Chapter 9 #2
“Follow me,” Brock ordered. He led us down a long hallway.
It was all white, almost blinding, and there were some large pictures on the walls.
Paintings, I should have said. We descended two steps into the huge room at the end of it, which was also almost entirely white.
That included the furniture and I could have wept for their cleaning lady when we sat on one of the couches.
This type of fabric showed everything, almost even fingerprints.
“I won’t offer you a drink,” Nolan’s dad told him.
“Good. I won’t have to decline.”
“I assume you didn’t have to miss a day’s work to get here.”
Nolan didn’t answer that and I thought about what the word “assume” meant.
They discussed family members whose names weren’t familiar to me because he didn’t talk much about the rest of the Whitakers.
He didn’t see them, either, although I knew that there were at least a couple in our area up north.
I suddenly wished that we were back there and I got a little chill, which very well could have been a sign of a ghostly presence.
It also could have been that the temperature in here was close to Kolter’s house when the furnace had gone down the winter before.
Nolan looked at me and scooted a little closer, like he was sharing some body heat.
I leaned toward him, glad of that and thinking that he might have needed mine, too.
Their conversation sounded as chilly as the air in here, more like an encounter between strangers.
It was a polite exchange of information but that was all.
Then I caught the faint sound of a door slamming.
It could have been very far away because noise was probably muffled by these walls, which looked thick, and by the heavy white rugs on the floors.
Those were almost painful to step on because I knew how stuff could get down between the fibers. God forbid if anyone spilled a drink!
Brock Whitaker hadn’t seemed to catch the sound but, since I was so close to Nolan, I could feel him stiffen. I scooted even a little closer.
Then his mother came in, and she wasn’t what I was expecting.
I had been imagining someone who looked like the bad witch from the Oz movie, but this woman was drop-dead beautiful.
Yeah, she could have been from a movie, but it would have been one of the old Hollywood spectaculars that Cadence loved and Nolan’s mom would have been the beautiful, elegant heroine.
She was extremely thin. Like if I whistled, she might have been carried away by the breeze from my mouth.
And she was also very tall, taller than her husband for sure and towering over me.
“Nolan,” she said. “Te voilà. Bon anniversaire.”
“Merci.”
She looked at me. “Et qui est-ce?”
“We’re going to speak in English tonight so that everyone understands,” he answered, and I heard Brock mutter something that sounded like “thank fucking” and then another word that I didn’t catch.
Nolan stepped forward and he and his mom did a series of kisses that went from side to side, smooch-smooch-smooch, but I didn’t think that they’d touched.
“And I’m sure you already know that this is Vivi,” he continued, holding out his hand toward me. “Vivi, this is my mother, Madeline Whitaker.”
“Hello,” I said.
“Vivienne, enchanté. It’s nice to meet you,” she said. She spoke just like her son had the first time I’d met him, Nnnn-ooo-lll-aaa-nnn.
“Nice to meet you, too.” She was so royal-y, I almost felt like I should curtsy.
She glanced around. “It’s feels strange to be here now. I’m usually at the office for several more hours due to the rigors of my position.”
Brock muttered something else, but she ignored him.
“I have some things to complete—”
“How about dinner first, and then you can return to work?” Nolan suggested and her eyes widened in surprise.
“Oh. Yes, all right. This way,” she directed me. I followed and her son came right behind me. To my surprise, he was right, right behind, almost bumping our shoulders together. I looked up at him and he nodded.
Dinner was really good—delicious, in fact.
I ate as much as I could, but Nolan moved things around his plate and only took a few bites.
His dad matched my energy and Madeline acted exactly how her son had predicted: no food crossed her lips.
I was glad to see that no alcohol did, either.
His parents reached for their water glasses a lot, a whole lot, but neither of them said a word about how they weren’t drinking anything else and they also didn’t ask him about his own intake.
Despite the good food, the meal was pretty tense.
Brock hadn’t spoken directly to his wife (not even a “hello”) and Nolan was also very quiet.
Madeline talked a lot, though. She went through every detail of her day, from when she left that morning and her windshield was foggy, to a traffic issue on Woodward Avenue at Lone Pine Road, to her coffee being the incorrect temperature when her assistant brought in her first cup of the day.
