Whitney started to unzip, just wanting to make sure everything was still in place…
The bathroom door swung open and Roma strode in without knocking. “Mom?” said Roma.
“Honey?” said Whitney, zipping up the case quickly and slamming shut the cabinet.
“What’s going on?” said Roma, sitting on the edge of the Jacuzzi. Roma was deeply tanned, wearing a yellow bikini. Whitney felt a stab of jealousy at her daughter’s youthfulness, followed by a wave of affection for her pinkish, sunburned nose. “Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me anything?” said Roma, looking at herself in Whitney’s bathroom mirror.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” said Whitney.
“You probably think I had something to do with this,” said Roma, standing up, opening Whitney’s cabinet, helping herself to Whitney’s hairbrush and running it through her glossy brown hair. “You always blame me for everything.”
Whitney bit her tongue and sent a quick prayer: Please don’t let her open the Kate Spade case.
Roma met her mother’s eyes in the mirror with a strange expression. Whitney tried to convince herself that maybe…maybe?…her daughter was just looking at her with simple teen disdain. That was normal, right? Teenage girls were supposed to disdain their mothers!
From infancy, Roma had been worrisome. While Xavier latched right on, Roma would not nurse, turning her tiny head disdainfully and wailing. After three days, when Whitney was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Jules came home with formula, a bottle, and twelve kinds of plastic nipples. “Leave her to me,” he said. He took baby Roma （clad in her pink Vuitton pajamas, a gift from Jules’s mother） and left the master bedroom, shutting the door.
“No!” Whitney had cried, a sense of failure descending. “Jules! No!” Whitney desperately missed Roma, but also （her stomach twisted when she admitted it to herself） felt enormous relief.
Jules had opened the door, peered in. “No?” he said.
Whitney felt guilty, but whispered, “Thank you.”
Jules looked at her with tenderness （he had once been tender!） and shut the door.
Xavier nursed easily, gazing at Whitney. “My love,” she said. His eyes fell shut and he nestled closer. Whitney breathed in the smell of milk and skin, leaned her head back against her silk headboard, and smiled.
* * *
—
NOW, WHITNEY TRIED TO hide her annoyance with her fifteen-year-old daughter. “Come on, Roma,” she said. “I would never think—”
“Yeah, right,” said Roma. Whitney gritted her teeth. She hated this expression. But this was normal! she told herself. A normal teen would be annoyed with her mother!
Whitney forced herself to move behind her daughter, put her arms around her. In the bathroom mirror, they looked peaceful, like a painting. Like the painting Jules had commissioned that now hung above one of their fireplaces. “You’re going gray,” said Roma.
“I love you, Roma,” said Whitney evenly.
“Whatever,” said Roma, walking out, taking Whitney’s hairbrush with her.
* * *
—
WHITNEY TOOK A XANAX and a bath, hoping to halt her rising panic. Her shoulders loosened, and her mind slowed down, then fell silent.
She toweled off and put on a silk robe. In the kitchen, she found her husband and daughter. Roma was perched on a Lucite barstool, still barefoot and wearing her skimpy bikini. Jules was making himself a coffee. “If you take me to get a new phone like you said you would, Daddy, I could ask around and see what people know. I never connected my computer to my phone when I upgraded! I’m, like, living in the desert at this point. Like, a desert island. But in my house. In Texas. You know what I’m saying!”
“Coffee, darling?” asked Jules.
“Yes, Daddy,” said Roma.
“He means me, Roma,” said Whitney. “And no, but thank you.”
“Can I have an espresso, Daddy?” said Roma.
Jules looked at Whitney: He wanted her to be the bad guy.
“No, Roma, no espresso,” said Whitney, on cue.
Jules shrugged, as if he were as pained as his daughter. Roma sidled up to him. “Daddy,” she cooed, “what about my phone?”
“I’ll take you to the Apple store,” said Jules. “Let me have a chat with your mother and then we’ll go.”
“Finally,” said Roma, who had been without her phone for less than twenty-four hours.
“You can’t just lose an iPhone and expect a new one for free,” said Jules, sliding his reading glasses down his beaky nose. “I told you to turn on the Find My iPhone notification system. That application—Big Mother? They raised twenty million in their first round. You’re going to get that app and the Find My iPhone thing, and you’re paying me back every cent, you know,” said Jules.
“OK, Daddy,” said Roma, who had never earned a cent in her life. What job could she possibly do? wondered Whitney sadly. She’d always dreamed, if she had a daughter, that she’d raise her to be strong and brilliant. Come to think of it, Roma was both…just not in the way Whitney had ever envisioned.
“Very well,” said Jules. “Go and put on some clothing, Roma.”
“Yes, sir,” said Roma, slinking out.
Slinking! Like a feral creature! Whitney couldn’t believe she thought this about her own daughter! She shook her head.
Jules turned to Whitney, put his hands on the counter. “I have a call in. Ken Bauer is the best of the best, apparently.”
“We don’t need a lawyer,” said Whitney.
“We do,” said Jules. Whitney sighed, understanding this was done. She would have to reevaluate her plan, stay one step ahead. Or talk to the lawyer? How wonderful it would be to lay everything in the lap of the “best of the best” lawyer in town! Whitney knew it was impossible; she knew. It was too late, and yet she yearned to unburden herself.
“Whitney? Are you there?” said Jules, peering at her curiously.
“I’m having drinks at six,” she said. “With all the moms.”
“Ah, a secret dog walk,” said Jules. He put his arms around her. “It’s not one of ours,” he said. “You know it’s not.”
“Right,” said Whitney. She repeated, “It’s not one of ours.”
Jules touched her face. “It’s just some awful event,” he said. “It has nothing to do with us, not with our children.”
“This best of the best lawyer will represent both the twins, right?” said Whitney.
“Why would Roma need a lawyer?” said Jules. He looked straight at Whitney, his jaw tensing, green eyes flashing with anger and pain. Roma had told them she’d been binge-watching television in her room all night.
Whitney had turned off the alarms and the video surveillance system as she always did when she drank wine with her friends, not wanting the piercing beeps as they went in and out of the slide door into the yard, grabbing drinks from the outdoor fridge, not wanting footage of moms sneaking cigarettes and sharing confidences.
No one had been watching Roma. She could have gone out, leaving her Netflix account playing. Both Whitney and Jules knew that if she’d climbed out her ground-floor window, she could have reached the side yard, Barton Hills Drive, and then the greenbelt.