14. Liv
Liv
Iperched on the couch in my grandmother’s living room, Chloe at my feet, while Theo and Grandma Ella played a duet. The song was lively and intricate, bringing my parents out of the kitchen to listen.
Dad had offered to pay Ruth, my grandmother’s all-around companion, to help with brunch, but my mom had insisted on preparing the meal herself.
She’d been baking mini-muffins and whipping up quiches since nine, sending my father out for bagels and smoked salmon and enlisting Chloe to scoop capers.
My job had been to set the table, which I’d apparently done all wrong.
After the second time I’d caught my mother refolding the napkins and rearranging the centerpiece, I’d offered to entertain Grandma Ella instead.
I stole a sideways glance at my parents, forcing myself to relax.
My mother was like a bloodhound when it came to reading a room; it was what made her so successful on the many philanthropic boards she chaired.
The last thing I wanted to do was make her suspect something was amiss before Theo had even introduced himself.
I folded my hands in my lap, fixed an attentive expression on my face, and let the music fade to background noise.
No matter how hard I looked, I could find no resemblance between my grandmother’s silvered, once-blond hair and Theo’s inky black, or her chocolate-brown eyes and his mutable hazel.
Their bone structures didn’t echo each other’s, either.
But the way his head bent toward hers, how they filled in each other’s silences, evoked an eerie sense of foreboding in me.
I told myself it wasn’t odd that they both loved to play the piano. It meant nothing.
But then…what if?
I knew what it was like to have a life separate from the people who’d raised you, the longing that came from wanting to find out the truth of your origins.
The feeling that you never quite fit in.
I’d known I was adopted as far back as I could remember, but my parents had been adamant I wait to find my biological family until I turned eighteen.
I’d brought it up the day after my sixteenth birthday, my brand-new driver’s license in hand.
Getting my license had triggered something in me—panic that I was on the verge of adulthood, and my biological family had missed everything.
My entire childhood, all gone. Now, maybe they’d miss the chance to know me as an adult, too…
and I’d miss the chance to know them. I didn’t want to feel inexplicable anymore, like someone who’d sprung from Zeus’s head fully formed.
I wanted to understand where I came from, to make sense of the parts of me that couldn’t be explained by the way I was raised.
But based on my parents’ reaction, you’d think I’d asked to join a polygamous nudist colony rather than track down my roots.
“This family has had quite enough of that kind of confusion, don’t you think?” my mother had said, her mouth pursed in a moue of distaste. “Are we not sufficient for you, Olivia? Haven’t we given you every opportunity, everything you ever wanted?”
Of course they had. And of course it was enough… Except, it wasn’t.
I’d tried to explain that some things weren’t about them.
That I needed to know where I’d come from, in order to better understand myself.
But the suggestion that something was missing from the perfect life they’d provided for me, that I saw myself as someone other than a Carter-Brentwood, had proved both incomprehensible and infuriating.
After my father grounded me, he’d stalked into his office with a tumbler of Lagavulin and slammed the door.
My mother had gone straight to bed and hadn’t spoken to me for a week.
In the silence between us, a terrible suspicion had bloomed: They were the ones that saw me as different than a Carter-Brentwood, like a dandelion they were pretending was something other than a weed.
If they dressed me the right way, sent me to Cotillion and sailing camp at the yacht club, taught me how to act at garden parties, then they could shape me into the daughter they deserved.
They could imagine I hadn’t come from less-than origins, make me into a blank slate on which they wrote only Carter Carter Carter.
They hadn’t just written on me, though. They’d erased me. And I let them.
I never asked them about my bio parents again.
Instead, I searched on my own, the day after my eighteenth birthday.
But I was too late. They were both gone, him in a car wreck, her from an overdose.
If my parents had said yes to my search, or if I’d been resourceful and determined enough to dig on my own, I could have found my bio mom before she died. Could have met her, talked to her.
Sitting on the piano bench in her living room, Theo was a stranger to my grandmother. But maybe, just maybe, he was also her great-nephew. Her blood.
Everything his family had been through, the grinding poverty and the depth of their emotional wounds…
that could so easily have been my story.
