by Cynthia Dane
I had so many questions, some of them starting with Jimmy’s role in my father’s security team and what the hell everyone was doing there. When I got back in Jimmy’s car, I asked how the hell she got wrapped up in this. I was duly informed that Jimmy was an employee of my father’s first, and acted as my aunt’s informant from the office. She wasn’t trained to be a bodyguard, but she was good at reading people and taking up personas that suggested she had no role to play in anything. Well, she certainly fucking fooled me. I had to really hand it to her for landing the receptionist job before I even made it to the final round of interviews.
“By the way,” my aunt said from the seat next to mine, “sorry about using your login to access the Mann-Garrett records. I hear Mr. Smith finally caught on to it. Guess you’ll always be in his crosshairs.”
The car pulled up in front of my house. The doors did not unlock. “What about Aiden?”
“What about him?” Jimmy asked from the driver’s seat.
“He’s up to something. I had assumed he was the one hacking into the accounts to find out dirt about Erica.”
“Hmm.” My aunt looked out the window. “I’m not sure yet, honestly. He’s been a low priority, and I’ve already stretched my meager resources thin on this project. But I’ll take a look into it for you. If he’s up to something, we’ll find out.”
Finally, one of the men in suits opened my door. I stepped out. My aunt didn’t move. “Did you poison Brooke?”
“No,” Jimmy responded. “We’re looking into that, too. Focus on your own drama and let us handle the rest.”
“I think Sherman is trying to handle it too.”
“We’re smarter than him. For fuck’s sake, he thinks we’re the Triad. What an idiot.”
“Hurry,” my aunt interrupted. “We need to get out of here before they show up.”
“I have one last question.”
“Be quick.”
“Why were you in town tonight?”
My aunt spared me one of those diabolical grins I never knew she was capable of producing. “Why don’t you ask your lover?” The door closed. She patted Jimmy’s shoulder. The blue Prius took off down the street in front of my house.
The Mercedes turned the corner.
No time to get ready for Erica’s arrival, not that I had the disposition to change clothes or freshen up my face. The best I could do was race into the house, say hello to my mother in the living room, and announce that company was coming over. I hoped to God she couldn’t see the adrenaline flashing behind my eyes.
“Who is it?” My mother’s Bloody Mary sloshed in her glass as she tried to see the TV. My mother never missed a rerun of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. “One of your friends?”
“My boss.”
She had to do a double-take at me. “Eric Mann?”
“Yup. So I’d greatly appreciate it if you didn’t make a big deal about it.”
“I’ll go make more drinks!”
“That’s the spirit.”
Sherman knocked on my door the moment my mother hustled into the kitchen. Kris Jenner quipped at the shaking camera on my way to the door.
“You better be dead,” Sherman said. “And you don’t look dead, so that’s another mark against you today.”
Erica pushed passed him. “Natalie,” she said, exasperation grasping her body. Two of her slicked back hairs stood up in alarm. “Are you all right? Your message made it sound like it was life or death!”
To this day I don’t know what my aunt and Jimmy finagled into my girlfriend’s text message box, but apparently it was so urgent that Erica risked Sherman’s wrath to come find me at my house as soon as she saw “my” words.
“I’m fine. So sorry to worry you.” I stepped out of the way so she and Sherman could come inside. My mother, in her velvet tracksuit and tacked-on makeup, stood in the living room archway with two Bloody Marys in her hand. Miffy barked behind her. “Hi, Mom. This is my boss, Eric Mann. Eric, this is my mom.”
“Su… such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Mann!” I couldn’t hear her over the barking.
“Kindly shut that dog up, please,” Sherman said.
“Mom, we’re going upstairs for a few minutes. There’s something I need to give Mr. Mann from work that I forgot to take in yesterday. Hang tight.”
“Okay!”
She watched after us with reverence as we ascended the stairs. This wasn’t how I wanted Erica to see my childhood home and meet my mother. This wasn’t how I wanted my night to end at all. Fuck!
Because I knew it wouldn’t end with a hot kiss and the kind of cuddling that gets a girl naked and wet. I also knew that with Sherman right behind us, I would never get the full truth out of his boss.
“Could you wait out here?” I asked him in the hallway. “This is really personal. Like, if Erica really had a dick, I’d be telling her I’m pregnant kind of personal.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Please, Sherman,” Erica said. “We’ll be right in there.”
He finally relented with the caveat someone would be watching us through my window. In case, you know, I tried killing Erica or something. Because I was suspect #1 to Sherman Smith.
Erica almost sat in my desk chair before I implored her to take the end of my bed. She remarked on my interior decorating tastes while I sat down next to her.
“Honey,” I said, trying to keep myself together. “I know there’s something else going on. Something you haven’t told me but is coloring everything we do and the way everyone handles you. It has to do with something your father did, doesn’t it?”
“What else is there to tell you?” Erica looked away. “My father raised me as his son after his real son died. Having a daughter wasn’t good enough to take over the family business. He was a messed up man.”
“Something else, Erica.”
