“We’ll walk you out.”
We followed Will into the entrance hall. Daddy put his arm around my shoulders.
“Thanks for having me over and for the tour.”
“Our pleasure.” Daddy pulled me close and pressed his lips on top of my own pounding head. I dropped my eyes, but not before an odd expression crossed Will’s face.
“See you Monday.” His voice was hesitant, and in it I heard, Look at me.
I didn’t. “Yeah.”
We waited in the doorway while Will went down the steps and got in his truck. He started the engine, and it idled for several seconds. I wished he’d get out and bound up the steps and punch Daddy in the throat.
He shifted into gear and drove down the hill.
“Has anything happened?” Daddy asked.
“Sir?”
He spoke slowly and distinctly. “Has anything happened between you and Will?”
I raised my eyes to his and kept my voice level. “Of course not.”
“He knows a lot about you.”
I didn’t blink. “He watched some videos.”
“Darlin’, I can tell when I’m being lied to. I could tell with your mother, and I can tell with you.”
“I’m not lying.” I started to go inside, but he caught my upper arm and kissed me, hard. His hubris took my breath away, but as always, he was invincible. No housekeeper appeared in the entrance hall to catch us. No boy in a white truck rode to my rescue.
He broke the kiss. “You have feelings for him.”
“I don’t.”
Daddy followed me inside. “He brought you flowers.”
“From the class.”
He trailed me up the stairs like he had my scent. “What class?”
“The junior class. He was the delivery boy. That’s all.”
I went into my room, but when I started to close the door, he pushed his way inside.
“Have you had sex with that boy?”
“Jesus, Daddy. Of course not.”
He closed the door.
“Gertrude’s downstairs.”
“Not the first time,” he said, but he hesitated. All that bourbon had left him less sharp than usual.
“Go to bed,” I said.
“You’re in love with that boy.”
“No, sir, I’m not.” I didn’t dare blink.
“Don’t lie!” he roared, and he so seldom yelled that I couldn’t help cringing.
My mistake. I’d shown weakness, and he pressed his advantage, my ribs be damned, the pain be damned, me be damned.
He didn’t bother to undress himself or me all the way. I still wore my sweater and the rib belt and he was still in his polo shirt when he thrust into me so hard that my vision went gray except for a blizzard of twinkle lights.
I’d made my choice, and this was the consequence, and it must have been acceptable or I’d have chosen differently, and now, with Will gone, I needed to convince the calculating, angry, drunken man glaring down at me that I’d chosen him. I hated him, his hairy forearms braced on either side of my head, his hot breath, his citrus smell, but I’d chosen him.
His steady thrusting drew whimpers from me. He wasn’t concerned with the cause, pleasure or pain or abject misery. He was getting what he wanted.
After a while, he withdrew and turned on his back. I turned on my left side, seeking relief, and as soon as I did, his body spooned around mine, and he pulled the elastic from my braid, his fingers loosening the plait. His nose rooted through my hair, and he kissed the back of my neck.
Come back, Will Come back. Come upstairs. Find me like this.
As awful as that would be, whatever the consequences, this—this thing, whatever it was Daddy and I did—would be over.
- eighteen -
“FLIP THEM OVER when you see bubbles,” Gertrude said.
What were the globs of pancake batter on the griddle going to do, boil? But she was busy juicing oranges, so I watched for bubbles. Sure enough, air bubbles began to pock the surface, bursting and making pinprick holes in the batter. I leveraged the turner under each pancake and flipped it, leaving thin smears of batter that hardened immediately.
The sound of the juicer drilled into my brain. My headache had been constant since my fall. I wondered if Will had been able to stop his migraine before it took a stronger hold—if he’d even had one.
“Did you have a good time last night?” Gertrude asked.
“It was okay.”
She paused, half a hollowed-out orange in her hand. “Sugar, you’re allowed to have a good time. You can like a boy.”
“I don’t like him. And I have a good time.”
She halved another orange with a thock of the knife. “All you do is ride horses and go to school. When do you have fun?”
“Riding’s fun.” I lifted the edge of a pancake and tried to see under it. “Are these done?”
“Yeah. Put them on the plate under the warmer and pour some more batter on the griddle.”
The juicer whirred intermittently. I stacked pancakes on the waiting plate and ladled out more batter. It ran together to form a giant four-leaf clover. Good luck.
She poured the juice into a chilled pitcher. “You don’t ride for fun. You ride to win.”
“Winning’s fun.”
“You aren’t that thick, sugar. You don’t want to hear what I’m saying.”
I sighed. “What are you saying?”
She assumed a firm expression. “You need to not work so hard all the time. You need to be a teenager and have fun for the sake of having fun.”
“Tell that to Daddy,” I muttered and then added quickly, “No, don’t. Please.”
“I’ve worked for your daddy for thirty years. I know when to say something and when not to.”
“I don’t think you do.”
The firmness of her expression replaced by offense, she turned away and put the orange peels in the trash.
I didn’t have so many allies that I could afford to lose one. Besides, Gertrude was the last person I’d ever want to hurt.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
A scorched smell rose from the griddle, and she shouldered me aside, taking the turner and flipping the cloverleaf.
