta and Italy and South Africa before settling back in and getting to work. But my work has always given me meaning. Jeffrey didn’t just attack my dignity and my sense of right and wrong, he took away the one thing I need to feel like myself.
You don’t get to tell me how to fight my battles. You barely know me.
I know what you taste like. I know what your thighs feel like under that dress—and the way your skin warmed under my hands. But we can get to know each other better if you insist. ;-)
You’re an asshole.
Agreed.
I sent him a photo of me drinking from the flask, and he responded:
Yeah, baby. Put your lips where mine have been. I’ll bet you like that, huh? Do you regret turning me down?
I sent him the middle finger emoji and an answer—
best decision of the new year
He sent a laughing emoji in response. After that, I’d tucked away my phone. Talking to him was as much of a waste of time as moving my mother’s sofas in eight hundred different alignments, or hanging up the copper pots in the kitchen and then taking them down. He was funny and undeniably sexy, but he was also trouble. The kind of guy who’d need to get bailed out of scrapes and maybe even jail. The kind of guy who probably talked a good game with five different women at the same time without even flubbing their names.
I also didn’t like that he was speaking to something deep inside of me, waving life into a spark that was on the verge of guttering out.
After spending another two hours tossing and turning, I blocked Seamus’s number.
I haven’t slept through the night since.
Every time I lie down, I find myself sucked into some uncomfortable self-reflection. I spent the first eighteen years of my life trying to escape this house, only to find myself back and stuck in a holding pattern—all while the man who ruined my life is living his best life in Charlotte. I’ve seen him do it, on the screen of my phone, because Ellie Reed chronicles every minute of her life, which now includes him.
Jet-setting to Hawaii for the weekend. Eating fancy three-hour lunches. Sending perfect cheeseboards back to the kitchen. Riding bicycles on an unseasonably warm day. Kissing for the camera.
He probably never thinks about me. If he does, I’m guessing it’s with satisfaction at his complete and total victory. Yes, I’ll have my day in court, but he probably considers his win a done deal.
She thought she was different from the others, but I crushed her like an ant. She’s doing home decorating now. Home decorating! Can you imagine? She doesn't know the difference between a sette and an ottoman.
I made her, and I destroyed her. Don’t you want to see what I can do for you?
That thought sends me on long, punishing runs, because at least my own body is something I can control. Yesterday, it inspired me to move the new furniture around in this room in five different patterns that ended with me leaving it exactly as it had been in the beginning.
So I went out this morning and blew six hundred and twenty three dollars on an armchair my mother doesn’t need and no one will probably ever sit in.
My mother sighs and looks up from her phone. One of her friends put a dating app on it for her on Valentine’s Day, a few days ago, and now all she does is pore over photos of silver foxes from dawn until dusk. Really, you’d think she’d take more of an interest in the redecorating project. She’s a widow, three times over, and two out of her three marriages would warrant a one-star review. But a woman has needs, as she reminded me last night, when I asked her why she was on her phone throughout dinner.
I’d prefer not to think of my mother’s needs, mind you, but here we are. If her needs were just sexual, I’d care less. But she made it clear that she’s looking for the real deal. Again.
“This one’s bald as a cue ball,” she says thoughtfully, clucking her tongue. “He thinks he can fool me by wearing a newsboy cap, but I know a bald head when I see one. It’s there in the curve of the scalp.”
I gesture silently toward the chair.
She makes a dismissive gesture. “Yes, yes, very nice. Just like all of the other changes you’ve made. Someone should call Better Homes and Gardens .”
Really, I don’t know why I put in the effort.
I head over to the bar and pour us each a drink. Handing hers over, I say, “I thought you wanted me to stay in Marshall. You told me I could have free rein decorating the house. You seemed excited about it.”
She sets down her phone, giving me a peek at Newsboy Guy. Yup. Cueball. Worse, I can see the introduction message he sent her. He called my seventy-year-old mother kitten and told her exactly what he’d like to do with her—
“Why don’t you sit down?” my mother asks.
