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I knew what really bothered Miranda about me, and it had nothing to do with Grace.
I looked exactly like my mother, the late Patrice Chalamet.
I was a constant reminder that she had been alive. That once upon a time, she had stolen Douglas Corbin from her. That if it weren’t for Patrice, I would have never been born.
Gracelynn wouldn’t have been either.
There was an alternate utopia for Dad and Miranda. A version of reality they’d almost managed to achieve. And it was yours truly who crapped all over it.
The servants talked about it all the time. Whispering as they fluffed pillows, prepared nutritious meals for us, drove Gracelynn and me to our tennis and ballet practices.
As the story goes, Miranda and Dad had been dating on and off throughout college. She overlooked Doug’s indiscretions—whatever that word meant—and wouldn’t let him out of her sight. When Dad went to a friend’s wedding in Paris eleven years ago, Miranda had wanted to join him. But it was a private event, consisting of fifty people, with no plus-one invitations.
That’s where he met Patrice. A glamorous wannabe actress from Rennes and the maid of honor. The two had a rendezvous (again, no idea what that meant), after which Dad went back to America.
It never occurred to Doug that Patrice would come knocking on his door two months later with a positive pregnancy test, white as a sheet. Legend says she vomited all over his shoes to prove her point before he even finished asking what she was doing there. And that Miranda wasin his apartment at the time,In a less than decent condition, one housekeeper had said snidely.
Dad’s dad—my grandfather—forced his hand into doing the right thing. So Dad married Patrice, a complete stranger.
The servants always said my grandfather never liked Miranda.
Too high maintenance. Too much of a social climber.
Miranda’s answer to the public humiliation had been cold blooded. She fell pregnant with Dad’s best friend’s child shortly after. A man by the name of Leo Thayer. An Aussie heir to a beef-export empire. So thorough was her counterbetrayal that Gracelynn was born looking so much like Leo that the paternity test Miranda had sent Dad confirming Gracelynn wasn’t his hadn’t been necessary.
Versions varied about what happened afterward. I heard a few stories from a few servants. But the most popular tale was of how my father and Miranda had rekindled their affair before Gracelynn and I had gone off our wet nurses’ milk.
Only now Miranda wasn’t the prized girlfriend—she was the mistress. Until Patrice died, and she got promoted to wife.
Miranda, like her daughter, couldn’t stand to lose to anyone. Especially a ten-year-old kid.
“I’ll talk to him,” my father murmured. “Make him understand what he did was wrong.”
“That’snotenough. You think I can sleep at night knowing your son is across the hall from my daughter after what he did to her?”
“We don’t know exactly what happened, sweetheart.”
It surprised me that Dad stood up for me, but I knew he wasn’t going to stand his ground for long. She’d wear him down. She always did. And he, blinded by his own sins, by her beauty, would submit.
“Well, I hate to do this, but it’s either him or us.”
“And where should I put him?” Dad spit out impatiently. “He’s a kid, Miranda. Not a goddamn vase!”
“There’s a boarding school not too far from here. Andrew Dexter Academy. Elaine’s son goes there. The one who was in that gifted program? I have the brochure ...” I heard the rustling of paper.
Of course she had the brochure handy.
“You want me to tuck him in a private school on the other side of the state?” he growled. “Jesus, Miranda, listen to yourself.”
“Oh, come on, Doug,” she said soothingly. “It’s a good place. We both know he’s being stalled here academically. You’d be doing him a favor. He could be fulfilling his potential, instead of being bored here and getting into all kinds of trouble. We’d love to have him for holidays and summer vacations. He would be so much more manageable.”
And so I becamemanageable.
Banished from my own house over a lie my stepsister had told to get rid of me.
Over her jealousy. Her greed.
Gracelynn got her Russian tutu. They put it behind glass, like the Armoury Chamber in the Kremlin. Precious and unattainable. Just like her ballet aspirations.
