Ladies of the House

by Lauren Edmondson

  “I’ve thought it through,” she announced. “This Blake thing.”

  I couldn’t help laughing dryly, as it had been less than twenty minutes since he’d sped off like he’d just robbed us blind.

  Cricket continued, “It seems clear as day to me. Melinda Darley’s hoping, no doubt, that distance will dull Blake’s love for Wallis, and that the whole relationship will suffer because of it. It is deliberate sabotage. There you have it. It makes sense, no?” I didn’t challenge this; she’d summed it up remarkably well. Cricket nodded to herself. “Think, Daisy, about how he acted. He was haggard. Did you see how he was? Just awful. I have to believe this is a guy who was not acting on his own free will.”

  Here, though, I had to step in. “Cricket,” I answered, “this is a grown man you are talking about. Even if what you’re saying is true, Blake is a person who is capable of living a life independent from his mother’s wishes. There are other jobs. He could’ve made it clear to his mother that Wallis was a nonnegotiable. In your theory, the fact that he did not choose Wallis over himself is suspicious and, I’d argue, very telling.” He’d hurt my sister, and the more I thought about it, the angrier with him I became. He had been a part of this family for the past couple of months, so how could I not have begun to think of him like a brother? I didn’t want to believe anything could tear him away from Wallis. But he was gone, and what mattered to Wallis was his absence, not the reasons behind it.

  “But, Daisy, you’ve seen them together. You know how much he loves her.”

  “I know what he’s shown us.” Cricket looked like she was ready to object, and loudly, so I put a finger to her lips and pointed to Wallis’s closed door. This was turning into a conversation that I didn’t want Wallis, as upset as she already was, to overhear.

  “Can you honestly say you haven’t had doubts? Not about how much he loves Wallis, but about his own—I don’t know—resolve? To have a relationship like theirs takes a certain amount of steadfastness. It isn’t an easy task for anyone, not even for someone who is in love.” I recalled Melinda Darley’s face in the graveyard when she’d said those proprietary words—my son—like a child guarding her toys.

  “He loves her,” Cricket maintained. “That we can all be sure of.” She was seated on the edge of the couch now, ankles crossed. Her gaze seemed designed to disarm any further argument I might volunteer.

  “Fine,” I conceded, though I was far from satisfied. “But let’s focus on protecting Wallis’s feelings, and not defending Blake at the expense of them.”

  Before Cricket could answer, there was a knock at the door.

  A second later Wallis burst out of her room. “Who is that? Is it Blake?”

  “It’s probably just the pizza,” I said, but she lunged to open the door.

  We were both wrong. It was Atlas. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten him. For weeks, I couldn’t get him out of my head, but the minute I do, he turns up. I watched for Wallis’s reaction, wondering if I should tell him to go, but Atlas was probably the only person in the world she could forgive for not being Blake Darley. She hugged him, drew him inside. I stood, feeling unprepared, and shaky, and—oh, God, he looked so nice and I hadn’t washed my hair since Thursday morning.

  “I knocked on Daisy’s door downstairs,” Atlas said, obeying Cricket’s command and taking a seat in one of the wing chairs. “But then I thought since it was Sunday evening, you might all be up here.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I—we—” I checked Wallis, who shook her head. This stuff with Blake, it seemed, she wanted to keep quiet. “It’s been a day.”

  The door buzzer sounded, and Cricket said something about how popular we were. This time, it was the pizza, and she made business of going downstairs to retrieve it.

  “How are you? We haven’t seen you since—” Wallis stopped. I thought she was remembering, like I was, the events in the graveyard two weeks prior. “Well, it’s been a minute. Where have you been?”

  I cast my eyes toward Atlas. I couldn’t resist. I thoroughly wanted to know what he would say. What had he been doing? Who was he with? Did he love me yet?

  “Here and there,” he said unhelpfully.

  “Not here,” Wallis said. “Unless Daisy has been hiding you.”

  “He’s been in my closet the whole time.” I laughed, but it was high-pitched and graceless.