I plant a hand on my hip, knowing some sort of lecture is on the way and in no mood for it. “No thanks. I’ll take it standing up, thank you very much.”
“Take what?” she says with an amused twist of her lips. “I just figured you’d like to sit in that chair you’re making such a fuss about.”
Glaring at her, I lower into it, and find it uncomfortable. Shit. Did I forget to sit in it before buying it? I smile at her and take a sip of the drink. “Perfect. I’ve never felt more relaxed.”
She gives me her patented never bullshit a bullshitter look. “I don’t think you’ve been relaxed for a single day in your whole life, Emma. There was a week when you were six or maybe seven when you couldn’t move your bowels, and I thought you were going to give us a diamond.”
“If I couldn’t shit for a week, you should have brought me to the hospital,” I say before I can reel myself in.
She gives me a haughty look over her gin and tonic. “You kids these days, going to the hospital for a papercut.”
I could point out that my brother hadn’t gone to the hospital after being whipped so badly he still has scars from it, but to be fair, Anthony kept what our father was doing a secret—and the day after my mother found out, my father plummeted to his death from an apple tree. It was an argument in favor of karma, because she did not, in fact, have to kill him, which she certainly would have done.
I settle for saying, “I haven’t worked for over two months, Mother. You don’t get more relaxed than that.”
She has the look of opposing council during a cross examination as she gestures around the room, which, admittedly, has changed quite a bit since I took up residence. “This may be the first time I’ve seen you sit down since New Year’s,” she comments. “Thank God you went and bought yourself a chair, but I’m afraid you won’t have long to sit in it. We’ve been invited to a house warming.”
“And you accepted?” I ask, horrified. Admittedly, I have no idea who is throwing this party, and I did mostly enjoy myself at poker the other night, but the only other guests were Rosie, Anthony, and their friends. I’m not ready for the world.
She gives me a look that might have appeared sympathetic on someone else. “Emma, dear, when was the last time you left the house for something other than a furniture or home improvement store?”
“I went to Starbucks. The woman behind the counter told me all about the wart on her chin. It was a very meaningful interaction. There were tears in my eyes.”
“You’re unfulfilled,” says my mother, the woman who’s never had a job and is so rich she couldn’t possibly blow all of her money in one place, or even fifteen.
I straighten in the uncomfortable chair, trying to look relaxed. But what does a relaxed person even look like? My back should probably be slumped, I decide. I try it, and my mother watches me with a stiff expression. Sighing, she finally says, “I should have said something when you first arrived, but I had hoped some time off would be good for you. Back in my day, we enjoyed taking lengthy vacations.”
I narrowly avoid saying your entire life has been a vacation.
“ Clearly, I was wrong,” she continues. “I think you need to get back on the horse.”
“What horse? The one you keep at the stables? Or is this your bid for me to join SilverFoxes.com with you so men can start calling me kitten too?”
She makes a sound adjacent to a snort. “Do you have another nickname you’d prefer?”
I can practically hear Seamus in my head, whispering, “ Daddy .” But to be honest, the thought of finding another silver fox holds no appeal for me. I wasn’t interested in Jeffrey because of his money—it was his experience and power that drew me in. But power, ill-gotten and ill-used, isn’t attractive at all, it turns out.
My mother waves a hand at the room, filled with opulence. “This lifestyle doesn’t suit everyone. You need to work to be fulfilled. You’re like your brother.”
She’s right, but at the moment I can’t work in the profession I spent my whole life preparing for. Which is truly a shame, because I would absolutely revel in taking someone’s shitty ex to the cleaners right now—his tears would be medicine for my bored and under-stimulated soul.
“I loved my job,” I admit, glancing out the window. My mother’s elderly gardener is leaning over to clip a bush, giving us a perfect view of his aged posterior. “I was protecting people. It felt…important.”
