He tsked, interrupting me. “There is payment or there is pain. This is the only way it can be. No negotiation.”
The room grew quiet as I contemplated his words and he contemplated me, perhaps deciding if I was a predator like him or prey like my mother.
It’s hard to accept when a parent doesn’t love you, but it’s even more difficult when they simply feel nothing. I really didn’t matter to him except as a means to an end. I mean, I’ve always known he didn’t care, but he had brought me food a few times when I was at the end of my rope. Why had he done it? Perhaps he’d still have a smidge of feeling for my mama. Perhaps his conscience couldn’t allow an innocent child to die from neglect. Or perhaps more chillingly, he’d wanted to assess me, study me while she was gone. Had he ever considered hurting me too? Had he entertained the thought of ramming his fists into my flesh…or worse? I cringed, thinking back to the past, wondering about those times he’d come to the apartment, if he’d been a hair-trigger away from devouring me.
I swallowed. “We don’t have the money. We simply don’t. I could sell my car, and everything else we own, but there’s no way I can get anywhere close to twenty thousand. We don’t even have good credit at the bank, but once we sell the house—”
“Be quiet,” he barked, making me jump. I shrank back in my seat as far as I could.
He turned to a brown duffle that had been sitting on his desk. He unzipped it.
I drew up, expecting a hatchet or a gun with a silencer or maybe even a chainsaw. You never knew with the stories I’d heard about him over the years. What I didn’t expect was the Ziploc bag of vials he tossed in my lap.
“I’ve been thinking. Perhaps, there’s another way you can repay your debt.”
My fingers were stiff as I picked the bag up and peered at the white substance inside. Hello, Dovey the drug dealer.
“You want me to sell coke? You think your addicts will trust me?”
He waved away my comment. “I have plenty of corner boys. You’ll be selling much more. You’ll be peddling to those rich kids at your fancy school. Establishing a new clientele. To pay off your debt, of course.” He smiled, and chills feathered up my spine because it was so damn genuine.
“How much of my debt? What’s the value? I need numbers.” There. That was the Ratcliffe girl talking.
He shot me a look loaded with what seemed like approval. Did it take selling drugs to make him love me? Would he be interested in me as a real daughter then? I didn’t know what to do with that thought, so I pushed it away.
“There’s ten vials, and each one is cut into an eight-ball. They cost two-fifty each. Normally, eight-balls might be cheaper, but rich kids aren’t junkies. They aren’t looking for Wal-Mart prices.”
“There’s twenty five hundred dollars worth of coke in this bag?” I gripped it tighter. That was half of what my car cost.
He inclined his head. “Yes. And, your deadline is Saturday. I want you back here at the warehouse with the cash, and we can talk about giving you more.”
I stared at the vials, feeling desperate as I imagined me turning my classmates into addicts like my mama. And if I got caught there’d be no ballet in prison. All my dreams would be destroyed.
“Failure to do this will bring dire consequences, Katerina.” Had he read my thoughts?
“I am your blood,” I heard myself say, hating the admission, hating the neediness in my tone. “Part of you is in me. Doesn’t that count for something?”
He shrugged, his shoulders elegant in his jacket. “You’re a beautiful example to the neighborhood.”
I forced down the bitterness that rose up. “Please, just listen to me. I hate drugs. They killed Mama. I—I don’t want to sell—”
“Do not beg me,” he hissed.
Prey! My breaths came as shallow inhalations. “Please. Have some mercy. Sarah is sick—”
He slapped his desk, making me jerk. “Do you want Sarah to disappear? Or your friend Heather-Lynn?”
I shook my head furiously. No, please.
“How about one of your friends at that school?”
God, no.
“The list is long of things I can do, Katerina,” he said silkily. “I think your imagination can figure it out.”
I stared at him, heart pounding, my mouth dry. Somehow, I had to pay back the money.
Could I push dope?
He checked his Rolex, the conversation obviously over. “You work for me now. Until I say you do not.” He gave me a blindingly beautiful smile. “See you soon, dotchka.”
He nodded his head and walked out, done with me.
I rubbed my arms, trying to get warm, trying to hold myself together. My mind swirled, wondering if this had been his plan all along, to loan money to Sarah he knew she couldn’t pay back just so he could get a dealer into BA. But, I didn’t think so. He’d never paid attention to me before. It seemed more likely that Sarah had fallen into his web, and he’d grasped the opportunity to play with us.
Blondie marched to the door and motioned for me to come on. With sweaty hands, I picked up my destiny and followed him.
BY THE TIME I got home, it was one in the morning. I tried to be quiet as I came in the door, but it didn’t make a difference because Sarah was up. Alzheimer’s messes with your internal clock, so I wasn’t surprised. But her appearance sucked the wind right out of me.
Dressed in her yellowed, thirty-year-old wedding dress, she sat on a chair in the living room, clutching a faded wedding photograph of her and David I recognized from the mantel. With the billowy gown and her white face, she resembled an eerie ghost from the past, making the hair on my scalp tingle.
