11. TELEPHONE GAME

TELEPHONE GAME

T he four cups of coffee did not make me feel more alive. The painkillers barely dulled the thrumming in my head, and dread beat like a drum in my gut—which certainly didn't help the nausea—as my car crawled through the obnoxiously high iron gates of my mother's estate. It felt like I'd spent the night being trampled by wild animals, and it didn't help that it was barely eight in the morning. I spilled out of my car as though my limbs had turned liquid, and then I wobbled toward the sprawling stone manor, doing my best to act normal. Halfway up the cobblestone walkway, I spotted the girls and my mother trotting around the grounds on Spider and Rex, mother's prized quarter horses. Liv rode with my mother. They'd be at it for a while, so I ambled over to an old oak tree in a grassy area and slid to the ground, tugging my scarf a little higher on my neck to block out the dawn chill. The early morning frost on the ground bit into my jeans, and the slight breeze whipped unruly strands of hair across my eyes, but at least the fresh air kept me from retching. I swore that the next time I ventured out with Sebastian and Sam, I'd drink less, go to bed earlier, and avoid Andras at all costs. Or at least not swoon over him in public.

Maybe I should have responded to Kim's text. But what could I have said? Nothing but the truth—that I was a hoe who found myself swept up in Andras's sex king vibe like an idiot–would be believable. I had no intention of telling Kim or anyone that Steven and I were getting divorced, not yet. Anything I said would be used against me in the vicious court of sycophant suburbia. Not that I cared what any of them thought of me, but the rumors might hurt my girls, and that mattered. Parents talk, kids talk, and everything comes back to them full circle in the classroom. Cheating rumors would be especially brutal—would fuel taunts, teasing, and shame. I cracked my knuckles. I hated that Andras had an effect on me, but I could barely admit it to myself, let alone the world.

Last night, when I got home, the window of the small mother-in-law apartment above the garage glowed with light, signaling that Steven was settling into his new home and working unencumbered well into the next day. But I didn't think about him, or my broken heart, or dividing our assets. Nope, I crawled into bed and thought of Andras, how he'd been inches from my mouth, the scent of him in the air: whiskey, tobacco, cedar, and something metallic that seemed to cling to my clothes and hair.

Groaning, I scrubbed my hands down my face. Coffee. I needed more coffee but didn't want to drag myself to my feet and stumble in there . The manor stood tall enough to block out the sun and large enough to sleep a small village. Despite growing up in this house, it didn't feel like a home. A home has laughter. A home doesn't feel like a mausoleum. The 15,000-square-foot manor was too pristine, too quiet. And, of course, there was the dark truth that our father had died inside, right on the first floor. But he didn't simply die. You say someone died when they had a stroke, or their heart gave out, or they tripped down the basement stairs on the way to the laundry room and snapped their neck. Bob died, sounds like, "he grew old, and then that thing happened that happens to all of us one day." Dad didn't simply pass from this life one night in his sleep. He had been torn to ribbons. He'd been murdered here, on this property, and it would forever taint the place. The unprocessed grief stuck like a film over the brand-new paint they'd used to cover the blood splatter. I shuddered. Images of how we'd found him filled my head and haunted my thoughts and my nervous system. Then, there was our mother, in a Burberry dress, being led away in handcuffs. We'd been questioned relentlessly for weeks by detectives who had no business questioning traumatized teens.

Our lives would never be the same after that. We wrestled with grief, fear, loss, and the unnerving possibility that our mom had been the one to do it. To be honest, I don't think anyone would be shocked if our mother, the ice queen, had killed someone. But the way he'd been killed was so disturbing that there was no way she'd done it–she was too squeamish for that, too clean. She couldn't even look at raw meat in the kitchen without wrinkling her nose or turning away. The detectives said that all of the evidence pointed towards her, all of it, but they couldn't quite prove it. So they let her go and no other suspect was ever found. It was bad enough to lose our father, and though Jess and I were positive Mom had nothing to do with it, there were moments when we subconsciously wondered. How could you not? Imagine being asked to do your homework by someone who'd possibly disemboweled your father in his study down the hall. Best not to take any chances.

I shut my eyes hard to clear my head and raked my fingers through the dead grass, letting the frost burn my fingertips. Hooves pounded against the earth and then abruptly stopped in front of me. I opened my eyes to see the long legs of a bay-colored mare, a mere foot from my knee, and my gaze flicked up to my mother hovering there in her riding clothes, poised tall and unmoving like a statue on the back of Rex. Liv sat nestled between my mother and the saddle horn, smiling down at me.

"Hi, mamma!"

I blew a kiss up to her.

My mother was the picture of her posh British background, with pretty gray hair pulled up in a French twist, polished thigh-high riding boots resting in stirrups, and her high-cut cheekbones flushed a rose pink against her pale face. Liv wore an almost identical outfit to my mother's, her curls in a low ponytail at her nape, just below her riding helmet.

"Daniele," Mom said, looking down her nose at me, "why are you sitting on the wet grass like a dog? If you're not going to ride, why don't you take yourself inside and have Elenor, or whoever is working today, make you a cup of coffee or tea?"

"I'm fine here." I grumbled, "I'm enjoying the morning and don't mind sitting on the grass like a dog, Mom."

She exhaled dramatically, the sound of the burdened and suffering, and shrugged.