“Please don’t be upset. It’s just… that ‘meeting the father’ thing last night. Daddy doesn’t want me to have any distractions.”
“I know what your daddy wants.”
The same words I’d just uttered popped into my mind again: I don’t think you do.
She put the overdone cloverleaf on the warming plate. “He wants you all to himself.”
I stared at her.
She poured batter into evenly sized puddles on the griddle. “He didn’t want to share you with your mother. He doesn’t want to share you with friends. And he sure doesn’t want to share you with a boyfriend. That was evident last night.”
Unspoken words crowded against the back of my teeth, my standard defense of Daddy, most recently delivered to Mrs. Adams: I trained all the time. I didn’t have time for friends.
Gertrude smiled gently. “It isn’t my place to interfere. Eddie reminds me of that every time I want to say something.”
Eddie and Gertrude talked about us—and to the degree that she’d expressed opinions about Daddy’s parenting? I didn’t have time to digest that little tidbit before she continued.
“You know you can talk to me, right, sugar? About anything.”
I wasn’t about to volunteer any information, but I wouldn’t demean her offer by playing dumb, either.
“I know,” I said.
She nodded and turned away from me, conversation over.
I filled a stoneware mug with coffee and took it outside to the front porch. Gertrude didn’t know about Daddy and me, I thought. She was just inviting me to open up to her, the same way Mrs. Adams had.
I sampled the coffee, which tasted like dirt and skunk. I set it aside and leaned against one of the big white columns. T
he oak trees formed a soaring green arbor that ran the length of the driveway. The vast lawn was manicured into placidity. The pastures where the horses grazed were comparatively wild, and beyond them, the wooded hills wilder. Rosemont was the perfect prison. It held me more securely than any cell.
My jailor came into view, striding up the hill. As he neared the porch, I picked up the mug and held it out to him.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Poison.”
Another wise-ass answer gone wrong.
I backpedaled. “I don’t know how you drink it like that.”
He took the cup from me, peered at the coffee, and sipped. “Tastes fine to me.” He sat down beside me on the step. “What are you doing out here?”
“Gertrude’s making breakfast. I was in the way.”
He took another drink of coffee. “How do you feel?”
The delicacy of his tone told me it was not an ordinary inquiry but a morning-after question.
“That hurt last night,” I said.
He lifted his chin in acknowledgment. “We should hold off until your ribs heal.” He studied his coffee. “Darlin’… I need to know you take this seriously—all of it. I meant what I said to that boy. You have the potential for greatness. I won’t watch you throw it away.”
He usually delivered that line as part of a lecture, complete with the assurance that if I wanted to be ordinary, he could make it happen. Today he sounded concerned, which was undoubtedly genuine, but also a means of manipulating me. I didn’t exactly fall for it, but I preferred it to his harshness.
“I’ll push you right to the edge sometimes,” he said, “but I’ll make you the best. You have to want this life, though. It isn’t a hobby. If you lose focus, if you lose your head over some boy, especially a boy like that…”
A boy who was kind and compassionate and funny. A boy who made me feel okay.
With each pulse of my headache, I could have sworn my eyes bulged out of my skull, cartoon-style. “I want it.” I paused. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“That means you ride, you go to school, you smile for the cameras, you do what I tell you to do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t lose your head over Will Howard.” His mouth quirked when he said Will’s name, an involuntary tic.
“I’m not losing my head over anyone.”
His eyes bored into mine. Before Will, he’d never doubted me. I’d done this to myself.
The front door opened behind us. “There you are,” Gertrude said. “Hope you’re hungry. Roan made pancakes.”
Daddy stood up. “Really?”
“I messed some up.” I could get up and down on my own, but to reinforce the idea that I didn’t mind his touch, I took the hand he held out.
In the dining room, I helped myself to a short stack of Gertrude’s perfectly round, perfectly golden pancakes. As I sat down, I glanced across the table at Will’s chair. I hoped he had been lying about getting a migraine, because if migraines felt anything like concussions, I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
I reached for the maple syrup.
“Tomorrow’s going to be demanding,” Daddy said. “You’re shooting all day. Oh, and Vic and Laura are staying for supper.”
I’d accepted I’d spend a full day filming; I wasn’t prepared for guests staying into the evening, but I assumed a cooperative expression. Daddy needed to know I was up to the job.
“I want you fresh tomorrow. The point of this is to show people you’re strong, not weak. I don’t want you at the barn today.”
“It doesn’t take much strength to watch you ride,” I said, though watching Daddy ride my horses was hard. It reminded me I wasn’t good enough for them.
“Take a nap. Do your homework, write a post, review your answers for tomorrow—not so much that you sound scripted, though. I want you to sound unrehearsed.”
That would be a challenge. We’d been running lines since Monday.
He opened the newspaper Gertrude had left beside his plate, removed the sports section, and folded it into quarters. Fucking Vic, I thought. No, that wasn’t fair. The interview wasn’t Vic’s fault. Daddy could have scheduled it in another week—except, being Daddy, he couldn’t. I had to prove to everyone right fucking now that I was still the prodigy roaring toward a place on the U.S. team. Unstoppable.