She makes a sound that is probably meant to be sympathetic and reaches over to pat my hand. “I should have been more of an airplane mother when you and your brother were younger. I’ll always regret that.”
“Do you mean helicopter?” I ask, caught between wanting to laugh and the distressing burning feeling behind my eyes.
She waves a hand. “Helicopter, airplane, call it whatever you’d like. But I didn’t know your father was hurting Anthony until just before he passed, and at the time, I thought you were better off because he—”
“Ignored me?”
“Yes. I wish he’d ignored all of us, to be frank.”
I laugh, feeling the burning sensation recede. “So do I. Now, whose housewarming party are you dragging me to?”
Her gaze is hawk-like. “Have you been listening to me at all? I must have told you at least five times over the last week that Claire’s father Chuck has moved to Asheville. Claire, you know, the girl who’s marrying Rosie’s older brother.”
No, I haven’t been listening. I’ve been obsessed with getting this room perfectly right, and I’m still not satisfied. This chair definitely has to go. It feels like I’m sitting on a rock attached to a ladder. And the window closest to the fireplace is gusting cool air. Maybe we can replace it with a stained-glass window. Hold on…maybe I can make the stained-glass window. That would take up a lot of time, wouldn’t it? It would probably be challenging. Possibly entertaining too.
And yet, the house will probably still feel wrong.
There’s that office, festering.
There’s this room, imperfect.
There’s me…cracked through the middle.
My mother has continued speaking, moving the conversation along to the other people who will be there. One of them is Nicole, of course, because it’s impossible to get away from her and her hunky husband. I’m guessing she’ll pull me aside for her usual pep talk about what a loser I am for letting Jeffrey and a woman who’s famous for her pet rabbit walk all over me. And yet…my mother’s not wrong. I need to get out more. Maybe I could even get a job somewhere as an interior decorator. Spice things up.
It’s not an appealing thought. To be perfectly honest, I prefer telling people what to do to being ordered around, but it’s better than sitting idle and waiting for the hearing.
“Yeah, of course,” I say. “Chuck. He’s the one who needs to divorce the occultist. Why’s he moving here?”
She clucks her tongue again. “Because Claire is his only child, of course, and he’s thrilled she’s marrying that gardener.” Her gaze turns shrewd. “I wouldn’t mind if you married a gardener.”
“Seriously, mother? You’ve been telling me for years that marriage is a prison. It’s part of the reason I became a divorce attorney.” Experiencing my father’s domineering coldness was another. I used to daydream that she’d leave him and take us far, far away.
She shrugs carelessly. “Yes, and most of my marriages did feel like prisons, but look at your brother and Rosie, and all those other young people they spend time with? They’re outlandishly happy. It’s given me a new lease on life. That’s why I’ve decided to give it another go.”
“I’m not interested in marriage,” I say, meaning it.
“So don’t get married,” she says flippantly, going for another sip of her drink and then setting it down on a coaster on the new side table. She almost drops it, because the one I purchased—mid-century, solid wood, classic—is lower than the old one. “Find someone who’ll show you a good time. Back in my day, I had a lot of fun with lots of men. You know, a woman’s thirties are her prime when it comes to—”
“Mother,” I say, groaning. “I don’t want to hear about your dozens of lovers . It’s bad enough that I walked in on you and Mark ‘expressing your affection’ all over the rose garden.” Mark being her third and favorite husband. He’d been gentle and introverted, the opposite of my father, but ultimately too withdrawn for her. She liked to engage, and he sought out peace. Alone, in the garden. On trips that didn’t include her. Sometimes, although none of us talked about this openly, with a famous male poet he went to boarding school with. I don’t want her to launch herself into another relationship that will end with her feeling undervalued and unfulfilled.
“But, you know, I’d rather you find a lover than another husband.” I pause, considering how to say this gently, then decide it’s probably too late for me to learn to talk that way. “You don’t have to marry every man you like.”