"Do as you will, Daniele, as you and your sister always do. Don't let comfort get in the way of your decades-long brooding."

She clicked her tongue against her teeth and Rex jerked his head up but began moving his powerful brown legs forward, the muscles tensing and bulging with every stride. I glared at her narrow back and flipped her off when she was halfway across the field. Brooding . Brooding is how my mother referred to mourning as if it had been odd and annoying that we'd reacted negatively to–or even noticed–our father's brutal passing. That alone might have convinced me of her guilt if it weren't for how incredibly non-violent she'd been all our lives.

She was no saint. She had a wicked mean tongue and was a master of guilt and manipulation, but she'd never laid a hand on us and rarely lost her temper. Our mother's weapon of choice was cool, calm calculation, not brute force. She was strong from years of tennis lessons and endless pilates, but not strong enough to do that . Plus, Mom had always been too squeamish, too posh, and too clean to ever put herself in any situation where she might be sullied in any way, let alone becoming drenched in another person's body fluids. I can say with absolute certainty that whomever, or whatever, killed our father would have ended up soaking wet in sticky crimson. I swallowed hard.

In the distance, Ria bounced on top of a trotting Spider, his blonde coat glowing, her face a mask of cool focus and confidence. Seeing them out there, I remembered Jess and me at about the same age, in the same style of clothes on horses long dead, and our riding teacher, a squat, severe man, barking orders at us the entire time. I shivered; the cold had finally reached my bones.

In the kitchen, I made a cappuccino with the espresso machine and cozied up on the chaise in front of the fireplace with some House and Home magazines that I found on the end table. My mother and the girls came inside shortly after. Ria and Liv waved to me as they were shooed upstairs to the guest rooms by my mother to shower and change. They came down a half hour later in clothes I didn't recognize (surely gifted by their grandmother), their dark wavy hair in braids and headbands, most likely styled by Elenor, who was probably cleaning the rooms upstairs. The girls ran to another part of the house to do who knows what. I called after them, "Five more minutes! Pick one last fun thing to do, and then it's time to go!" My mother's eyes danced as she watched them bound down the endless hall across the marble stone floor. She cooly prowled to the armchair closest to me and lowered herself gracefully onto it. Crossing her legs at the ankle,–Gods forbid she wrinkle her white pantsuit–she straightened her spine like a queen on a throne, her gaze sweeping across my face then dipping to my feet and slowly creeping up to settle on my eyes. I bristled as she silently judged.

"How are you?" she asked, resting her hands in her lap.

"I'm doing well," I said.

I spread my legs and slunk down in the chair. I didn't know why I had to irritate her on purpose, but I couldn't help it. My mother's eyes narrowed on me and she inhaled sharply but held back whatever it was she wanted to say. A pause.

"How is your sister?" she asked.

"Good."

"Good."

"How are you, Mom?" I asked.

"I'm doing well, thank you."

"Good."

Then, we sat in silence for what felt like a million years. She watched me. I let my eyes roam around the room. The paintings were the same ones that had hung on the dark green walls when we were young: a forest at dusk, a vase of peonies, and a massive portrait of a nude woman staring at something off to the right. The ceiling was flawlessly white without a dust particle or cobweb in sight, meaning that someone regularly climbed a very tall ladder to clean the thing. A few loose tendrils fell over my eyes when I leaned over to examine the rug–the same vibrant blue, green, and red Persian rug I'd painted in the piece above my bed at home. Liv and Ria screamed and laughed somewhere across the house, but other than that, the place was as silent as a tomb.

It had always been dead quiet unless they threw a party or my mother put on some of the jazz or classical music she liked so much. Once in a while, our dad would listen to old Persian music, and a smile would tug at his lips as he spread his arms out wide to snap his fingers and move his broad chest back and forth to the beat. This usually happened after he received good business news and had one too many tequila shots to celebrate. Jess and I would join him, moving our hips, shaking our shoulders; our mother would watch with raised brows, being way too Anglo-Saxon for ass-shaking. Despite these moments, despite the Persians being a warm people, our father was typically quiet and distant, his bushy black brows forever knitted together and forehead creased in an expression of deep contemplation as he mulled over work while silently judging everyone. Obsessively. Still, I missed him. For some reason, that always seemed to bother our mother. Her refusal to comfort us or even talk with us about what had happened had deepened the divide between us over time.

Victoria burst into the room with Olivia right behind her.

"We're ready!" Victoria announced.

"Thank Gods," I muttered under my breath.

"I heard that," my mother accused, looking bored.

I rose to my feet, my back aching from slouching in the chaise. I supposed I deserved it. I bent down and hugged Olivia and Victoria. We walked towards the front door together, the girls practically under my feet and my mother directly behind us, gliding.

"We had caviar again!" Victoria said.

"It was disgusting," Olivia added.

"It was not disgusting," my mother countered.

We turned to face her at the large, black, medieval-looking door in the foyer.

"Goodbye, Grandma! Thank you!" Victoria said, stepping forward to hug her grandmother gently around the legs. My mother patted her on the head, careful not to upset the headband.

"Thanks, Grammy!" Olivia waved.

"Thank you, mom," I said, smiling tightly.

My mother dipped her chin.

"Of course, darling," she said, barely a whisper.