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Whereas I’d gone numb, she’d gone shrill. Both were a nuisance to deal with, but only the latter elicited a headache.
Mom tapped her finger over her lips. “However, she comes from a good family and is actively seeking a husband. I approve of her.”
“I approve of her, too.” Celeste Ayi sashayed to the drink cart, helping herself to a double scotch on the rocks. “She must know a good plastic surgeon. I’ve been meaning to get a mini-lift for a while now. Everyone has one.”
A bitter laugh stuck in my throat.
How cruel was life that the only things my father had wanted for me—a wife, children, and happiness—were the things I reviled the most?
And yet.
And yet.
I couldn’t let my mother down.
When Dad passed away, he’d done so protecting me from sure death. If he’d never shielded me with his body, he’d be alive.
Mom would have a husband to dote on.
Celeste Ayi would be free to find a fourth husband.
The world would operate exactly as it should’ve.
But he’d left us behind. And discounting my unhinged Ayi, I was Sun Yu Wen’s sole living relative.
I’d felt precisely one human feeling my entire life.
Guilt.
Guilt over killing my father.
Guilt over destroying my mother.
Guilt over ruining my family.
Letting go of it would separate me completely from my species. I clung to it as proof I wasn’t a complete psychopath.
Its burden felt delicious against my bones, its suffocating pain reminding me I wasn’t completely numb.
“There she is.” Mom thrust the Polaroid in my face. I kept my feeton the desk and angled the picture with a lopsided tilt of my head. “Her name is Eileen.”
Eileen was objectively attractive.
Warm smile. Nice figure. All the right credentials.
And still—she bored me to death before we’d even exchanged one word.
I handed my mother the picture back, shaking my head. “Too wholesome.”
My phone buzzed with another text from Oliver. I sighed, deciding to answer it before he found a way to escalate.
God forbid he, too, barged in here.
Ollie vB:
You sure?
Ollie vB:
