Chapter 18 Ace #2
“Do you have any idea where your mother might have gone?” Ace asked Sienna, keeping his tone easy and curious rather than pointed. “Has she ever mentioned a place she liked? Somewhere she went to think?”
Sienna gave a short laugh that had nothing warm in it.
“I have absolutely no idea where she is,” she replied.
“And I genuinely don’t care. I only want to know how to get my safe back.
” She looked at him with a settled, type of satisfied expression.
“That woman is gone. Alfred, who was just as hateful as she was, is gone.” She gave a satisfied sigh.
“The house is quiet for the first time in my entire life.” Something flickered in her eyes that was almost contentment.
“You know, Victoria was never a mother to me. She was a performance. Everything Victoria Morrison did was for an audience.”
Ace looked at her. “That’s a hard thing to grow up with.” His voice was filled with compassion.
“It is,” Sienna agreed, without self-pity.
“Which is why my grandfather was everything to me.” Her voice shifted, the hard edge softening into something genuine.
“He understood me. He never performed. He was exactly who he was, and he never pretended otherwise.” She glanced at Ace.
“He used to say that the best people in the world were the ones who knew precisely who they were and refused to apologize for it.” Her eyes looked haunted for a few seconds.
“I can’t believe two of the three people I cared most for in this world are gone,” she gave a tight smile.
“Well, I never knew my great-grandfather, but I know I would’ve loved him.
My grandfather, I visited as often as I was allowed to, and then there was…
” She looked at her hands and then at the concert, the moment passing in a flash.
“You know what, this is morbid, and I want to enjoy the concert.”
Ace dropped the questioning as her friends came back.
“The line for the bar is out of this world,” Lauren groaned. “We’re going to sit for a moment because we went to dance instead. We’ll try the bar again in a few moments.”
After they’d settled, Ace waited for another song to finish.
“How is Clive taking all of this?” Ace asked. “It must be hitting him hard.”
Sienna’s expression shifted into something Ace could only explain as contempt.
“Clive is a mommy’s boy,” she said flatly.
“He always has been. She always favored her little boy more.” Her eyes flashed hatefully.
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s got her tucked away somewhere in Miami.
” She glanced back at Ace. “He’s just moved into his own apartment there, you know.
” She rolled her eyes. “He’s about to start an engineering degree.
” She produced a dismissive sound. “He’s far too old to be starting a degree. ”
“I think it’s admirable,” Ace replied. “And it’s never too old to learn something new. I’ve seen Clive in action. Look how he helped fix the problem with the one bridge in Gainesville just last year.” He held her eyes. “I think he’s making the right move.”
Sienna gave a non-commital shrug, pulling an ugly face.
“That’s such a you thing to say,” she told him.
“You’re such a good person, Ace. Just like my earnest, dumb brother.
” She shook her head, but something else was there now underneath the dismissal, something that wasn’t performing.
“That’s why my grandfather always preferred me.
He used to say Clive was too soft.” A nostalgic quality settled over her face that Ace hadn’t seen there before.
Something real underneath everything else.
“He adored me. More than he adored my mother. More than anyone, honestly.” She smiled, and for one unguarded moment it reached her eyes.
“He always said I was just like him. Just like him and his father before him.”
“In what way?” Ace kept his voice entirely easy.
“In every way,” Sienna replied, with a satisfaction that was completely unguarded.
“I even got the female equivalent of the gymnastics trophy both my grandfather and great-grandfather once held for the State of Florida.” She looked at Ace with a pleased expression, as if sharing a private pride.
“It’s a family tradition to get that trophy. We’re very competitive people.”
“Didn’t your mother do gymnastics as well?” Ace asked.
“She did,” Sienna confirmed. “But she had an accident on the parallel bars in high school and stopped midway through.” She waved a hand.
“She was never as naturally gifted as I am anyway.” She glanced toward the stage.
“Anyway. Enough of this. It’s a concert, and I’m tired of speaking about my dysfunctional family. ”
She reached out and took his hand.
As she did, the sleeve of her long-sleeved shirt fell away from the back of her hand and rode up toward her wrist, and in the shifting light of the venue, Ace’s eyes moved there before he’d decided to look.
The marks were faint and not fresh, but not old either. A series of thin, linear scars across the back of her hand and along the inside of her wrist, the kind of marks that didn’t come from an accident or a fall. The kind that came from sustained contact with something sharp in a confined space.
Ace looked at them for precisely the time it took to register them fully. Then he looked back at the stage.
Sienna hadn’t noticed he’d seen her hands and what she’d been covering up beneath her long-sleeved cuffs.
She was already moving to the music, her hand still loosely in his, the conversation about her family finished as far as she was concerned, and the evening back on the track she’d planned for it.
Ace sat beside her, watching the band and keeping his face exactly where it needed to be.
He kept hold of Sienna’s hand and looked at the stage as his mind ticked over the conversation they’d just had, knowing it was pretty revealing. Ace gave her hand a squeeze, and she winced, glancing down as he did.
“Ow,” Sienna hissed.
“Oh, sorry,” Ace said. “I was getting so involved in the music…” His brows rose as he pretended to see the marks on her hand for the first time. “Oh, gosh, Sienna, what happened to your hand?”
“Roses,” Sienna said without hesitation. “I love roses. I’m the one that tends to all the bushes in the garden out back and I’m always ripping my hands up. I’m so embarrassed about them.”