  “You’re right.” He laughed too, just as stilted. “I’m the boogeyman. Reporting is just my cover.”

  “Is this some inside joke?” asked Wallis. “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m just kidding.” I was making the awkwardness worse, wasn’t I? “Boogeymen don’t live in closets anyway. They live in mirrors.” Yes, much worse.

  “You’re thinking of Bloody Mary,” said Atlas.

  “You’re right!” Someone needed to stop me. “And Candyman.” I made my hand into a hook and sliced it through the air.

  “Oh, my God.” Wallis looked at me as though I’d jumped the shark, as though I was pirouetting over the shark. Or as though I was the shark. “I think we’ve exhausted this topic of conversation.”

  Thankfully, Cricket returned, arms stacked with pizza, and beckoned us into the kitchen. I could barely get a box onto the counter before she was offering its contents to Atlas and encouraging him to have first pickings. We squeezed ourselves around the table that Cricket had placed in the part of the kitchen she referred to as the breakfast nook, using plates and silverware that were too fancy for pineapple and ham. I tried to make something that resembled normal human dialogue. Cricket, Atlas, and I discussed the weekend, the weather, the new restaurant a few blocks over with the amazing pho. Wallis’s eyes glazed over. She picked at pepperoni, peeled her cheese off her slice, poking, never really ingesting.

  “Daisy told us about the piece you’re writing,” Cricket said to Atlas. “How’s it going?”

  Atlas folded his napkin into a miniature square. “It’s going,” he said, not sounding at all like himself. “We’re... well, part of the reason I wanted to see Daisy tonight is that my editor and I have decided to push the publication date.”

  So, the article wouldn’t drop just as I was returning to work. This felt like a blessing.

  “My editor,” added Atlas, “wants me to follow up on a couple things.”

  “What things?” My relief vanished.

  But Cricket interrupted whatever answer Atlas was preparing. “Since you have more time, Atlas, you should interview Daisy! She worked with Gregory, and she would be a wealth of knowledge.”

  “Great idea,” said Wallis, rousing. “Daisy should do it.”

  “I...have asked,” said Atlas.

  My mother and sister spun toward me.

  “Definitely not,” I said. Folks are out for blood, Miles had told me not so long ago, and they’ll settle for yours. When they looked disapproving, I sighed. “I’m not really in the market for notoriety right now.” I meant to come off light, breezy, in spite of the circumstances, but Atlas didn’t smile. He turned his eyes back to what was left of his napkin.

  “All right, so.” My sister, suddenly galvanized, dabbed the corners of her mouth in a move that struck me as preposterously formal. “You don’t want fame. What are you in the market for?”

  “Peace of mind. Happiness.” The stuff, in other words, that was eluding me now. “I suppose the rest of the world feels much the same way.”

  “And fame has nothing to do with happiness?” Wallis said.

  “Fame, no.” I thought of the photo of me smiling at Melinda Darley. “Maybe fortune.” I thought of the little cottage on the lake that was no longer ours, and my old bedroom on the top floor, and the childhood summers spent under the slanting gable, with its painted floors and iron bed and stacks of books I devoured when I was supposed to be sleeping. I’d caught a trout in that lake once, after just four hours and six failed reels. Gregory
, uncharacteristically patient throughout, had celebrated like I’d won an Oscar. We’d been happier at the lake; my father, too, was less of his politician character, less thin-skinned and more—Dad.

  “Oh, Dodo,” Wallis said, pushing her plate aside. “I think you’re just saying that because we’ve lost all ours. I don’t need a fortune to be happy. Just enough to be comfortable.”

  “I think,” I said, “that your definition of comfort is my definition of luxury.”

  “We should all start buying scratch-off tickets!” Cricket piped in.

  “I can image exactly what I’d do with my share of the winnings,” Wallis said.

  “I can guess,” Atlas said. “You’d buy back the house on P Street.” A beat or two of silence followed before he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. That was the wrong thing to say.”