“What do you want from me? I thought you were having some kind of crisis.” Erica relaxed, and her fatigue from the whole day washed over her. “Come to find out that you want to grill me.”
“I’m serious, okay? I need to know the whole story.”
She glared at me from the corner of her eye. It was the first time she gave me such a critical look in so long that I had almost forgotten what it was like to be on the other end of Eric Mann’s ire.
Damnit. She didn’t trust me. Sherman had gotten to her enough that I was better off showing her my tits and hoping that helped.
“I’m frustrated, okay?” Those were real tears coming out of my eyes. From the emotional night before, to the strange afternoon on the coast, to finding out about Aiden and Janelle, to oh my God that shit with my aunt… I was ready to collapse. I just needed to know that my girlfriend would be there for me. “There’s something else going on with you. Something that happened a long time ago, huh? Something to do with your father.”
I know what I definitely thought it was, and I prayed to God that I was wrong.
I was.
Kinda.
“My father was not a good man,” Erica said with a heavy sigh. “He was backwards and so privileged that he thought it a mark of a good father to be tough with his kids. Of course, he was tougher one me than my brother. My brother could do little wrong.”
“Oh my God.” Now I knew where this was going.
“Most kids like us were raised by nannies, but you have to understand that my parents had been trying for years to have kids. When they had us, my father made it his personal responsibility to make sure we were raised right. That meant taking my brother beneath his wing and making sure I’d be a good submissive wife to one of his billionaire buddies one day. That was my use. I was five years old and understood what he meant when he said I’d be out of the house at sixteen because he had married me off. It was so Victorian that I was depressed even as a little kid. My only friend was my brother, who didn’t understand what was going on at all.”
“Okay, I take it back. You don’t have to tell me everything.”
But it was
too late. I had opened the bottle. “Our roles were easily understood. My brother would inherit the company and continue the patrilineal legacy my great-great-grandfather started. I was a future housewife for a rich man. The only thing I needed to know was how to be a docile lady. That meant learning how to take corrections.”
She rolled up her sleeve. A scar I had never seen before was nestled in the bend of her arm.
“He gave that to me on my fifth birthday because I didn’t curtsy well enough.”
“What the fuck did your mother do?”
Erica rolled her sleeve down again and shrugged. “Drank. Showed off my brother and put me in pretty dresses a tailor made for me. She always treated me as a doll because she knew I wasn’t really her daughter. I was her husband’s business token. There was no point in her having an emotional attachment to me. Likewise, I had little attachment to her. My brother was the only positive thing in my world.”
“Please, Erica, I don’t need to know this after all…”
“Wish I could tell you that having an abusive dad who beat the shit out of me was the big, bad secret outside of my sex and gender, but it’s not that simple. Nobody cares about that. If anything, I could make it into a big cash grab or use it as an excuse to start up a foundation for battered daughters or something.” She laughed. What else could she do? “Nope. The truth is nastier than that. It’s something nobody knows. Nobody, Natalie, except for maybe Sherman. I never even told Brooke. More people know about what’s between my legs than they know about the day my brother died.”
I sat in silence.
“We did go horseback riding that day, but we never made it out of the stables. I wasn’t happy with the animal I had been assigned since something about its face scared me. I don’t even remember now. I remember crying because I really didn’t want to get in the saddle. My father wasn’t having it.”
Oh my God, please stop.
“Long story short, my father flew into a rage and went to beat me, and my brother got in the way. He beat my brother to death thinking he was me.”
“Jesus!”
Erica put her hand on my knee. “Not only have I been pretending to be my brother all these years, but every day I think about what happened. I remember that monster coming for me with death in his eyes. He was going to kill me. I knew that, even at five years old. I think my brother knew too. He didn’t hesitate trying to stop our dad. I watched it happen. Stood there totally helpless because nobody else would get involved. They’d rather watch a child be beaten to death than go up against Charles Mann.”
I took her hand into mine.
“Part of the reason my dad started passing me off as Eric was because he believed he needed a son. But a bigger part is that he didn’t want to accept that he had killed his son instead of me. He wanted to bury me and keep Eric. So he convinced everyone. He even brainwashed my mom. The only one he couldn’t completely brainwash was me. But I was too afraid to go against him as a child. By the time he died, it was too late. I was committed to my life as Eric.”
She leaned her face against my shoulder. My hand instantly went to her hair and smoothed down those errant hairs. Tears warmed my sweater.
“I’m so sorry.”
She lifted her head again and wiped a few tears from her eyes. “If the whole truth got out, I would be ruined. Not just the company. Not just my employees. Me. I wouldn’t be able to survive it. It can’t… it can’t ever be released. We’ve all suffered enough from my father’s evil.”
We shared another tearful kiss before Sherman pounded on my door.
“Let’s move!” he bellowed. “We don’t have much time before we’re in Singapore!”
“Singapore?” I attempted to clasp Erica’s hand as she went to Sherman. “What is he talking about?”
