Chapter Twenty-Eight Mary
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mary
Three and a half years ago
My parents sat on the couch, watching silently as Sam and I made our way around the living room, hurriedly righting everything that had been tipped over, knocked over, or thrown over during our little melee.
Splintered picture frames, overturned lamps, a broken mug.
The front door hung crooked on its hinges, the lock plate split clean through.
They’d had to kick it in after hearing the noise from the hall—crashing, shouting, maybe the sound of something heavy hitting the wall.
“Maintenance is going to love that,” Sam muttered, rubbing her bruised shoulder as she stooped to pick up a throw pillow. “Guess that’s coming out of our deposit.”
“Or mine,” I said under my breath, stacking books back on the shelf.
We didn’t look at each other once, and when we’d finished, she headed upstairs without another word to any of us.
“Excuse me just a second,” I murmured, slipping into the kitchen where I’d left a hoodie draped over a chair.
I pulled it on over my short-sleeved T-shirt so they wouldn’t catch sight of the Gemini tattoo I’d gotten to match Sam’s several months ago.
“Can I get you something?” I asked as I walked back out into the living room. “Some water? A cup of tea, maybe?”
“What, out of booze?” my father asked with a pointed look toward the empty champagne bottle.
I sighed wearily. “Dad, please. Just . . . just don’t, okay? If you’ve come here to criticize my life, you can just turn right back around and head home because I’m not doing this.”
My mother shot him a warning glance before picking up the discussion. “Mary, what’s going on? This isn’t like you. What on earth were you and Sam fighting about? It looked as if you wanted to kill each other!”
“It’s nothing,” I replied flatly, signaling, once again, that I didn’t care to discuss it.
Not that my mother ever paid attention to signals.
“It was most certainly not nothing,” she said. When I didn’t respond, she continued. “Honey, we’re worried about you. We’d like you to consider coming home, even if it’s just for a visit. A week or two? Perhaps a little distance would do you girls some good right now.”
It was such a struggle to keep my rage freshly stoked, especially when I’d just expended so much on my sister.
The simple truth was that I had missed them.
That I still missed them. That, in spite of everything, I still loved them.
But, tempted as I was to try and smooth out a few of our ruffled feathers, I had to stand firm.
There was a reason my parents were sitting here, in my apartment, nearly three thousand miles from home.
Which begged the question . . .
“How do you know where I live?” When they didn’t answer immediately, I filled in the blanks myself. “Ah, right. You had one of your security guys track me down,” I said with a nod. “Nice, guys. Real nice.”
“I’m not going to apologize for being concerned about you,” Mom said.
“If you’d responded to any one of our calls, emails, texts, if you’d sent up smoke signals, anything to let us know you were okay, then we would have respected your request to leave you alone.
But barring proof that you were okay, I needed to lay eyes on you for myself. ”
“In person,” Dad added before I could point out the obvious. “Not on some late-night show or tacky TV commercial.”
His choice of words was a direct insight into their presence here now.
“Okay, so that’s what this is about?” I chuckled incredulously, my brows raising high into my forehead. “You don’t like my new public persona?”
“Mary, that’s not what—”
I cut him off sharply. “What’s wrong? Are your PR people telling you my ‘tacky commercials’ are tarnishing the pristine Langston Pharma brand?”
When they shifted a little uncomfortably, I knew I’d hit at least part of the nail on its head.
“What happened to being a wilderness guide?” Mom asked. “Isn’t that what you were working so hard for? Isn’t that what you came out here to the West Coast for? And now what? You’re just trading on your notoriety.”
“Notoriety? Funny, I’m not aware that I’m notorious for anything.”
“No?” Dad challenged. He reached around to the messenger bag that was on the floor by his feet and pulled out a stack of photocopies. When he held up the first one—an article from a trashy supermarket tabloid—I felt my stomach lurch.
“Twisted Twins!” he read aloud dramatically.
“The Secret Sibling Rivalry Boils Over—Public Fights, Boozy Nights, and Chaos Ensue!” He dropped that one onto the coffee table and held up another.
“Double Trouble: Separated at Birth, Now Spiraling out of Control! Twins’ Drunken Brawl Stuns Onlookers.
Oh, look, here’s a good one—Wilder Than You Think!
Viral Twins in Public Meltdown—Fist Fights, Feuds, and Too Much Booze. ”
“All right!” I said, holding up my palms when he reached for another. “Okay, okay, I got the idea already.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Mom countered. “This isn’t about our reputation, Mary. Or the company’s. It’s about yours. Keep it up, and no college will take you!”
“Who says I want to go back to college?” I demanded, my voice growing louder. “I’m doing just fine without it, thank you very much.”
“You call this doing fine?” Dad asked, gesturing to the pile of lurid headlines. “You’re out of control. Both of you. Whether you want to believe it or not, we don’t want to see all this affect Sam’s future either.”
I scoffed loudly. “Oh, so now you’re worried about Sam? Seriously?”
My mother’s jaw tightened, and when she spoke again, it was through gritted teeth.
“Mary Louise, I don’t know how many ways we can tell you we love you and we’re worried about you.
Both of you. You don’t have the life experience to know that you’re headed down a very rocky road.
How you proceed from here will affect the choices you have the rest of your life. ”
I took a long, deep breath and tried to calm down before I spoke again. “I appreciate your concern, but it’s not necessary. What you’re reading about are overblown stories taken out of context—”
“Out of context?” Dad echoed, incredulously. “The two of you were arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct! And what we just witnessed here in this apartment makes me think the context is spot on!”
“Okay, so we didn’t start it,” I told him, not wanting to get into the details of the night Sam had one too many shots of vodka and picked a fight with an entire bachelorette party.
“And we weren’t charged with anything. Besides,” I continued, gesturing around our loft, “as you can see, I’m not living in some hovel.
I have an agent and several contracts for commercials and appearances.
No one is concerned about the publicity.
In fact, it’s only increased our visibility.
And if you doubt that, ask our publisher!
There’s even talk about a book deal and selling the rights to our story to a producer here in Hollywood.
So you see? I’m doing quite well out here in the big bad world—even without the life experience. ”
My father stood, offering my mother his hand so she could join him. The two of them looked at me for a long beat before my mother spoke softly, reverently.
“Remember your Proverbs 16:18, Mary. ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.’”
Then they turned and walked out.