43. Delilah
DELILAH
Palm Sunday begins with me parking illegally in front of my mother’s house while Kane critiques my parallel parking from the passenger seat.
“You’re four feet from the curb.”
“I’m protecting the rims.”
He looks out his window at the gap between the tires and the curb. “A small family could live there.”
“Then I’ve solved the housing crisis. You’re welcome.”
I turn off the engine and sit for a second to collect my thoughts.
Through the windshield, the house looks so much less menacing than I know it actually is.
Low brick wall.
Wrought iron staircase railing on the stoop.
Same old house it’s always been.
Except for Mom’s Palm Sunday grapevine wreath hanging on the door. It’s kinda like the Eye of Sauron staring right at me.
The curtains are open. I see silhouettes moving behind the glass.
My mother has been throwing this party since I was six, back when my birthday fell close enough to Palm Sunday that combining them seemed practical.
By eleven, the event had become Palm Sunday dinner featuring a stale grocery-store cake with DELILAH squeezed into the corner in blue gel.
By sixteen, the cake stopped appearing unless I made it myself.
And guess what?
I’m not doing that anymore. Like my last visit, I’m showing up today completely empty-handed.
No bakery box warming my lap. No folded tablecloth wedged behind my seat.
There isn’t even an emergency pie in the trunk.
My hands feel so empty they might float off my wrists.
Kane opens his door. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” But I don’t move.
He waits a moment, then reaches over and lays his hand on my thigh. His thumb presses into the denim above my knee.
“We can leave,” he reminds me, like he’s been doing all day. “I’ll take you anywhere.”
I look at the house again. “You’d really drive away?”
“I’d set the car on fire in her driveway if you asked nicely.”
“That seems rude.”
“Then don’t ask nicely.”
A laugh slips out. It’s small, but it loosens something lodged beneath my ribs.
This is why I can go inside. Not because the house has changed. Not because my mother has.
Because I won’t be arriving alone.
I take the keys from the ignition. “Come on. Let’s go celebrate Jesus’s highly marketable entrance into Jerusalem.”
Kane gets out. Together, we mount the stairs.
My mother answers before I knock.
Her gaze lands on me first, then moves down my body. It stops at my hands.
Nothing in them.
A tiny muscle jumps beside her mouth. “Kane,” she says with forced warmth. “How lovely to see you again.”
“Leanne.”
“Come in,” she says. “Everyone’s nearly here.”
The living room is crowded but not yet full. Folding chairs line the wall. I wonder who brought them up.
Aunt Virginia sees us and lifts both arms in greeting. “There she is!”
She hugs me hard enough to shift a rib. Aunt Sherry hugs me next, smelling like White Diamonds and the mimosa she’s drinking that’s 98% champagne with hardly enough orange juice to coat the bottom of the glass.
Uncle Bub shakes Kane’s hand. Cousin Jenna tells me she drove past the bakery last week and saw a line out the door. Even Father Dunn, who is hovering beside the mantel with a palm cross pinned to his lapel, says he heard business is booming.
I sit beside Kane on the loveseat and wait for the old panic to arrive. The compulsion to scan the room for what needs doing.
It twitches once when I notice the cocktail napkins are still wrapped in plastic.
Then Kane’s hand settles on my thigh.
His palm is warm through my jeans. His fingers curve inward, possessive enough to be a little racy if anyone looks closely.
That’s all it takes to remind me that the damn napkins are not my problem.
My mother passes through the room carrying an empty water pitcher.
“Delilah, dear, could you fill this?”
“No.”
I decline to elaborate.
My mother stares.
I smile.
After several long seconds, she turns toward Cousin Jenna. “Would you mind?”
“Sure,” Jenna says, and takes it.
Nothing collapses. Jesus does not reverse course at the gates of Jerusalem. The ham continues cooking.
Life goes on.
Kane’s thumb moves once against my leg.
“Show-off,” he murmurs.
“I’m drunk on power.”
“A tale as old as time.”
“I may refuse to pass the salt later.”
His gaze lowers to my mouth. “Don’t overextend yourself.”
The doorbell goes at ten past two, and my mother sings out from the hall, “There they are!”
Vivian comes in first in ivory, ring hand doing what ring hands do.
Connor follows behind her, carrying a store-bought lemon cake with the sticker still on the box.
My mother hurries toward them. Vivian kisses her cheek. Connor shakes Father Dunn’s hand.
Then Vivian sees me beside Kane.
Her smile tightens.
My mother brings them into the room with a hand on each of their arms. “This means so much,” she announces. “All of us together. Moving forward.”
Moving forward.
The phrase has appeared in every voicemail since Christmas. Families move forward. Sisters must move forward. People who love each other do not dwell on the past, particularly when the past contains just so many silly, forgivable little mistakes, right?
We sit down to eat. But before one forkful reaches anyone’s mouth, my mother stands and taps her wine glass to ask for attention.
“I just want to say something,” she says. “Before we eat.”
Oh, boy. Here we go.
“It’s been a hard winter for this family. A very hard one. And I know there are people at this table who thought we’d never all sit down together again.” She looks around, gathering nods. “But we’re here. That’s what family does. Family moves forward.”
It’s a riff on the same speech she served up last time. As she goes on about the damage that my slideshow did, it occurs to me that her language is more polished every time.
She’s rehearsed it. She’s said it so many times to so many people in this parish that it’s got grooves worn in it, and I’m sitting here for the second time as the audience for a bit she’s been touring since New Year’s.
What’s bothering me is that, in ten weeks, she has never once asked me a single question.
She never asked what was in the videos, or how long it went on, or whether it’s true that my signature was forged on four million dollars. Not to me, and as far as I can tell not to Vivian, either.
It makes me wonder. Could she have…?
