My inbox was flooded with emails, but I barely skimmed through a couple before I caught my sister Cassie’s subject header: WTF LILY? WHERE ARE YOU? With dread, I double clicked on the link, my heart in my throat as I read the message.
WTF, Lily? Where are you? Dad’s dying and you don’t give a fuck? Call me!!!
My eyes traveled down the page, and I noticed four more emails from her, each with more serious subject lines. What was going on? “Shit… I need to use the phone. Aidan?” I called out, forgetting not to look up as he came into the office. “I need to use my phone, it’s an emergency.”
“What is it?”
“It’s my dad. Cass said I need to call her right away, he’s dying!”
The color drained out of his face as he forgot his own rules, already digging into his pocket. “Go ahead, use my cell, yours isn’t charged up.”
“Thanks,” I murmured, taking a few seconds to remember Cassie’s phone number. Usually I picked it out of my contacts, and we hadn’t been all that close in a while. I got it right on the first try though, for all the good it did me. It rang and rang with no answer, until I got a message that her voicemail box was full. “Shit…”
“Try the other one,” he suggested, his eyes glued to my face.
“I don’t know her number. Let me try my Dad.” I dialed it while he fished around in one of the desk drawers, pulling out my phone and plugging it into the charger. Dad’s line rang and then beeped three times. “Oh my fucking God, what is going on?” I muttered in frustration, but Aidan held my cell up for me to read.
“Here’s her number,” he said, having scrolled through my contacts to find it.
I owed him a big fat BJ later, but for the moment I was relieved to have Darlene’s number at my fingertips. I dialed it into Aidan’s phone, needing to be mobile, not tied to the charger as I paced nervously, waiting for her to pick up.
“Hello?” she answered on the third ring, her voice tentative. “Who’s this?”
“Oh, thank God,” I breathed. “Darlene? It’s me. What’s going on?”
“Lily? Where are you? Whose number is this?”
“I’m…” I didn’t want to get into it. “How’s dad? Cassie said he’s dying.”
“Well, we’re all dying, aren’t we?” she replied, waxing philosophical. “I mean, each day pushes us closer to our last breath.”
“Darlene!” I was ready to push her closer to her last breath!
“What?”
“Is Dad alright?” I demanded.
“He’s out of the hospital, if that’s what you mean.”
“He was in the hospital? What for?”
“I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. Something with his lungs and then the echo thing came back irregular or… I forget. Do you want to talk to the nurse?”
I paced back and forth in front of Aidan’s desk, chewing on the side of my lip while I tried to make sense of her babble. “Yes! Can I please talk to her?”
“Sure, hold on a sec. Where are you, by the way? Cassie said something about trying to leave you, like, a ton of messages.”
“I’ve been out of cell range for a while.”
“What kind of a study program is that? I thought there was cell reception everywhere in the civilized world.”
“Study program?” I echoed, stopping short.
“Yeah, Dad said you were on some exchange program in Australia… or was it Austria? What time is it there?”
Dad told them I was on an exchange program? What else had he told them? “It’s not important right now,” I waved it away. “Can I please talk to his nurse?”
“Aw, shit. She’s not there. I think she went to bed,” she said, and I relaxed. That had to be a good sign. “You want me to wake her up? Or do you want to talk to the other one?”
“There’s more than one nurse?” That didn’t sound so good.
“Uh huh, but this one doesn’t speak English for shit. I can never understand her. You speak Mexican, don’t you?”
“I speak Spanish, yes.” Or at least I’d taken it for my language requirement a long time ago. Still, it had to be easier talking to the nurse, even with a language barrier, than trying to get any answers out of my sister. “Yeah, let me talk to her, okay?”
“Sure thing. I’m sure she’s bored watching Survivor anyway, it’s all in English.”
I shot Aidan a nervous smile. He’d settled onto the corner of his desk, watching me from under hooded eyes.
“Hello?” The woman’s voice came on the line, heavily accented.