“Dovey,” she breathed, wiping her cheeks with quivering hands.
“What happened?” Trying to not stare at the oddness. And then trying to not glare at the bruise on her cheek.
“I woke up because I had this horrible dream about David with smoke and flames everywhere.”
I nodded. He’d died in a fire on an oil rig.
She gazed at the picture of them. “He wasn’t in bed, so I got up to look for him. And then, I couldn’t find his shoes by the door or his coat in the closet. I didn’t see his aftershave or any of his things. I don’t know why, but I wanted my wedding dress on. To feel closer—” she fisted her hands, making little gulping noises.
She’d forgotten.
“And then I came in here and saw our picture, and I remembered—everything. I remembered the police coming to this house and telling me he was dead. It was like he died all over again.” She sank back into the chair, her face twisted, tears flowing.
Her pain cracked my chest open, and I nearly broke in front of her, but I reined it in, knowing I had to be strong for her. And in that moment, her despair reminded me of Cuba’s grief tonight when he’d talked about Cara. It hammered home the fact that no matter how different we were, death comes for us all, rich or poor, young or old.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” I said, grabbing her some tissues. I sat down next to her on the chair. “I can’t imagine what that must have felt like, to relive his death.”
A few minutes passed until she finally looked up, her green eyes red and swollen.
She asked, “Where have you been? You shouldn’t be out this late.”
I sighed. “I went to see Alexander. He says you borrowed money. Is it true?”
She blinked and averted her eyes. “I needed money to repair the wood floor in the studio and we didn’t have it. Or if we did, I didn’t realize it. Your dance and school supplies for the year were overdue and then we bought you a car. My doctor bills and the medication. It all came at once, and I couldn’t seem to keep track of it all. I kept losing bills and forgetting if I’d paid them already.” She chewed on her lips. “We had the building for sale, and I assumed it would have sold by now, and I could pay him back. But, he sent his men today.”
I nodded, feeling defeated and frustrated all at the same time.
“They hit you,” I said.
I sucked in a sharp breath. Ah, this was her disease talking. Because never in a million years would a fully functioning Sarah have thought Alexander Barinsky gave a rat’s ass about me. Her mind was going, and I was failing her. Obviously. I mean, she’d gone to Alexander.
How had I missed it?
Worry gnawed at me, and I stood and walked to the window, needing some distance from the woman who’d raised me. It was awful and terrible, but part of me, fueled by a sense of impotence and doom, was angry with her because she’d put us in serious danger. And I hated that part of me, but it was real and it was there. I pushed it away—empathically. Because in the end, it wasn’t her fault she was wasting away mentally and eventually physically too.
I had no one to blame but myself for not watching her better.
She tugged at the sleeves on her dress, fidgeting like a child in trouble. “Is Alexander mad at me?”
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I told her the only thing I could think of. “No. It’ll be fine. He agreed to let us sell the house first. There’s nothing to worry about.”
She let out a big sigh. “Good. I knew he’d come through.”
I hid my disgust for him by changing the topic. “We need to talk about getting a nurse or a sitter to come stay with you.”
She bit her lip and clutched the tissue, and I took her hand and squeezed it tight. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking. What do you want?”
She took a deep breath and started talking, telling me things I think she’d held back for months. She told me how she felt like she was trudging slowly through quicksand just to get through the day, how each little conversation took all her concentration, how she couldn’t remember the ingredients to her famous hummingbird cake, and how she’d forgotten the steps to her favorite dance movements. “I feel like I’m being erased by a giant pencil, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Soon, I’m going to watch you dance and not know who you are.”
Her words had me in tears, slamming home the truth of her impending death. She’d taken care of me for the past eight years. Now, it was my turn to take care of her.
Somehow, someway, we were going to pull through this.
If that meant selling coke, I’d do it.
“Well, damn. I wasn’t expecting that.”
–Cuba
I DROVE HOME thinking about Dovey. I made a mental plan to dig deeper about the Barinsky thing as soon as I saw her at school tomorrow. Maybe she’d let me help her.
But wasn’t getting close to her a bad idea? Hell, I didn’t know anymore.
A lot had changed today.
I pulled into the winding drive that led up to my house. A chateau-style monstrosity designed by a French architect, it had been built with stones from an old castle in Provence. Dad had had it built for my mother a few months after Cara’s death, hoping to cheer her up.
But it hadn’t worked.
Because you can’t bring back the dead.
Mother’s first two attempts at suicide were feeble efforts and she’d given glaring clues.
I knew why she did it. I mean, she’d always taken meds for her depression issues, but Cara’s death had sealed the deal. She blamed me for Cara the most, then my father for one thing or another, and then herself for leaving her with me that day.
The first time, I found her unresponsive from prescription pills. I’d been fourteen and had just come home from a school. She’d texted me earlier to make sure I was on schedule, and I should have known then that something was wrong, but you never want to believe that your parent wants to die.
I’d hated myself for what I’d made her do.
