by J. J. McAvoy
Apparently, I’d spoiled her too much.
“You see how things change? I said no. So, go put on your costume so you are not late. Now!”
Gigi pouted, hugging my legs, and I stared down at her blankly. Slowly her pout fell, and she released my legs as she turned and headed back into her closet. I shook my head, watching her go. She really was something. Over the last year, watching her grow and change was both amusing and trying. Apparently, she was in the testing-boundaries phase again. She was the little princess of the castle, and she knew it.
“It’s good you put your foot down now,” my grandmother said as she slowly walked inside.
That was another thing changing—watching my daughter get more and more energetic as my grandmother became less so. It wasn’t drastic; it wasn’t even as if she were on death’s doorstep. It was just noticeable. “Your father had the hardest time doing so with your sister.”
“I remember,” I replied.
“How is Calliope?” she questioned softly. “Rumors are circling the house already since she did not have her morning meeting with the staff.”
“She misses one day and they act as if she’s on her death bed,” I grumbled.
Ever since she’d taken over, Calliope had made sure to start the morning with a briefing with the staff by setting the agenda for the day, reviewing the previous day, applauding some, and correcting others. It was as if they were in the military. She didn’t need to do all of that, and yet she insisted.
“The staff like her. They are worried because it is unlike her to be absent,” she reassured me.
“Are you sure they like her? Or are they pretending to?” I questioned, feeling the annoyance in me rise again. “I can’t see who is loyal or not anymore.”
“Are you talking about the staff or the family?”
I looked at her face, a few more wrinkles there than last year; she looked tired. “I’m talking about everyone, Nana. You must know what is happening.”
“I do.” She frowned. “And I do not like it.”
I frowned as well, looking away from her. “So, you believe I am blind as well?”
“I do not know,” she said with heaviness in her breath. “I do not know anything. Who’s right.? Who’s wrong? What caused what? Who did what? What happens next? I’ve never known. I am not smart enough.”
I did not like the way she said that. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I was average. Your grandfather was average, too. He had to work very hard after his brother’s death. He pushed himself over and over again. And it was hard and trying for him, which was why he was so happy when your father seemed to have an instinct for it. He wanted to do his part and go back to being average with me.” She smiled to herself. “The plans your father and mother made were above my head. The plans you make are above my head. I do not understand any of it. I’ve come to terms with it and simply want to be a support.”
“And who do you support.”
“The Callahan family…you all figure out everything else. I’ll focus on simpler things…like my great-grandchild.”
And right on cue, there was a thud from her closet door, and I rushed toward it. “Gigi—”
“I’m okay,” she said, and when I opened the door, she was jumping up and down, trying to get her zipper up. When she saw me, she frowned? “Papa, go away! I’m getting ready.”
“But your zipper—”
“I got it.”
Was she already at the stage where I couldn’t help her get dressed?
That was fast.
I disliked that.
She jumped again, trying to reach the back of her Tinkerbell costume. Why her school was doing Peter Pan in November, I wasn’t sure, but she was very excited about it and the role she’d gotten. When I asked her why, as she had no lines, she said it was because she got to make faces all day at the kids she didn’t like and she didn’t get in trouble.
Rip.
It was the next sound, and she froze, turning to look back at me, and I tried not laugh. She took after her mother a lot with their shared expressions.
“Oh, no, Papa!”
“See what happens when you eat too much bauducco chocottone?”
We both turned at the sound of that voice.
“Mommy!” Gigi called out, rushing to her.
She stood there in a dark robe with even darker circles around her eyes. Her skin had paled, and her scattered hair was a mess. She was clearly still ill, but Gigi did not seem to notice, grabbing her mother’s hand and bringing her into her closet.
“Papa said you were sick, but I knew you’d come.”
“Me, sick? I don’t get sick,” she lied, glancing up at me. She gave me a slow blink and smile as if that were enough to make me believe she was okay to be standing and not in bed.
“I told him that.” Gigi smiled at me, too.
I remembered when my parents would lie to me. When they told me they were fine when they weren’t. Sighing, I knelt before her and turned my daughter around so she looked at her mother.
“Ethan,” Calliope seemed to know what I was doing.
But I shook my head, as I would not stop.
“Papa?”
“You see how Mommy’s eyes look darker?” I pointed. “And how Mommy’s skin is very, very white?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“That means Mommy is sick.”
“But Mommy says she’s not sick.”
“Mommy does not want you to worry,” I said to her. “So, Mommy says that. But if she spends all her time trying to help you and not getting better, she’ll get sicker. Mommy wants to be super Mommy, so she works when she’s sick. Do you think that’s good?”
She frowned, on the brink of tears, and looked back at her mother. “Mommy, you are sick?”
Calliope glared at me but couldn’t even manage to hold herself up, instead having to lean against the door frame as her body weakened.
“Calliope,” I left our daughter’s side to go to her, taking her arm, “you do not need to push yourself this hard all the time.”