  “Not at all,” Wallis said. “I don’t mind thinking about our years in that house. I know it holds painful memories for Mom and Daisy, but I was always happy there. You’re right. With my imaginary fortune I’d almost certainly have to go back to that house.”

  “Our riches, for now, remain imaginary,” I said.

  Wallis had no response to this, except to shrug. “We’re not rich in anything. Not money, not credibility. But I still think Daisy should do the interview.”

  She soon excused herself with little attempt at civility, and retreated to her room. In her absence, Atlas seemed to withdraw into himself, leaving Cricket and me to clean the table wordlessly. I was rinsing dried red sauce in the sink when I heard him push back from his chair.

  “There is something truly awful about cold Sunday nights,” he said, coming up behind me.

  “The Sunday scaries.” I focused on the sponge.

  “I always liked to have a full house on Sundays.” Cricket sipped from a mug of tea and gazed out the window at the sidewalk in front of our building, the wiry, shapeless bushes that always seemed to be on the verge of death. She’d threatened, a week or so ago, to pull them out and plant some new rhododendrons herself. “Made things better. Your father always liked to either be out on Sundays, or have big dinners in. Do you remember, Daisy?”

  “I do,” I said, scrubbing a plate that didn’t need it.

  “Stay for coffee, Atlas, will you?” Cricket asked.

  “I don’t want to go back to my charmless apartment,” Atlas said, “but I must.”

  Cricket soon left the room, with a look that suggested she thought she was doing me a favor. The dishwasher loaded, I dried my hands.

  “I really meant to catch you alone tonight,” Atlas said. “But then Cricket waltzed in with food, like she could sense I was starving.” He paused, smiling slightly, hoping I might say something.

  So, I did. “I’m glad to see you.” I leaned my hip against the counter and hoped I appeared relaxed.

  “Me, too.” He ran his hand across his face. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you like I should’ve been after Miles put you on leave. I’ve just been traveling so much.” He crossed his arms, his fingers drummed against the short sleeve of his T-shirt. “It’s a flimsy excuse, but—well, I’ve been in Arizona, actually.”

  “What’s in Arizona?” He dropped his eyes. “Oh,” I said quietly, getting it. Gregory Richardson’s lover. “Is she nice?” I asked. “Is everyone going to feel sorry for her?”

  “Polite, yes. Overly so. She is determined to charm me.” He smiled reassuringly. “I won’t be swayed, don’t worry.”

  “And the things she’s saying about my father... Will people end up hating him more than they already do?” I didn’t want that. Although I knew he probably deserved it. These competing thoughts I held simultaneously.

  Atlas chewed his lip. Then: “I’ve—In the course of following this story, I’ve stumbled into something. And I’m not sure. I need to dig further. I still have at least a dozen more sources I want to talk to, more research.”

  “More?” I asked dimly. “Is this why you’re pushing the pub. date?”

  He stepped near enough to see my hands trembling, as they tend to do right before bad news comes down like a guillotine. I think he saw it, because he continued gently, “Daisy, your father had been stealing from his office expense account for much longer than originally reported.”

  All my affect, all I had constructed to appear calm and cool in front of Atlas, was completely swept off its foundation. Unable to move, I cast about for alternate explanations, for reasons this might not be true. “How much longer?”

  “Off and on, at least a decade. Maybe more.”

  “Decade.” It was barely a word. More like an exhale.

  I looked over Atlas’s shoulder, into Cricket’s living room, and back, further, into the past. And I saw my father, standing before a crowd, glass of wine in hand, ready to toast. He had placed himself by the fireplace in our sitting room in P, taller than most, his smile broad, appearing less tipsy than he actually was. Go, Cricket told Wallis and me. Go, get up there. Wallis must’ve been in high school; she clasped my hand as we joined our father. I’m going to be brief, he said, wrapping his arm around Wallis’s shoulder, drawing her into his side and away from mine. She was delighted and leaned into him as I stood there, awkwardly, inspected, without a shield. I just want to say how terrific it is to have the gang all here for our annual farewell to summer party. I’m preaching to the choir here, but we are going to have quite the fall. I find myself up for election, again. It seems like just yesterday I was asking you all for donations.