No. There’s no way.
She’s my mother, and even if Vivian is her superstar, her golden child, I’m still her daughter.
She would never…
Would she…?
Before the question can even fully take shape in my head, Mom wraps up her speech—
—and Vivian stands to take her place.
Instantly, I get a bad feeling. There’s something in her face I don’t like, don’t trust. A smug smile. A twinkle in her eye.
“I’d like to make a toast,” she announces. She raises her glass high. “To Dee and her new man. And their very successful partnership.”
She puts an emphasis on that last word that only adds to my unease.
Partnership. What could she mean by that? She couldn’t possibly know the full extent of our relationship.
Hell, I don’t even know the full extent of our relationship, and I’m the one in it.
But her smug smile is only getting smugger.
Her twinkling eye is only shining brighter.
Something bad is coming.
I can feel it.
“Kane,” Vivian continues brightly, “how’s the waterfront project coming?”
Nobody says anything.
“Sorry—I only ask because it’s so interesting. All those blocks down by the piers.” She sets her glass down and picks up a folder off the sideboard behind her. “Do you own the whole street now, or is it still just most of it?”
“Viv, what are you—”
“Relax, Dee. It’s not always about you.”
She opens the folder and starts sliding pages out, one, two, three, passing them to Uncle Johnny to hand down.
“I just thought everyone should get to see, since we’re all being so honest with each other lately at family gatherings. Right? I mean, that’s the trend you started.”
The page reaches me.
It’s a map. Printed in color. Sunset Park, Thirty-Ninth up to Forty-Fifth, Third Avenue to the water.
Every parcel outlined and numbered, and almost all of them shaded in with a company name typed in a little box beside them.
Harrow Nine.
Terminal Row Realty.
Bright Anchor.
Dozens of them. Thirty, forty names, all different.
Second page: a list of those companies, and beside them, the same registered agent service in Albany over and over. The same three lawyers. The same suite number.
Halfway down that list, in bold, is a name I recognize very well.
V HAVEN HOLDINGS, LLC.
Third page is the map again, zoomed in. Forty-Fourth and Fourth. One lot left white with all the others around it grayed out.
Typed underneath:
LOT 22—4412 FOURTH AVENUE—NOT YET ACQUIRED.
And under that, a photocopy. Loan terms. A schedule of acceptable collateral, with two lines struck through—a car, a share in something—and handwritten in the margin, Rejected.
I’ve seen this map before. In Kane’s house at midnight, in his T-shirt, looking for a glass of water, I put my hand on the table and found my own lot, and Niko stepped in front of it and told me to ask Kane.
But I didn’t ask him. I let it go. I was too tired and too happy and too naked to go hunting for the rest.
“There’s a lot going on here, so let me explain,” Vivian offers helpfully.
“Mr. Kane Makov here is not just some new fling of my sister’s.
In fact, Connor was the one who introduced them, so to speak.
Because Kane found Connor and pressured him into taking a very valuable loan. Why, you ask? Great question.”
She grins widely. Her teeth look like fangs, glinting in the afternoon light, and her tongue is red from her wine.
“Because Kane has been quietly acquiring every single property in Sunset Park. For over a decade now, he’s used shell companies and shady lawyers to build up a huge block.
Connor offered lots of collateral in exchange for the loan, but Kane wasn’t interested in cars or jewels or houses, were you, Kane?
No. Oh, no. Kane didn’t want anything—except for the bakery. Lot 22.”
Not one soul in the room is eating. Uncle Johnny is holding his page at arm’s length, squinting at it.
I set my page down.
“Where did you get this, Viv?” I ask.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“A man gave it to me.” She shrugs one shoulder. “He was very polite. I guess the only question that remains is, was he telling the truth?” She turns to look at Kane. “Well, Kane? Was he?”
Every face at the table turns to Kane.
Mine, too.
He hasn’t moved. Coat off, sleeves down, one hand around his water glass. He hasn’t looked at Connor or the map.
He’s looking at the far wall, at nothing whatsoever, and his jaw is set so hard that I can see the muscle standing out under the skin.
“Kane,” I say.
Nothing.
“Kane. Tell everyone she’s lying.”
He doesn’t move.
My mother moves beside Vivian and loops a comforting arm across her favorite daughter’s shoulders.
“Delilah,” she says softly, “don’t make another scene.”
The words split something open inside me.
Another scene.
As if I control the projector this time.
As if I arranged the chairs.
As if I did this.
I look at Kane. I ask the only question that matters.
“Did you target Connor because you wanted my building?”
Kane looks at me.
He turns his head then. He looks at me.
And his eyes—God, the green of them, that have looked at me across a mirror and a counter and a candlelit bedroom, that looked at me when he told me you’re not my collateral, when he said the debt ends, we don’t—
His eyes offer nothing, and his mouth stays shut.
The silence lasts long enough to become an answer in its own right.
Long enough for Connor to lean back.
Long enough for Vivian to smile.
“Dee? Are you okay?” she asks, in the softest, kindest, most beautifully modulated Concerned Sister voice she has ever performed.
Still, Kane says nothing.
So it’s the truth then. I’ve been a target from the start.
I am the last person to know—again.
My chair scrapes the floor when I stand. I pick up my keys from beside my plate. Nobody tries to stop me.
Not Vivian, because she has what she wanted.
Not Connor, because he’s finally found someone else to pin his guilt on.
Not Kane, who refuses to say a word in his own defense.
I walk through the hallway past the photo wall. Past the place where half my face still hides behind Uncle Bub’s shoulder.
I pick up speed down the steps and run until I reach my car. I jump in, start the engine, and pull away from the curb without looking back.
I don’t know if Kane is following me and I no longer care.
I should’ve known better than to ever care at all.