Gertrude moved in and out of the room, refilling Daddy’s mug, removing the serving dishes, giving me a wink, which I returned with a wink of my own, though I didn’t feel much like it. Her insight about last night had been sobering. She disappeared into the kitchen.
“What was that for?” Daddy was looking over the top of the newspaper.
“What was what for?”
“That winking business with Gertrude.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes we wink.”
He refolded the sports section into its original size and reassembled the newspaper. Mama used to leave sections of the paper scattered all over the house, which drove him crazy.
Gertrude returned to take away our dishes. “What would you like to serve tomorrow night?”
“What about the tenderloin you mentioned?”
“The lamb?”
“Yes, that’ll be fine.”
Lamb. For me.
“Pick out something nice to wear tomorrow,” Daddy said as he stood up. “Something practical for walking. They want B roll of you showing Vic around.” He turned to go and then turned back. “How about your navy polo shirt and a pair of those cuffed riding pants with the paddock boots I gave you for Christmas? Blue looks good on camera.”
He knew exactly how he wanted me to be in this interview: fresh, unrehearsed, and in blue. At least I got to pick out my own socks and underwear.
“Cool,” I said.
“Good. Well, I’m off to the barn. See you at lunchtime. Rest up.”
Then and there, I learned I didn’t have to see him ride my horses to feel bad about it. Knowing he was riding them was enough to hollow out my midsection.
I hoped the physical act of opening my lit book would give me the momentum to find another writer for my essay. I’d chosen Crane because I only had to read a short story and do some superficial research and I’d be done. I needed to pick someone else today, because Vic would be here all day tomorrow and the outline was due Monday.
Opening my book gave me no momentum whatsoever—but even if I settled for a B, I’d still pull an A for the course.
Good enough.
I took my notebook downstairs, booted up Daddy’s computer, which I had blanket permission to use for homework, and outlined Crane’s short life. His death at twenty-eight was a bonus, since I didn’t have decades to cover, but he’d packed a lot into those years: a career, travel, affairs, scandal, adventure. I focused on the wreck of the Commodore and the short story he’d written afterward, “The Open Boat.” No wonder Mrs. Kenyon wouldn’t grade essays on Crane higher than a B. This was too easy. I finished the outline and printed it.
Homework done, I returned to my room, pulled out the clothes Daddy wanted me to wear tomorrow, and hung them on the closet door.
I considered writing a blog post, but he hadn’t liked the ideas I’d pitched yesterday. After tomorrow, I could write about the interview. I’d approach it humbly—Gosh, this was so much fun!—but it would promote the mini-doc. He’d like that.
What else had he suggested? Oh, yes, a nap, because he wanted me fresh. Broken bones, a headache, and heartache probably ruled out freshness. Besides, the last time I’d napped, I’d woken to find Gertrude showing Will into my room.
See you Monday. I’d wanted to hear something else in the words, but that was all he’d said, and that was all he’d meant, and Monday and every day after that were going to suck. Seeing him at school would be awful.
I took my phone from the closet. His phone, actually. I’d give it back Monday. No point in keeping it. I turned it on to check for missed calls, voicemails, texts. Nothing.
Some
consolation was in order. I uncapped the bourbon and took a long pull on the bottle. Warmth and sweetness spread through my sinuses and down my throat and outward from my center.
I reread Will’s last text. It was from Sunday night, when we’d planned to watch The Third Man and instead I’d been having a meltdown or a breakdown or a panic attack or whatever that had been. Guess your battery died. It’s OK. Some other time. Sweet drug-induced dreams to you. Winking smiley face.
I scrolled back further. I’m thinking you’re not there.
Recognize Ashley Wilkes?
You there?
Got your popcorn?
P.S. I will lick every inch of you.
I’d scrolled back to last Friday, when Daddy had been doing his walk-through. The previous message was also Will’s: Yes to fire road. Good night.
The one before that came from me: Gotta go. Let’s try to meet on the fire road Sunday.
I stashed the phone and the bourbon back in the boot and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth.
“As a matter of fact, Vic,” I told the mirror, “yeah, I do take a drink now and then.” I shook my head. “No, I wouldn’t say it’s the most surprising thing about me. Funny you should ask.”
* * *
AT SUPPER, DADDY recapped today’s training sessions and told me Jamie was in first place at Greensboro. Better Jamie than Bree or Michael, but whoever won, I decided to send a congratulatory note. That was the sporting thing to do, even if it didn’t come from the heart.
After supper, I washed the dishes while Gertrude prepped for tomorrow, the two of us working in slightly uncomfortable silence. At least, I was uncomfortable. I didn’t know about her. But I was glad when I finished drying the dishes and put them away.
I stopped by the study to say good night to Daddy, who stood behind his desk, sorting papers.
“Night. Oh, darlin’—were you researching Stephen Crane today?”
Did he check the computer every time I’d been alone in the house?
“Was that okay?”
“It’s fine, but why were you researching Crane?” He tapped the papers into a tidy stack.
He hadn’t paid as much attention to my conversation with Will as I’d thought.
“I have to write an essay on literary naturalism. Crane’s considered the first American naturalist.” A fact I’d learned today.
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