  Probably because it was yesterday! someone shouted. Laughter.

  I see some of you are already pulling out your checkbooks, and that tells me I can wrap it up. My talented daughter Wallis will play the piano for us next. And Daisy will go around with the basket for the alms. Just kidding! Look at Daisy’s face. Oh, I scared her. Anyway, cheers—to all of you, my dear friends. Drink, eat, and give generously.

  Gregory had spent his career asking people for money. But he’d really been stealing it, even then.

  My friend—my Atlas—watched as I slid down the cabinets to Cricket’s cold kitchen floor, pulled my knees to my chest, and laid down my cheek. “We won’t ever be free of my father, will we?” If this news came out, any hope for normalcy would be extinguished, blown out by the roar of the crowd.

  “I’ll kill the article,” he said, taking a seat across from me on the floor, back against the stove, maneuvering his long legs so one was on each side of me. “I’ll put the entire thing in the ground if you want me to.”

  “No.” It wasn’t an answer, more like a denial, because I couldn’t believe my ears. This would be more than a kind gesture. It would be an enormous sacrifice. “I can’t ask you to do that. You’ve done so much work. You paid for all that travel.” And this, which was too painful to say aloud: How can I ask you to give up the truth?

  “Just say the word.” He was resolute. “The work isn’t more important than you.”

  He could’ve offered this begrudgingly, hinted that I would be a coward to accept his offer. I studied his eyes, fair skies blue, the arch of his brows, and saw that he was sincere. And in spite of the pain of yet another of Gregory’s betrayals, for once I felt I was not entirely on my own.

  From the bedroom, we heard Wallis’s music raised, then from Cricket’s a request to lower the volume, please.

  For my family, then. For Wallis, who was recovering from a breakup. For Cricket, whose life had already been upended once. For me, too, my career.

  I uncurled my body, straightened my shoulders, and rose from the floor. Did it feel icky? Undoubtedly. But everyone already knew Gregory was a crook. Revealing this information wouldn’t change that. Right? And keeping it to myself would protect our precarious new life from imploding further.

  I waited for Atlas to stand too, then readied myself to do what was required. “Kill it,” I said.

  Without hesit
ation: “Done.”

  “Thank you.” I jammed my hands into my pockets, not sure what came next with us. “Thank you.”

  He nodded. “I can’t promise, though, that this will never come out. Miss Pell talked to me. She might talk to others.”

  “Yes.” This had occurred to me. “But you’ve bought us time. The longer it’s been, the less likely anyone will be interested.” We would cross that bridge, in other words, when we got there. But I didn’t even want to imagine it, somewhere in the distance. All I could see was what was right in front of my nose. One day at a time, as Cricket had said.

  “Of course,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he believed this, but he smiled like he did, turned and collected his blazer from the back of his chair. “I’ve overstayed my welcome. We’ll talk tomorrow, yeah?”

  “Yes.” Tomorrow. I liked this promise.

  “And sometime, preferably sooner rather than later, you, me, ramen, video games.”

  “Yes.” This one, more enthusiastic than the previous.

  After he left, I regretted not hugging him closer. Maybe I should’ve said—wait, Atlas, don’t go? Maybe I should’ve checked to see if he gave me one last glance before he showed himself out. Maybe then I would’ve let myself fall into his arms. There was a good chance, I thought, that he would’ve caught me.

  * * *

  I went to find Wallis. In the space of a few steps, I added, I subtracted, I tried to do some knotty calculations. Did I need to tell Cricket and Wallis? When was the right time to lay this at their feet?

  Wallis was on her bed, slender feet tangled in the duvet, absorbed in her phone. I gripped her doorframe. “What can I get you?” I asked. “You barely ate anything at dinner.”

  She removed her headphones. She’d been listening to a Bon Iver song that seemed specifically designed to amplify melancholy. I repeated my question, but she declined my suggestions of ice cream, chocolate, whiskey.