“You should wear gardening gloves,” Ace said. “Those scratches look deep, almost like fingernail scrapings.”
“Have you seen rose thorn groupings?” Sienna told him, pulling her hand free and dragging her sleeve down, but not before he glanced at the same marks on her other hand. “Roses can be brutal in rows, and I don’t like wearing gloves as I like the natural feel of the stems and the soil.”
“I can see you must like it,” Ace commented, hoping this was all being picked up. “Because you have them on both hands.”
“That’s why I keep both hands covered,” Sienna admitted. “I’m so embarrassed by the marks.” She showed him her fingernails. “My nails are so pretty and well-groomed, but my hands are all scarred and ugly.”
“I think your hands are still pretty,” Ace commented. “You shouldn’t try to hide them.”
“That’s sweet,” Sienna said and then turned to hear what her friend was saying.
Ace settled back in his seat as the band played on, then moved into a slower set, and the crowd shifted with it, the energy dropping to something more comfortable and sustained.
Sienna leaned against his arm.
Ace looked at the stage and thought about his grandmother in her retirement village in Miami, the weekly calls he made, and the way she always answered on the second ring, regardless of the time, as if she’d been waiting for it.
He thought about what it would mean to lose her, the specific, irreplaceable weight of the last person in the world who had known him since the beginning.
“I’d give anything to still have my mother,” Ace admitted quietly to Sienna. He kept his voice even and let it sit there between them. “I last saw her when I was four and waved her and my father goodbye, not realizing it was the last time I’d see them.”
Sienna looked up at him. “I wouldn’t,” she replied, without hesitation and without apology.
“Mine’s not worth finding.” She gave a short laugh that had nothing to do with humor.
“Although she was finally useful for something, I suppose.” There was a sinister flash in her eyes.
“Let’s just hope she stays gone for good. ”
Ace looked at her. “What was that?” Then clarified. “What was your mother being useful for?”
“Disappearing.” Sienna smiled with a settled satisfaction showing she’d been waiting a long time for a specific outcome and was now living comfortably inside it.
“She’s gone. Finally. No more eyes on me constantly.
No more commentary on everything I do. No more of her standing in every room I walk into, making sure everyone is looking at her instead of me.
” Her chin lifted slightly. “Now I can live exactly as I want. Do exactly as I please.” She looked around the venue with the expression of someone surveying something that now belonged entirely to them.
“It’s remarkable how light the world feels when someone toxic finally removes themselves from it. ”
Ace said nothing.
Sienna’s gaze moved across the crowd and found the small group twenty feet away with the unerring accuracy of someone who had been tracking their location all evening.
“Although I see some people never change their habits,” Sienna remarked pleasantly.
Her eyes settled on Willa and Harvey. “Look at the two of them. Don’t they just suit each other perfectly?
” She tilted her head slightly, lifting her chin rather snootily.
“Harvey and Willa. Two people with absolutely nothing to prove to anyone because nobody important is watching anyway. Losers in their own circle.” Her voice dropped into something smooth and deliberate.
“The cheap seats always find each other eventually, don’t they? ”
Ace went very still. The stillness lasted approximately three seconds.
Then he pulled away from Sienna, stood, and took a step back.
Creating a distance between them that was small in physical terms and considerable in every other sense.
Ace looked at her with an expression that he was no longer managing for anyone’s benefit.
“Those are my friends you’re talking about,” he said.
His voice was quiet and entirely level. “Willa Parker is one of the finest people I have ever known. She is brave and decent. Willa has more genuine worth in one conversation than you’ve demonstrated in this entire evening.
” He held Sienna’s eyes without blinking.
“Harvey has lost more than anyone I know, yet he keeps a smile on his face and a place in his heart for fair-weathered friends like you.” His eyes narrowed.
“The cheap seats comment says considerably more about you than it does about either of them.”
Sienna stared at him, her bottom jaw dropping slightly at his words.
Then her expression shifted into something he hadn’t seen on her before.
It wasn’t hurt or embarrassment, but something harder than both.
The face of a person whose carefully constructed surface had been pushed past the point where maintenance was worth the effort.
Ace reached into his jacket pocket and took out his wallet. He put two folded bills on the partition beside her without looking at the amount.
“That should cover a cab home for you and your friends,” he told her. “From wherever in Gainesville you end up.” He held her gaze for a moment longer. “Enjoy the rest of the show, Sienna.”
He put his wallet away, turned, and walked into the crowd without looking back.
Ace moved through the press of people with the focused, unhurried purpose of a man who had stopped doing the thing he’d been asked to do and had started doing the thing he should have done on a limestone island in the middle of a storm.
Ace found Willa near the left side of the floor, standing with Harvey, Margo, and Rad, her face tilted up toward the stage.
Her green dress caught the venue light in the way it had been catching it all evening from thirty feet away.
Ace stopped beside her.
Willa turned and looked at him.
He looked back at her.
“I owe you an apology and an explanation,” Ace told her. “I don’t care if I’m breaking a promise right now, but I think I’ve got everything I need to get.”
“What do you mean?” Willa frowned.
“Can we go somewhere quieter?” he asked.
Willa looked at him for a moment with that steady, unhurried attention she gave to things that mattered. Then she handed her drink to Margo without a word and turned toward the exit.
Ace followed.