19. Liv
Liv
“Holy crap,” Tessa said, leaning back in her chair. “You did what?”
Tonight was margarita night at my house, a tradition we’d instituted the week I’d found out Gray was cheating on me again and kicked him to the curb.
Despite my protestations that I was handling everything just fine, Tessa had left the twins with her husband and come over with the Emergency Rescue Cooler: a red Coleman filled with a thermos of margaritas, a pint of dark chocolate gelato, and a Tupperware full of her grandma’s pork posole with queso fresco.
Over the eighteen months since I’d dumped Gray, we’d made this a habit.
We had a ritual: we drank, ate, and shared our woes.
Usually, these were predictable, like her frustration with the university, which always managed to screw up the disbursement of her funding, or my aggravation with Gray’s shenanigans.
Tonight was different. It was our first-ever Wednesday margarita night, for starters.
And also, these circumstances were anything but ordinary.
I’d begged her to come over after Chloe went to bed, desperate for a sounding board about the latest developments in the Carter/Dressler saga.
When I finished, Tessa stared at me, her dark eyes wide and stunned.
“Wow,” she said. “When you dust off the cobwebs to your pleasure palace, you go all the way, huh?”
My face heated. “Nice, Tess. I knew I should never have told you about having sex with him on that piano.”
“Not to mention this coffee table.” Her nose wrinkled as she glanced at the object in question, currently playing host to the pitcher of margaritas, chips and salsa, and the remains of the fruit-and-cheese platter I’d thrown together.
“I’ve got to say, I feel a little dirty right now.
” She made a show of brushing off her hands, as if ridding them of imaginary germs.
“Tessa!” Balling up a napkin, I tossed it at her. “Do you think I made a horrible mistake by asking my grandma about the test? Or by buying that ticket to New York?”
Tessa gave me an empathetic smile and brushed her silky fall of black hair away from her eyes. “No. But like we talked about before, I understand why you’re afraid.”
Sliding back against the couch cushions, I tucked my feet underneath me and turned my face toward the fire. It had begun to storm, rain streaking the windows, distorting the darkening world outside. I felt safe, protected. And yet, I knew this was only an illusion.
“What if this blows up my family? Maybe I’m not doing this for the right reasons. Maybe it’s that curiosity of mine, needing to dig until I find the truth. Or”—I swallowed hard—“maybe I’m more concerned with bringing closure to Theo and his family than looking after my own.”
“Come on, Liv,” Tessa said, swallowing a mouthful of salsa. “You know that’s not true.”
“Do I? Gray’s always going on about how I put my clients first. I’m not saying he’s right,” I said, holding up a hand, “but—maybe there’s a grain of…something…at the heart of it. I know I have the need to fix things, to help. Maybe I’m going too far.”
I paused, and Tessa watched me patiently.
Not for the first time, I thought what an excellent therapist she would have made.
“But,” I said, and told her about what my grandmother had said about my search for my biological parents.
“I can’t help but wonder if Grandma Ella would feel the same way if she took the test, and, by some fluke, we found out she really was a Dressler.
She wouldn’t be losing us. She’d be gaining them, too. And they’d be gaining her.”
Tessa was quiet for a long moment. Finally she said, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant, “I think your grandmother’s right about your family getting bigger, not smaller.
But Liv, things are rarely just what they seem.
I know I told you to be careful about kicking the hornet’s nest, before.
But I’ve been thinking. When it comes to this situation, I wonder if your parents’ attitude stems from more than just their desire to leave well enough alone. ”
I raised my eyebrows and she continued, “I’d bet it’s also based in their privilege and their sense of identity.
I mean, think about it. If Theo’s right, then your dad doesn’t come from the blueblood stock he takes for granted.
How’s he going to reconcile that with the guy he’s always thought he was? ”
She smiled at me, but it was rueful. “I’ve told you how, growing up, I never fit in anywhere.
To my mom’s family, I wasn’t Mexican enough.
My dad’s family thought I wasn’t sufficiently Chinese.
At school, no one knew what box to put me in.
And then after college, when I met Victor, both sides of my family were pissed off because I married a Jewish guy.
Things were bad enough in California, but when he got that professorship and we moved to the South—now, no one knows what to make of me. ”
She gave a pained shrug. “I’ve never belonged anywhere.
I’m sure that’s why I’m always the head of every damn thing I get involved with, so I can shape it into a place where I’ll fit in.
And when I met you”—she graced me with a small but genuine smile—“I think I sensed you were going through your own version of the same struggle. You’re smart and successful on the outside, like I am.
But on the inside, you’re the daughter of a troubled teenager who gave up her baby, and wound up in a family where you never really fit in. ”
Her words struck me hard. I thought, as I always did, of the two lines of information I’d been able to dig up about my mother: Bess Gallagher, Irish Catholic.
Deceased in Westchester County, age thirty-two, of an opiate overdose.
Why had she let me go? Had she been forced to, or had she decided she wanted to give me a better life than the one she could provide?