She shakes her head as if I’m being obtuse. “Dear, if I’d married every man I’d had a tendre for, I’d have been married two dozen times, not three. Am I open to the possibility of more? Yes, but I’m certainly not going to settle. I already know three personality types that wouldn’t work for me. It’s time to find one that does. But you’re evading the point. What I’m saying is that you should be enjoying yourself. Maybe that handsome gardener has a gardener friend who’d show you a good time.”
Or a bad news brother , my mind supplies.
Gritting my teeth, I say, “His name’s Declan. Claire’s fiancé, I mean.”
“I know his name, Emma.” She glowers at me. “I don’t have dementia.” Then she taps her phone aggressively, her perfect manicure making a ringing sound. “But I can’t figure out the notifications for this confounded app. I don’t want to hear about it every time some egghead sends me a photograph of his—”
“All right… Kitten .” I clap my hands. “Do you think our best friend Chuck would like a new chair? I’ve got just the thing.”
Two hours later, an apple-cheeked Chuck welcomes us into his apartment with as much warmth as if he’s our long-lost something or other. He kisses my mother on the cheek. She says he looks dashing —and seems to mean it unironically—which is probably a surprise to both Chuck and me, given he’s wearing a beige sweater with buttons.
I watch my mother with suspicion. Has she been dosing herself with hormones?
Claire’s father is handsome enough, like the father of one of the heroines in a Hallmark movie, but he’s hardly giving off silver sex vibes.
Chuck pronounces the chair beautiful, which it is, and a thoughtful gift, which it is not, and insists on positioning it next to the sofa. According to what my mother said in the car, he has only been in Asheville for a week, but his place already looks cozy and lived in, with plenty of deep greens, reds, and warm wood tones. It’s certainly more inviting than Smith House. The only surprise is an intricate model of a Camaro left out on a shelf, but maybe Chuck likes fast cars.
My brother and his wife are already there, dressed in matching sweaters. I head over to greet them, announce that the matching sweaters are so cute they make me want to throw up in my mouth, and Rosie gives me a big hug. “I was hoping you could help me redesign some of our closets later,” she tells me with a smile. “I found an app that lets you add in your exact measurements.”
“That sounds depressing,” I say before I can stop myself.
Her smile looks victorious. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”
I study her, finally picking up what she’s putting down. “You’re trying to give me some kind of wakeup call, aren’t you?”
“I was worried you’d be into it.” She glances up at my brother, grinning. “Good news. Your sister doesn’t want to reorganize our closets. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t been body-swapped with one of your mom’s friends after all.”
My mother makes a huffing noise. “Please. My friends would never demean themselves enough to organize their own closets.”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” Rosie says fondly. Her lively eyes dart to mine, and I have to smile. She’s just…
Her name is Rosie, and she walks around wearing rose-colored glasses and making other people happy, and it’s just so fitting. So categorically pleasing that she’s forcing me to smile.
Still, it’s easy for her to say that about my mother. She didn’t have to spend the morning watching her prowl for geriatric dick.
In fact…
I pat Anthony on the arm. “Why don’t you help Mom with the notifications for her new app?”
There, that should entertain him.
“What kind of app?” he asks suspiciously.
“Shopping,” I say and make a beeline for the drinks and snacks table. Of course, Nicole and her husband, Damien, are standing beside it, talking in undertones. The way they’re staring at each other is the “look” equivalent of matching sweaters.
They seem so different—his manners are so smooth he could probably charm a dozen Karens without even trying, and her manners…
Oh, who am I kidding, she doesn’t have manners.
I don’t see a lot of people like them in my line of work. Then again, by the time someone seeks out a divorce attorney, they’re probably past the point of generic advice like don’t go to bed mad or even more specific advice like don’t feed her fish to your lizard, Brad, you absolute lunatic.
Damien looks up as I approach them. Smiling, he says, “Can I fix you a mimosa, Emma?”
