“That’s not how it works,” Pop said softly. “Not how it’s supposed to work.”
“Maybe that’s how it works for me.” She didn’t sit, started gathering her things. “Maybe sometimes it’s about more than money. Sometimes it’s about making people pay for the things they’ve done.”
“Never leave them with nothing left to lose. Didn’t I teach you that much?”
“I have my own way of doing things,” she said. “You’ve never had a bigger score than that. Have you?”
He offered a deferential nod. “The student surpasses the teacher.”
“Is that what we’re talking about? You think I’ve surpassed you. Is that what she is?” She pointed upstairs. “Your new student?”
“Of course not. She’s just someone who needs us right now. In this world, you make a family where you can find it.”
“You just need someone to worship you.”
He shook his head, looked down again, this time at the grain of the wood on the table. “I’ve taken care of you, Pearl. Haven’t I? Good care of you? I’ve loved you like my own child.”
That anger, it boiled over, was a siren. But she stood stock still. She almost never lost her temper.
“Children grow up,” she said quietly.
Pop looked at her as if she’d slapped him.
She went upstairs. She could pack her things, everything that meant anything to her in twenty minutes. She did so. Through the wall, she could hear the stranger still weeping. The sound was low and despairing, toxic sadness, leaking in through her pores.
Fuck. This.
When she got back downstairs, Pop was waiting by the door.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “We can be a family.”
“I need space,” she said. “I need to figure out who I am.”
He smiled, expansive, understanding, took her into his arms and held her tight. She found herself sinking into him, almost changing her mind. But then she hardened inside again. He seemed to feel it, released her with a kiss on the forehead.
“Come for Sunday dinner,” he said. “Children may grow up. But they can always come home.”
She walked out the door, opened the trunk of the car she’d bought with her own money and put everything she owned inside. A glance in the rearview showed Pop in the doorway, waving, and the shadow of a girl in an upstairs window.
Her anger subsided; Pearl, Anne, Elizabeth, or whatever her name was now, felt nothing at all.
THIRTY-THREE
Cora
“What is it, Mom?” demanded Selena.
Cora clutched the iPad, still staring in disbelief. Her daughter’s face was a mask of confused anger. “This woman on the street with Geneva—” Cora still couldn’t quite believe her eyes.
“Oliver,” said Selena, looking at her son. A tear trailed down his cheek. “Go to bed, sweetie. This is a grown-up conversation.”
“But—” the boy said, staring back and forth between them. “I’m sorry.”
“Now,” said Selena, too sharply. She shut her eyes, as if summoning patience, then softened her voice. “Please, honey. Please.”
Oliver opened, then closed his mouth, finally storming off, the door swinging behind him. Cora heard him stomping on the stairs, had the urge to chase after him, to comfort him. He’d be upset because he was a sensitive child.
Selena took the iPad from Cora’s hands and touched the screen, the glow lighting her face as she watched the video.
After a second she gasped, sank into the seat behind her with a thud. She shook her head, seemed to be puzzling.
“Do you know her?” Selena asked finally.
“Do you?” asked Cora.
“I—met her on the train,” Selena said, sounding a little dazed, incredulous. “She’s been—texting me. I saw her again for a drink in the city.”
The revelation pulsed through Cora. “Oh my god.”
“Who is she? Mom?”
The words jammed up in Cora’s throat. There were so many things that she’d never told her daughters about their father, the things he’d done. She’d kept his secrets, to spare her girls.
Cora reached for Oliver’s iPad again, clicked on the image. Yes, it was her. Cora had immediately recognized the girl in the video.
“Mom!” said Selena. “Who is she?”
The first time Cora laid eyes on her, the girl was young, in her late teens. She was hovering outside the grocery store. Dark, with strong features like Cora’s husband, slim like their daughters—there was something feral about her, something that awakened Cora’s mothering instincts. She saw the girl in produce, inspecting apples. What was it about her, she always wondered, that caught Cora’s eye that afternoon? Then she was by the newspapers.
Cora almost approached her. Do you need help? She wanted to ask, even though there wasn’t any overt indication that anything was wrong. Just a sense she had. But when Cora was finished with checkout, the girl was gone.
The next time, the girl was walking up their block, trying to look like she belonged there. But she wouldn’t belong anywhere, Cora thought. She had the energy of an outsider, eyes searching, shoulders hiked. Her clothes were shabby, but she was leggy and buxom, a bombshell beauty. She kept walking.
Then, a few days later, she was hovering by the oak tree. Cora watched her from the kitchen window, then sauntered out onto the porch to water some plants, wondering if she’d approach the house. Finally, Cora walked down the flagstone path. I’ll invite her in. See what she wants, thought Cora. But the girl scurried off.
Cora knew who she was. The resemblance was so strong.
Marisol was off to college. Selena was a senior, would be leaving for NYU in the fall. It was spring, a time of new beginning, rebirth.
That girl. The girl on the street outside her house. The one on the video now.
She was the final straw for Cora.
Not because she was angry that her husband had clearly fathered another child outside the marriage; that was bad enough. But that he had abandoned that child and now she was so lost, so alone that she hovered on the street, waiting—for what, Cora didn’t yet know. What kind of man was he? How could she have ever loved someone so utterly morally and emotionally bankrupt?
Cora summoned her courage. It was so much easier to talk to her older daughter.
Marisol. Marisol talked—she might cry, or yell—but they talked and talked, worked it out. For Selena, everything was always black-and-white, good or bad—she was like her father that way. Marisol understood the shades of gray that comprised most of life—that sometimes what seemed right was wrong, that what was wrong might feel right. She wasn’t as hard on Cora as Selena had been and still was. Cora knew that Selena thought she was weak for staying with Doug so many years, for keeping his secrets. But she’d done what she knew how to do. She’d endured her own unhappiness because she thought an intact home was best for her children. Or maybe she was just afraid.
And now Selena found herself in the same mess—even worse. As a mother, how could Cora not take some responsibility for that? She’d been a poor role model.
The words, when they came, were little more than a whisper.