Maybe my bio mom hadn’t wanted to give me up.
Maybe she’d been young and alone, and the loss of her baby—of me—had been what drove her to addiction.
I would never know. But as I listened to Theo and my grandmother play, I felt the gap between the Carters and the Dresslers in my soul.
And the problem was, I wasn’t sure on which side of the divide I belonged.
What if Theo was setting me up? He’d seemed so sincere, but had I let my attraction to him and my own abandonment issues cloud my judgment?
At any moment, he could lift his fingers from the keys and proclaim his true identity.
And then— God, what if my parents disinherited me?
What would that mean for Chloe’s college fund?
And what if my grandmother turned on me, too?
Surely she wouldn’t. She loved me unconditionally, didn’t she? But still—
Chloe tugged at my jeans, disrupting the dangerous trajectory of my thoughts. “He’s good,” she whispered, as respectfully as if we were at a concert hall. “Like, really good, Mom.”
“I know,” I whispered back as Theo’s mouth slanted upward in a grin.
His hair fell forward and he tossed his head to keep it back, catching my eye.
I dropped my gaze, embarrassed to be caught staring.
Just like that night in the bar, he winked, then redirected his attention to the keys, turning the full force of his smile on my grandmother.
She returned it, her still-graceful fingers executing an agile run of notes.
He listened, head cocked. Then his hands came down, flashing over the keys with dazzling speed: a challenge asked and answered.
It was like watching two people engage in witty banter, but through music rather than words.
The music galloped faster, reaching a crescendo that reminded me of the ocean crashing against the shore.
Sweat gleamed on Theo’s cheekbones, the way it had when he’d pressed me back against my living room wall, and warmth curled in my belly.
What was it about this man’s music? He ought to come with a freaking warning label.
At least he wasn’t singing. That would be the end of me.
He hit a final triumphant note and the song ended, fading into the silence of the room.
My parents started clapping. Chloe put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, the way Gray had taught her, earning a disapproving glance from my mom.
She didn’t say a word, but I could hear her as clearly as if she had: “Ladies do not wolf whistle, Chloe Marie!”
For an instant I could imagine how Theo must see us, with the grand colonial house, the hand-woven Aubusson rugs, the Steinway, the walls lined with original artwork that cost more than most people made in a year. Pained, I forced myself to let it go. He’d known who we were and come here anyhow.
Pushing the bench back, Theo stood. I held my breath, waiting to see if my worst nightmare was about to unfold, but he just gave a little bow.
Grandma Ella dropped a curtsy, her eyes bright with excitement.
Surely bringing him here was worth it, if it could make her look this happy.
And if he could manage to keep his promise.
“Thank you for the pleasure, Mrs. Carter-Brentwood.” Tension strung his voice as he said her name, and I hoped it was only perceptible to me.
I slid a glance at my mother, and was relieved to see a genuine smile on her face, not the fake one she used to disguise scorn or condescension.
My clenched jaw loosened just a little. Maybe we could actually pull this off.
“The pleasure was mine,” my grandmother said, squeezing his fingers. “You’re every bit as talented as my granddaughter said you were. And please, call me Ella.”
Theo edged out from behind the piano bench as my father came up to him.
At sixty-five, my dad had a full head of graying hair and a fit, trim build that belied the years he’d spent behind a desk, expanding the portfolio of investments my great-great-grandfather had built.
Along with my Uncle Jamison, who was something of a ne’er-do-well, he’d inherited the business and had made it his life’s work.
When he wasn’t overseeing Carter Industries, he could be found on the tennis court, beating far younger opponents into incredulous submission.
“Russ Carter-Brentwood,” he said in his take-no-prisoners baritone, looking Theo over. I held my breath, but all he said was, “Nicely done. My mother’s the music aficionado, but even a guy with a tin ear like me can appreciate a good tune when I hear one.”
Theo gazed down at my father’s extended hand, his face expressionless. My mouth was suddenly so dry, my throat clicked when I swallowed. What if Theo spat at my dad, or…or punched him in the face? Oh, God, what had I been thinking, bringing him here?