“I’m fine.” Calliope insisted.
“It’s okay, Mommy. Nana can help,” Gigi said, going to my grandmother’s side and taking her hand.
“Are you sure? You said you wanted me to do your hair?” Calliope asked, pushing off me and trying to move closer.
“Nana is good at hair, too.” Gigi said.
Calliope frowned at that.
“Calliope,” my grandmother said, “you do not look well. Go rest for a bit longer. I’ll take care of her.”
She sighed, nodding, finally looking back to Gigi. “Come show me before you leave, okay?”
“Yes, Mommy.” Gigi smiled.
Using this moment of surrender, I scooped her into my arms, causing her to roll her eyes.
“I’m not that ill. I’ll be okay in a few hours,” Calliope complained.
“Show me in a few hours then,” I whispered, lifting her out the room.
“The servants will think I’m dying.” She complained.
“Get better then.”
“You’re impossible.”
“So are you,” I said as I kicked open the door to our room. Carefully, I took her back over to the bed.
“Ethan, I’ve been poisoned before. You don’t have to do all of this.”
There she went, being impossible to reason with again. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you are accustomed to being poisoned?”
She smiled, resting her head on the pillows. “Yep.”
“It doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Then focus on work and not me. You can’t use this to get out of the governor’s ball tonight. It’s important you go.” She was insufferable with a one-tracked mind sometimes.
“You annoy me.”
“Ditto.” She grinned, her eyelids starting to drift closed again. She reached up to touch my face. “Don’t worry, boss. I’m not going anywhere. Now take good pictures today for Gigi.”
“I’m not leaving you in the house alone.”
“What are you afraid of? Nothing is going to happen.”
She didn’t know that. This had shown me just how unstable everyone had gotten. They were sneakier, more desperate.
“Animals pushed into a corner swipe back.”
She didn’t reply, going back to sleep.
How I wished I could join her.
I felt the exhaustion set in and not just from the lack of sleep. Moving from the bedroom to the bathroom, I stripped to enter the shower.
I needed to think.
The plan needed to be re-adjusted…and fast.
CALLIOPE—AGE 12
“Calli? Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” my grandmother asked as she placed her hand on my face.
Her hair was blond and her eyes green. Her palms felt like sandpaper on my skin, but it was nice—she didn’t hit me. She never hit me. That made her better than my mom. But why did I keep hoping for it to be my mom who found me? Who asked me what was wrong?
“Nothing,” I said, coming out of the closet to sit in front of her.
“Are you mad at your mom for forgetting your birthday again?” my grandmother asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“You are lying. What have I told you about lying?”
“Do it convincingly, or don’t do it all.”
“That’s right, sweetheart,” she replied, putting her hand on my head. “And I know you are sad, but remember what I told you before? Your mom will love you one day soon. One day, when you are the best of the very best and you have helped this family…she will love you times a thousand.”
“Why can’t she just love me now?” I muttered with my head down.
“I love you. Don’t I count?”
“You count, Grandmama. But—”
“But you want your mom to count, too?”
I didn’t nod or look away.
“You just have to keep believing, keep working, nothing in this world that is worth having comes for free. You have to fight, Calliope. If you want to be happy, you have to fight harder than anyone else. And how do you learn to fight?”
“By training?”
“And what is the purpose of being trained?”
“To fight?”
“And you fight?”
“To be happy.”
“And to be happy is?”
“To protect your family and be believed in by your family.”
“Good girl, now, go to your grandfather so he can help you train. I want to see you happy, too. No matter how many times he or anyone else knocks you down, remember why you are doing this and get back up. Always get back up.”
CALLIOPE—PRESENT
When I opened my eyes, the room was dark with only the moonlight to cast a glow.
Not just the room but the world outside of the room from what I could see through the windows. The day had passed so quickly. I barely remembered it, either. Feeling cold feet, I turned down the covers only to see my daughter, dressed as Tinkerbell, lying in bed beside me fast asleep, her favorite dolphin tucked between us both.
“You’re awake?”
I glanced at the door as Helen stepped out of the bathroom, a towel in her hands. She reached for a switch and light flooded the room. “Yes, I am awake and feeling much better.”
“I’m glad to hear it. We were all worried about you. Especially this little one,” she said, coming to take a seat on the bed. She motioned to Gigi next to me. “Ethan had us all go to her play to make up for you not being there. Gigi did well. She had the crowd laughing at her expressions. The moment we came back, she wanted to see you. And she hasn’t left since. To little girls, their moms are their whole world. And to their moms, they are the most precious treasures.”
“Not all moms, sadly,” I said, brushing Gigi’s dark hair for a moment before looking back at her brown face. “Thank you for visiting me. With your father so ill, it must be hard.”
Twitch.
It was slight.
Barely noticeable.
But there was a twitch in her eyebrow that I caught.
“Of course, what is family for if not this?” she asked.
I nodded, looking around the room again. “Where is Ethan?”