“If your bio mom had kept you, your life would’ve looked completely different,” Tessa said, her voice soft. “Yeah, you were raised by the Carter-Brentwoods, but you’ve always felt like an interloper, right? Like me, you’ve never felt like you belonged.”
I took a fortifying gulp of my margarita, then a deep breath. This was the blessing and the curse of having a best friend who knew you inside out: sometimes she made you confront things you’d rather not deal with head-on.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I guess I still worry that one day I’ll say or do something that’s too much, and they’ll boot me out of their family the same way they brought me into it.”
Their family. Ouch. I winced at my choice of words, but pressed onward.
“I’ve never quite managed to live up to their expectations.
” Like tying the knot with Gray rather than one of the many investment bankers my mother had offered up for consumption, refusing to join the Junior League, or becoming a therapist rather than simply marrying into money.
“It worries me that maybe this will be the straw that breaks the back of a very overburdened camel.”
“Or,” Tessa said, far more gently than usual, “maybe deep down, you hope that you’ll find out that Ella and Lily really were switched. Because then, your dad will come from poor, immigrant origins, just like you. And you’ll finally fit in. You’ll belong together, after all.”
Silence fell over the room as Tessa’s words sank in, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the rattle of the windows in their frames.
I drew a deep breath to steady myself, and inhaled the scent of burning wood and petrichor; it had been a warm day, and when I’d gotten home from work, I’d opened all the windows, letting the fresh air in.
Though I thought I’d shut all of them after dinner, I must have missed one.
Sure enough, a cool breeze curled through the room, making the flames flicker. Goosebumps sprang up on my skin despite the heat of the fire, and I reached for the throw draped over the couch, wrapping it around myself. “Wow. I never thought of it like that, but you’re absolutely right.”
Tessa reached for the pitcher, pouring herself another margarita. “You’ve infiltrated them, honey. You’ve got the power of the privileged at your fingertips and the righteous fire of the disenfranchised in your belly. And let’s get real, there’s nothing more threatening than that.”
“You think I threaten them?” My eyes widened.
“I know you do.” She lifted her glass, her dark eyes sparkling at me over the rim. “Viva la revolución, my friend.”
“Salud,” I said in reply, and leaned across the coffee table.
But before our glasses could touch, the breeze swept through the room again, stronger this time.
It swept the napkins onto the floor, scattering them.
The flames flickered, then shot high, sending shadows leaping up the walls.
In the corner, the piano began to play a tentative tune, jarred loose as the wind rattled the keys.
As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The room was still, the piano silent. Across the table, Tessa and I regarded each other with identical expressions of shock.
“What the hell was that?” she said, sounding shaken.
“I must’ve left a window open,” I said, sliding off the couch to gather the napkins and striving not to sound unsettled.
She knelt next to me, picking up the rest. “I guess so. But the piano…that was creepy. My Uncle Wei would say it was a ghost, for sure. And my Tia Ana would say it’s close to Día de los Muertos, so the veil between the living and the dead is thin.”
I suppressed a shudder. Usually, Tessa was as pragmatic as they came, but every so often, the superstitions of her childhood bubbled to the surface. “There are no such things as ghosts,” I reminded her, reassuring myself as much as Tessa.
“Maybe it was Feng Po Po,” she offered, giving me a half-hearted smile as she stacked the napkins on the table and slid back into the armchair. “The goddess of the wind.”
“Yeah, because that sounds much better than a ghost.”
Giving a last uneasy glance at the piano, Tessa clinked her glass against mine.
She took a single, perfunctory sip, and then her phone buzzed.
“Oh, crap,” she said, glancing at it. “I didn’t realize how late it was.
Apparently Maia can’t fall asleep. Dean’s read her five stories, but she’s still asking for me. I’ve got to go.”
Was it my imagination, or did I detect a tiny note of relief in Tessa’s voice? Normally, she’d tell Dean to work it out, he was their dad, not a babysitter. And unlike Gray, he actually did. This time, though, she got to her feet, grabbed her raincoat, and slung her purse over her shoulder.
“Call me anytime if you need moral support,” she said. “Keep me in the loop when you go to New York with hot piano dude. And not just about what your research turns up, either.” She winked at me. “I want to know everything.”
“I will,” I said.
Hugging me, she stepped out into the rain. I went from one window to the next, determined to figure out which one I’d failed to shut. But to my surprise, all of them were not only closed, but latched.
The house was old, I told myself, dismissing a flicker of unease. Even a locked window wasn’t airtight. There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened.
But after I’d watched the fire burn to ashes, checked on Chloe, and crawled into bed—which, unsettlingly, still smelled of Theo—it was a different story.
Alone in the darkness, I thought again of the way Grandma Ella’s doppelganger had strolled past Atomic’s bouncer and slipped between the people on the dance floor, unnoticed by anyone but me.
How she’d vanished into thin air, as if she’d never really been there at all.