“Hi, this is Lily Gray, Mr. Gray’s youngest daughter.”
“Miss Lily no home.”
“I know, I’m Lily,” I tried again.
“Miss Lily no home,” she repeated, and I took a steadying breath.
“Sí, soy Lily,” I said, trying to remember my Spanish. “Do you understand English?”
“Yes, I understand good.”
“What is your name?”
“My name Dolores.”
“Hi, Dolores. Can you please tell me, how is my father?” I asked, speaking slowly and distinctly.
“He sick.”
Fucking hell. “Yes, how bad is he sick? Ah… es muy malo?”
“Sí, está muy enfermo. Sus pulmones están en mal estado. Que está conectado a un respirador, pero creo que sólo debería durar una semana más o menos,” she said in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Oh God…” I wasn’t sure what all the words were, but I definitely picked out that his lungs were very bad, and he wasn’t expected to live for longer than a week, more or less.
“What is it, Lily?” Aidan asked softly, and I looked up at him, my eyes filling with tears. I couldn’t say the words.
“Thanks. I have to go now.” I hung up, setting the phone on the desk. Without another word, I went back out onto the terrace, looking down at the peaceful garden below. Aidan didn’t follow me out, and I was glad for the opportunity to pull my thoughts together.
Sure, I’d known my dad was in rough shape for a while, but hearing it spelled out like that, the idea that I might never see him again… it sent me to a dark place I didn’t know how to climb out of.
It got colder outside, but I didn’t care. I felt numb, inside and out.
“Come inside,” Aidan called out from the doorway, but I wasn’t ready to. Going inside meant talking about it, and talking about it meant it would be real.
“Five more minutes,” I said, without looking back over my shoulder.
“You’ll freeze.”
“Five more minutes won’t make a difference one way or the other.”
He let it go, and I breathed an inner sigh of relief, but he returned to wrap a warm blanket around my shoulders. “Five more minutes,” he warned, kissing the side of my head. “And then I’m tossing you over my shoulder and carrying you in myself.” Like a caveman? The thought brought a faint smile to my lips, but I didn’t answer beyond a faint nod.
I didn’t actually have a watch on, but after a while, he came and touched my shoulders, and I went in without an argument. Aidan led me right to the fireplace, rubbing his big hands over my arms, trying to work some warmth into my bones. He didn’t speak, letting me gradually thaw, both inside and out.
“My dad’s dying,” I said eventually, staring at the flickering flames.
“What did the nurse say?”
I gave a half shrug, pulling the blanket tighter around me. “I don’t know exactly, she didn’t speak much English. But she said something about his lungs, and him not having more than a week to live.”
“She didn’t speak English? What the hell kind of nurse am I paying for?” he scowled, pulling out his phone.
“Thank you for doing that, by the way,” I said with a faint smile. “You didn’t have to.”
I saw his shrug out of the corner of my eye. “Fat lot of good it did if she can’t communicate with you.”
“No, I got the impression she’s the off-time nurse. The regular nurse wasn’t there
.”
“Ah.” His fingers stilled on the phone. “I could have a specialist sent to see him. They do make house calls if you ask the right way.”
He meant with money. “That’s really sweet and all, but if it’s as bad as she said, I’m guessing nothing can be done.”
Aidan didn’t argue that, and the reality of my words dragged me back down again. My father was dying. And no amount of money Aidan threw at him would change that fact, even though I did appreciate the sentiment – especially given their history together. The fact that he’d hired a nurse at all still blew me away.
“You should go and be with him,” he said in a low voice.
“Are you serious?” I looked up in surprise, forgetting the rule, and he turned away. I’m not sure if he even realized he was doing it, the motion was so ingrained into him.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? To be with him in his final days.”
My eyes flew wide with surprise. “Of course, yes, I’d love that. I just didn’t think…” I launched myself into his arms, delivering a fierce hug. “Thank you for this. I can’t tell you what it means to me.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It’s a big deal to me. Thank you for understanding.”