“Yes, I’d like it ninety-nine percent champagne, and one percent orange juice.”
He grins. “Done.”
And the beautiful man gives me exactly what I asked for.
Then, still grinning at me, he winks at his wife. “Why don’t you go show Emma those prints in the hallway, Nic? I really think she’d get some inspiration out of them.”
“Oh, I’d be goddamn delighted,” she says with a broad smile. “There’s nothing I like better than poking around other people’s shit.”
“Well, I certainly believe that ,” I mutter. What I don’t believe is that she cares about any of the wall hangings in this place—she’s accepted a few of my rejects from Smith House, which I took out at poker night, but she made it clear that she intended to sell them on eBay. Fine by me and all the surviving Rosings Smiths. No, this is about trying to convince me, again, to have a go at Jeffrey.
I think of my mother, earlier, telling me that I needed something more fulfilling.
I think of Seamus’s texts, which I screenshotted before I blocked his number. I’d never admit it to anyone in a million years, but I reread them at night. He thinks I’m stronger than I am, and I’d like to be that woman again sometime—if I was ever actually her in the first place.
But Nicole doesn’t wait to see if I make the right decision; she grabs my arm and tugs.
“Have fun,” Damien says as she hustles me away, her grip surprisingly strong for a woman who’s at least three inches shorter than me. It takes me a second to process that he’s speaking to her, not me.
As Nicole leads me into the narrow hallway between the apartment’s two bedrooms, I down the whole mimosa.
Nicole points to a photograph of a juiced-up car that’s framed and mounted on the warm beige wall. “Isn’t this place weird as shit? I mean, he’s got cross-stitched slogans framed, unironically, and then stuff like this.” She gestures to the photo. “No shit, I’m halfway convinced Chuck is a serial killer.”
“What does your sister have to say to that?” I ask, glancing back into the living room, where Claire and Declan are having an animated conversation with Chuck.
“She thinks there’s another explanation.” There’s a thread of teasing in her voice. Like she’s messing with me and doesn’t really mind if I can tell. Like she’s…testing me.
“You’re up to something,” I say blandly.
Her lips twitch with amusement. “Oh, I’m always up to something. It makes life more interesting.”
“For the millionth time, I’m not interested in your schemes,” I admonish, trying to sound bored. Succeeding, probably, because my mother stumbled onto an unwelcome truth earlier. I am bored. So bored I googled whether it was possible for a person to die of boredom. No, in case you’re wondering.
Shaking the thought away, I finish, “The best revenge is a life well lived.”
Nicole cocks her head at me, and I’m sure she’s about to start in on her usual you’re unfulfilled schtick . But she surprises me by saying, “Oh, totally, I got that. Crystal clear. I shouldn’t have bothered you in the first place. Sometimes people deal with things in different ways. While I would certainly want to put that motherfucker in his place, you’re doing the adult thing and moving on. Finding new interests.” She waves down the hall toward the pretty, uncomfortable chair, which suddenly feels like a metaphor for my life. “It’s cool. I respect that, and I’m not going to bother you about it again.”
I’ve been trying to get her to leave me alone, but I feel a creeping sense of panic. Shit. I don’t want her to leave this alone, do I?
“Uh…”
I have no idea where I’m going with that, so it’s a relief when she says, “So the real reason Damien gave us some girl time was so I could do the friend thing and give you a heads up on who Chuck’s roommate is.”
I glance around, verifying that I do in fact know everyone who is present.
“What roommate?” I ask.
And that’s when the front door opens.
It’s Seamus, carrying a nondescript bag that is, I’m guessing, from the liquor store. He’s wearing the same leather coat he slung over my shoulders a month and a half ago. He catches my eye and winks at me, and I’ll be damned if my whole body doesn’t quake.
I whip my head around to look at Nicole. “No.”
“ Yes . Are you finally ready to wake up, Emma?” Her grin widens, showing off her sharp incisors. “Because life is about to get een -teresting.”