She spoke in English but would start sprinkling in French words, using more and more of them until she was fully in the other language.
Then Nolan would say, “We’re not doing that,” and she would smile and switch back again.
During her recitation of the day’s problems, she also threw in some of the “zingers” I’d heard about.
“Brock, why are you eating so quickly?” she asked her husband.
“If you do that, you won’t know when you’re full and you know how the pounds creep up on a man your age.
” She turned to me. “He’s significantly older than I am. ”
Brock muttered and I definitely heard “eighteen months.” I said something about how cool their house was and she mentioned that it was a disaster due to constant problems that had resulted because of a language barrier with the architect.
I bet that she’d spoken to him in French and he had probably wanted to slap her, which I understood.
She had a few zingers for me, too, like when she said, “Vivienne. Where did you find that interesting top?”
I looked down at my shirt, which had come directly from the thrift shop. “I don’t remember,” I told her.
“It’s such an unusual color, especially with your hair, and the fit is…unexpected. Did you purchase it when you were taller?”
That made her son speak up, too. “Tais-toi, s'il te pla?t,” he told her, and her eyes widened like she was shocked by what she’d just heard.
“I believe that the mandate was to speak in English?” she questioned. She put her hand over her heart and looked sorrowful, but I could see how much she was actually enjoying herself.
I wanted dinner to be over, but not because it was uncomfortable or weird. I really, really wanted to know what his mom had found out about my paperwork. Yeah, I’d been hungry and the food had been great, but I was anxious to move into her study to see what she’d turned up.
Nolan stood when his mom did so I also jumped to my feet.
Then we all started to walk out of the room, leaving the dishes right there on the table for the woman who had also served the food.
It didn’t feel right. Brock Whitaker went in the opposite direction and disappeared without saying goodbye or good night or anything.
Madeline led us to what I guessed was the study, but before we got to the paperwork part, she wanted to argue about the invoice she had sent. Nolan wasn’t having any of that. “Let’s examine the work product first,” he told her.
And she frowned but she did give me a folder, and when I opened it…
“Certificate of Live Birth?” I breathed. There it was: Vivienne Claire O’Keeffe, and the date that my mom had always said was my birthday. She’d been right! It was blank under the place for my father, not “Ron” or anything.
“You were a tiny baby,” Nolan said, looking over my shoulder.
“She’s quite small now,” his mom pointed out, and offered ideas about why that was.
“Thank you so much!” I interrupted her. “This makes such a difference for me! How did you do it?”
She only stared. “It was simply a matter of persistence and, of course, one needed un soupcon of intelligence.”
I understood that she was saying I was a dumb quitter but I still didn’t care, because I had this piece of paper. “Thank you,” I repeated.
“What else is there?” he asked. And Madeline had my social security card, too! All of a sudden, everything had changed for me.
She shot out a few more zingers and then they started to debate her bill.
I did try to pay attention so I could add that cost onto my list of what I would need to pay Nolan, but I was also entranced by the documents that I now held.
I could get a driver’s license. I could get a normal job.
I could go back to school and graduate! Maybe.
“I can do almost anything,” I announced, and they both looked over. He smiled but his mother did not.
“In the course of our investigation, we did discover some information about your family,” she said. “You have one sister, Patchouli Agrimony O’Keeffe?” She made a noise that sounded like a cat coughing something up. “Pardon me. That name…”
“What about my sister?” I asked.
“Were you aware of her incarceration? It appears that she was dabbling in the use and sale of other people’s prescriptions, along with additional offenses. That was just the latest set of charges.”
I hadn’t been aware but I wasn’t surprised, either. “Did you find out anything about my mom?”
She opened yet another file. “Yes. What an interesting rap sheet she has. How many times was she arrested for solicitation?”
“I don’t have any idea. A lot?” I guessed, but Nolan was furious.
“Why would you bring that up? Why would you have her rap sheet printed out?” he asked his mother. “Is your purpose to humiliate Vivi or to humiliate me?”
“I thought it was relevant information about the woman you’re seeing.”