His arms tightened around me, face burying in my hair. “You’ll come back to me?”
“Of course,” I replied without thinking twice. “I love you.”
Aidan’s fingers sifted through my hair, still holding me close. “You may say that now, but things will be different when you get home.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ll feel the same way.” Did he really think I wouldn’t? Didn’t he understand how love worked? Then again, maybe not.
“Still, I’ll understand if you don’t.”
“Aidan…” I pulled back to kiss his lips, my eyes falling obediently shut. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve had a visit with my family and say goodbye to my father. And if I don’t, you have permission to show up and throw me over your shoulder like a caveman.”
“In that case, don’t think I won’t do it,” he said, pulling me close again. “You’re mine, and don’t you forget it.”
~11~
My father’s apartment in the city consisted of two floors in a converted brownstone. Very nice, by most people’s standards, but nowhere near as opulent as Aidan’s mansion. My sisters and I each had our own rooms, and Dad had a private office attached to his bedroom suite, so we’d never felt crowded, but after getting used to Aidan’s place for the past weeks, it felt smaller, the ceilings awfully low. It was good to be home, but it felt like I’d been gone for much longer when I stepped inside.
The driver had to make two trips to bring my expanded luggage inside. Aidan had insisted on having it all packed to go with me, another sign of trust, or possibly fear that I wouldn’t want to return to him.
“Hello?” I called out softly, not wanting to disturb anyone if Dad was sleeping.
Nothing.
Mid-morning, I expected Darlene to be at work and Cassie to be in classes, so the quiet apartment wasn’t that much of a shocker, but I felt the need to announce myself in case one of the nurses was wandering around. Figuring she must be upstairs attending to my father, I went into the kitchen to get something to drink.
I caught Darlene standing in front of the open fridge, a carton of orange juice lifted to her lips.
“You know you’re supposed to use a glass,” I commented mildly and she startled, sloshing juice down the front of her hot pink top, plastering it against her fake boobs. Her frizzy curls were pulled back into a tight bun which gave her face a pinched look, or resting bitch face, as I liked to call it.
“Lily! You scared the shit out of me!” she yelped, pulling the sodden fabric away from her cleavage. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I came to see Dad.”
“Oh. He’s upstairs, knock yourself out.”
“How is he?”
She shrugged, more interested in swabbing up the mess with a paper towel. “About the same.”
The tiny hope that he’d magically improved flew out the window. “So there’s been no change in his diagnosis?”
“Not that I know of. Goddamn it, Lily, now I have to go change.”
“Sorry,” I murmured. “I guess I’ll go up and see him. Just leave my stuff in the hall, I’ll move it into my room later.”
“I wasn’t offering to move it for you,” she muttered, throwing away the mass of paper towels. “Oh, Jillian moved into your room now.”
“Who’s Jillian and why has she moved into my room?” I frowned at the cavalier way she announced it.
“The day nurse. It’s not like you were using it.”
It made sense, I had to grudgingly agree. “Then I’ll sleep in dad’s office.”
“Dolores, the night nurse, took that over.”
The apartment was getting smaller by the minute. “Ah… okay. I guess I’ll take the couch then?”
“You should just crash in Cassie’s room. She’s never here at night anyway,” she smirked, covering her mouth with one hand to cough, “Slut…”
“I guess I’ll talk to her about it later. I don’t mind sleeping on the couch, really.” Considering the circumstances, I was just glad to have gotten there in time. “I’m going to go see Dad. Do you want to come?”
“What for? I talked to him yesterday.”
Her utter indifference shocked me. Darlene had always been something of a selfish bitch, but she was still family. “Alright, maybe we can all have dinner later tonight when Cass gets home from school.”
“Cassie’s not at school. She’s up in her room asleep.”
“At this hour?”
“She’s practically nocturnal these days. She came in around dawn and poured herself into bed. If you get up early, she might never notice you’re sharing the room.”