Erica wouldn’t look at me. “I’m going into hiding, Nat. Until this all blows over.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, and you can’t come with me. Even I agree with that. I’m sorry. I feel like this is all my fault. If only I hadn’t involved you…”
“Are you kidding me?” I attempted to follow her out of my room, but her resolve was strong enough to keep me at an arm’s distance. “It’s too late for that! I wanna be involved! Erica!” Sherman pushed me back into my room. The blow almost knocked me over. Almost.
If Erica’s resolve was tougher than steel? Then mine was titanium!
“You can’t walk away from me after everything’s that happened! You’re going to at least call, right?”
She reached the staircase and gripped the railing for balance. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.
“Fuck you! I love you!”
Not my most shining moment. But what else could I say? She brought that out in me! Everything about the past two weeks had been a roller coaster of emotions that I felt like I was finally going to throw up at any moment.
I couldn’t let her go without at least letting her know how I felt.
“Natalie.” She turned around, disbelief on her face. “Is that true?”
I broke past Sherman’s barrier and collided into my girlfriend’s embrace. She held me so tightly that I almost couldn’t breathe.
“You can’t go,” I said. “Not when we’re getting started.”
“I love you too.”
I returned her hold ten-fold.
She kissed me one last time, her lips smothering mine while Sherman looked on with rising urgency to get his boss out of my house. He pointed to his watch more than once, but I was so enthralled by Erica’s sudden surge in agency that I couldn’t pull my lips away from hers.
This could be our last kiss for God knew how long. Maybe forever. I had no idea what might happen after she left for Singapore. Maybe she would only be gone for a week and come back to me with a plan of action to change our lives forever. Or maybe she would fade into oblivion, a footnote in business class textbooks and a novelty on those Where Are They Now? lists. In case, I better make sure I had imprinted every second of this kiss onto my lips.
“I have to go.” In the end, Erica’s resolve was always greater than mine. She pulled away, regret already on her fair complexion as she bounded down the stairs with Sherman right behind her. I didn’t chase after them. “Be at work Monday!”
That was it. Those were her parting words to me. “Be at work Monday!”
The house fell silent when the front door slammed behind Sherman. My mother still stood in the front hallway with her dog, although she had finally left the Bloody Marys behind.
“Did I hear what I thought I heard?” My darling mother had too much work done to her face to show any sign of glee. “He loves you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Oh, Natalie! Honey!” The chihuahua barked in happiness alongside my mother as she stormed up the stairs and wrapped me in a superficial hug. No, no… I didn’t want that. I wanted Erica’s arms around me. I wanted to smell her sandalwood cologne and nestle my face against her chest, whether she bound her breasts that day or not. I wanted her kisses on my face and whispers of debauchery in my ear.
I did not want my mother’s cheap perfume, velvet track suit, and melting makeup taking over my space. My mother represented everything I hated in these relationships.
“I’m so proud of you!” Oh, God, she was still talking. Good thing I had already dissociated from the reality she demanded I join. “You’ve only known that man a month and you’ve bagged him! Maybe you have been listening to me all of these years, after all!”
She would never understand. While I was used to my mother never employing enough empathy to properly see my side of things, her emotional betrayal almost hurt me more than Erica walking out on me. At least Erica truly loved me. At least she knew me.
Like I loved her. Like I knew her.
I continued to replay the words I overheard Sherman say earlier that evening. He didn’t trust me. He didn’t want me around. If he had his way, I would disappear from Erica’s life.
E
rica said I was the first person to ever truly get her. The thought that I could be in the business of ruining her for my own personal gain was so preposterous that I wanted to cry.
So I did. I looked myself up in my room for the rest of the night and cried into my pillow like a teenaged girl who had been told her date for prom had canceled.
I couldn’t even remember the last time I cried like that. Maybe when I was a little child realizing my dad wasn’t ever coming back for me. Maybe when I lost my first best friend because she had to move to the other side of the country. Maybe when someone told me I would never be more than some man’s ultimate demure housewife fantasy because of the shade of my skin, the texture of my hair, and the shape of my eyes.
All I know is that one Saturday night in the depths of October marked the first time I cried from a broken heart.
Chapter 49
NATALIE
Going to work was a joke.
Erica told me to go, so I went, even though I knew she wouldn’t be there. Indeed, she didn’t come back to work at all that week. Nor the next.
She also never contacted me. I thought that she wanted me there so she could send me messages from within the company and outside of foreign eyes. Coded messages she knew I could translate with my quick wit and sharp mind. “Have everything stacked in alphabetical order…” could mean she was ready to come home and see all the hard work I had done.
Nothing came.
When I think back on those weeks from hell, I think of the emptiness manifesting in my soul and the dread weight pulling my heart down into my stomach. Everything was pointless. Food disgusted my tongue and upset my stomach. My usual routine of taking warm baths and brushing my hair was like listening to a demon shriek within my skull. Going to work? The one thing that was supposed to keep me on track and always working toward my future?
Infinite. Torture.
Erica was everywhere and nowhere at once. A piece of her soul remained behind in the office I walked into every day. Her name was on every header crossing my desk and popping up on my computer screen. Her photoshopped face was framed in the boardroom, and that picture of her as a child with her brother remained on her desk.