The second time, I’d just come home from football. I found her upstairs, this time in the tub, her wrists slit with an old razor blade of Dad’s. She’d cut herself the wrong way, horizontally instead of vertically. I watched the paramedics take care of her, taping up her bleeding arms, loading her in the ambulance.
My self-loathing grew.
Dad brought in more doctors and therapists for her. She even stayed in a treatment facility for a few days. She came out, claiming she was better, but her face was still hopeless, her shoulders still sunken. He flew her home to Brazil to see her parents. He tried everything, but nothing brought her back to the way she’d been before Cara. So he and I settled into a routine of watching her constantly. We even hired a sitter to be with her during the day. And when Dad was out of town, I picked up the slack. Trying to make up for not being vigilant when Cara had died.
And then the last time she’d tried—third time’s a charm, right?—I’d failed her in the worst way, proving that I’m useless when it comes to putting others needs before my own.
A white car parked in my spot brought me back to the present, and I squinted, recognizing Emma’s Lexus. I pulled in the garage and walked around to the front, thinking perhaps she was sitting by one of the statues on the front porch, but she wasn’t.
I called her on my cell and heard it ringing from the back of the house. Walking around the corner, I found her, curled up in the cold on a lounge chair by the pool. She’d thrown a towel across her legs.
“Didn’t know we had plans,” I said to her sleepy face as she stirred around. She looked almost sweet like this.
She pushed up and patted down mussed hair. “What time is it?” Her voice was small, not at all like Emma.
“Too late for you to be here. You didn’t call or text. What’s up?” I crossed my arms.
Her eyes flared and I noticed how nondescript the blue was. Nothing like Dovey’s.
“Do I have to make an appointment to see you? I thought we meant more to each other than that.” She stuck out her lip. “Don’t you even care about me a little? I thought we had fun last fall.”
I groaned. And here it was. The determine-the-relationship talk. I’d sensed it coming for a while.
She caressed my arm. “We haven’t been alone together for months. I miss you and the way you—”
“Stop,” I said, pulling back.
She harrumphed, body bristling. “I knew it. You don’t want me anymore. Just like Matt.”
“Hey, I’m nothing like that asshole. I never lied to you about what we were.” At her crushed face, I softened. “Is this about something he’s done?”
She sighed. “No. This is about us.”
I straightened up, needing the distance. I didn’t want to lead her on. “Why don’t you call me in the morning and we’ll talk. But right now, I just want to be alone.” To mull over Dovey and get trashed.
“You don’t love me,” she suddenly called out, catching me by surprise. “You want Dovey. Stupidest name I’ve ever heard, by the way.”
My gut tightened. “Emma, don’t be—”
“I’m pregnant,” she announced.
I stumbled back, crashing into one of the patio chairs. Nah, I misheard. She didn’t just say she was pregnant, did she? Because that was…
“I’m pregnant,” she repeated, her voice shrill.
I shook my head. Nope, she was definitely delusional. Very definitely confused because I used protection every single time. The only person I’d ever not used a condom with was…
“Say something,” she shouted, wringing her hands.
I sat down on the cold concrete.
“Are you sure?” My voice was low, my lungs losing air as her news settled.
She nodded, her eyes darting around the pool area. “Morning sickness doesn’t even describe what I have. It’s all day, every day. I’m exhausted and emotional. I hate the whole thing.”
“But have you seen a doctor?” Right? Like draw blood or something? I had no idea.
“I don’t need a doctor. I took a test at home…and…and it’s not the first time, okay. It’s not. I know what it’s like, you see, because last year, with Matt— ” her
voice cracked.
“What happened last year?”
“I took care of it because of my father’s television show and the scandal it would cause. I did what I had to do. You understand, right?”
What? I gripped my head, taking in all the info she was slamming me with.
“What am I going to do?” she exclaimed. “Please, don’t be like Matt. He didn’t speak to me for months when I told him I was pregnant. Don’t do that to me. I—I can’t take it if you do.”
Fuuucccck. I bent over and put my head between my legs, because her words were insane and I couldn’t do this and what the hell was I going to do?
This was a whole other different level than anything.
A real living thing I was responsible for…
And the truth of it hit me. Hard. It flashed like a neon sign in my head: a real baby. Mine.
Diapers, tiny clothes with snaps, pacifiers, and then holding it and rocking it, and I don’t even know what all else. It all crashed into my head and I wanted to deny, deny, deny.
But the truth was I’d slept with Emma.
My stomach did some crazy topsy-turvy thing, and I jumped up and ran over to the bushes, vomiting up everything. I gagged and retched until my throat was sore, glad to finally get it all out. My nausea had been boiling up and rolling around since this morning.
She started sobbing.
I hung my head, staring at nothing.
What would we do?
Was I going to run from this too?
“Tell me you aren’t going to get rid of it,” I rasped, wiping my mouth as I stood. She blanched and looked down guiltily, indecision on her face.
“Emma, wait,” I said, thinking of the baby Cara had been.
The tears came harder and louder then, her shoulders shaking.
She gulped in air. “I want to move to New York City. I want an acting career. Not a baby.”
She had dreams. I got that. But…
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