“He’s gone ahead to the governor’s ball.”
“And Wyatt?” I asked, kicking my feet out of bed.
“He’s gone with him.”
“Hmm…so it’s just us girls tonight?”
“Seems so.”
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Helen replied, moving to leave.
I watched her get all the way to the door before calling out her name. “Helen.”
She froze, and slowly, she turned to me. I smiled. “It’s good to have a family. Thank you for being mine and welcoming me.”
Twitch.
“Of course, how could I not welcome you,” she said, and with that, she left as quickly as possible. The door didn’t slam behind her, but it didn’t exactly close gently, either.
“You are a very bad actress, Helen,” I whispered, moving to toward the edge of the bed, lifting the ottoman bench—what I likened to my Pandora’s box. I had remembered something from before drifting off to sleep.
“Animals pushed into a corner strike back.”
That was true. But it was also true that if you shock an animal enough times for trying to leave, they learn to stay in the corner. I pulled out a vial, tilting it the side to see the air bubble in it.
I shouldn’t. Not yet. It wasn’t the time. I had been poisoned, and there was nothing I could do about it, just yet, but I would not forget it. Not ever.
Ring.
Ring.
Quickly, I moved to get my phone, not sure who’d turn the volume up so high. Then again, that was exactly what Ethan would do so he could see how out of it I might have been not to answer. Lifting the phone, I glanced down to see a blocked ID calling. Sighing, it could only be one of two people, and I disliked both of them right now.
“Why are you not with your husband?” my grandfather asked me. “Or at your daughter’s play this morning?”
“I was poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” He gasps.
“That is what I said.”
“Do you know by who?”
From the tone in his voice, I could feel him prying. “No, why? What is wrong?”
“We need to talk, in person.”
“Grandfather, I just woke up. I still feel…”
“Mala tempora currunt.” It was Latin, meaning bad times are upon us. A code which meant something had gone terribly wrong.
“Understood. I’ll meet you at the ball.”
He hung up without a word, and I glanced back at the vial in my hands. My grandmother was a botanist. In the beginning, before she had married my grandfather, she had only wanted to take care of gardens and experiments with plants to make better gardens. After her marriage, she began studying poison. She had taught me how to recognize the signs of poisoning right away, how to use them to heal myself, and how to kill others. It wasn’t as simple a buying some hemlock and dropping it in someone’s soup. She came up with the most complicated recipes and spent years trying to figure out how to make them more effective. All of that knowledge she poured into me and a few others under her care.
It was because of that, that I immediately knew something was wrong. It was because of her training that I had survived and felt well so quickly afterward. My grandmother was old now, slowly losing her mental capacities, and all she wanted in life was to see the destruction of the Callahan family for what they had done to her. It was her living and would be her dying wish on this earth, to give this family the pain they gave her.
That was why all of this was a mess.
But in the end, no matter how much I thought of it, there was no turning back now. I’d already chosen my path and chosen my side. All I could do was keep pushing forward, keep fighting until I had my happiness.
Lifting my phone
back up, I dialed once, and automatically, he picked up the phone.
“Where are you?”
“I am at the stupid ball with your husband. Good to hear you are still alive,” Dino replied.
I snickered. “How about Vinnie and Italo?”
“Vinnie is kissing ass and stuffing caviar and crème fraîche tartlets into his mouth with the other city elites, and I believe Italo is somewhere getting pimped out for your husband.”
“Pimped out?”
“I don’t know the details. Your husband keeps everything close to the vest. You’re going to have to call him.”
“I’ll ask him when I get there,” I said when I entered the bathroom.
“Get where? Here?”
“Yep, let him know, I’m coming.”
“He’s not going to like that.”
“That’s why my phone will be off and I’m letting you tell him, but give it like an hour before you do,” I replied and hung up, looking up at myself in the mirror. “Jesus Christ.” No, not even he looked this bad.
HELEN
Ever since losing my mother, it felt like my heart was on fire and there was ash in my throat. I couldn’t find peace. I couldn’t rest. I just wanted her dead!
“Ugh!” I screamed, throwing my phone into the mirror in my room. When it shattered, I stared at the broken reflection of myself, feeling the tears pool in my eyes.
Knock. Knock.
“What?” I snapped, quickly brushing away my tears.
The door opened, and upon seeing Nari’s face, my shoulders dropped. I didn’t need whatever shit she had to offer right now. Her dark eyes looked over the broken glass on the floor.
“Yes?” I asked, annoyed, adjusting my shirt and turning back to face her. “Did you need something, Nari?”
She looked away from the glass back to me. “You all right?”
“Do you really care?”
“We are family,” she replied, closing the door behind her and leaning on the door, dressed in an all-white pantsuit. “Or are you still looking down at me?”
“I never looked down—”
“Yes, you did,” she cut in coldly. “That day, when Calliope shot me, and you sat in the car and told me to ‘know my place.’ How does it feel when you are put in yours?”