“Ah, okay. Well, we can all visit later then. I’m going up.”
“Yeah, laters,” she waved, pulling at her still damp top.
I suppose it made sense for the nurse to take over my room. I hadn’t lived there full-time since moving into the college dorms anyway, but it still felt weird walking in on what’d been my room and finding it cluttered with a stranger’s things. Looking for a scrunchie in the bathroom drawer, I wasn’t sure if it was mine or hers, so I left it alone. Instead, I snuck into Cassie’s bathroom to steal one, knowing she’d never miss it. Sure enough, her bathroom counter was littered with beauty products and hair ties, and I picked out her long blonde hairs before I put it in mine.
“Stealing is a crime in all fifty states, you know,” Cassie yawned from the door.
It was my turn to jump about a foot into the air as she scared the crap out of me. “Oh, sorry, Cass. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She waved my concern away. “It’s time for me to get up anyway, I have a waxing appointment this afternoon.” Peering into the mirror, she swept away the dark tracks of old eyeliner with the tips of her fingers. Her hair was a tousled mess, but somehow still sexy, as if she’d styled it that way on purpose. Cass had always had that sex kitten look about her, with her sleepy eyes and bow shaped mouth. All she had on was a short, knit skirt and a black bra, and I hoped her top was lying on her bedroom floor, not in the back of some dude’s car.
“I’m glad you’re home. He’s been a real bitch to deal with since you left, you know? I swear to God, I was ready to smother him with his own pillow before Nurse Jillian showed up.”
“Hey, show some respect. He’s had a rough time.” When the hell had both my sisters grown so blasé about the whole thing?
Cassie rolled her eyes, slowly, directing them at me with plenty of intent. “Oh come on, you know what he’s like. This bed rest is making him shittier than usual. I’ll be glad when it’s over.”
“Cassie! How can you talk about him like that? He’s our father.” She’d knocked me senseless. “Disrespect is one thing, but talking about being glad when he’s dead…?”
“Dead?” Her eyes stretched wide before she collapsed in a fit of giggles. “Holy fuck, you thought I meant I’d be glad when he was dead? Shit, I’m not that cold, Lily. Give me some credit.”
“Frankly, I’m not sure what to believe anymore,” I retorted, my eyes narrowing. “Does he or does he not have a week left to live?”
“A week to… no. He’s on bed rest for a week. Who told you he only had a week to live?”
“His nurse said…” Christ, was my Spanish that rusty? “He’s on bed rest for a week?”
“Yes, he’s over the worst of it. All that’s left now is that damn cough and a temper that could choke a monkey. You know how he gets.”
“I don’t…” Relief mingled with anger, as I tried to settle my churn of emotions. “If he’s on the road to recovery, then why did your messages say he was dying!”
“Oh that.” She had the grace to look a bit sheepish. “Because I wanted to see if you could get your sugar daddy to pony up a little more cash to get him moved out of here. It’s disgusting listening to him cough up a lung ten times a day.”
“My… then you know where I’ve been?” Somehow I’d thought she was under the impression I was off at some school thing, like Darlene was.
“Of course I do. Who do you think Dad asked first to go play sex slave?” she smirked. “I didn’t realize how loaded he was. I guess I should’ve said yes, huh?”
“I, um…” The idea of my sexy sister showing up to seduce Aidan made my insides itch. And Aidan had seemed so surprised by my arrival at the mansion – had he been expecting Cassie?
“So, tell me all about it. Is he twisted?” she asked, her eyes snapping with anticipation for a juicy tidbit of gossip.
“Is who twisted?” Darlene interrupted, pushing her way into the bathroom to help herself to a box of tampons.
“The guy Daddy sold Lily to. Well… rented. It’s just for a year. Or did you get fired? Is that why you’re here? Is he looking to replace you with one of us?” Avarice shone brightly on her face.
Lily and the Beast 2 Page 8