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BUT THE KNOCKon the door.
Fast and hard and full of rage.
I know who it is.
She found me.
Her bunny.
It sounds like she’ll tear the door off the hinge if I don’t answer it.
More knocks. No pauses. She doesn’t stop.
Why wait?
Part of me is happy she came to find me.
Happy that I actually matter to her.
See, Francis? She actually cares about me.
Maybe we can go away together, Mother and me. Maybe she sees that I’m right. Maybe this is all I needed to do to get her attention.
I answer the door. I’ve never seen her look so angry with me in my life.
She cusses and screams and says we cannot go back to Francis’s after this selfish stunt I’ve pulled.
We’re in danger now and we have to leave New York immediately.
We’ve losteverythingbecause of me.
She smacks me with full force across the face, more violently than she’s ever hit me before, the crack of her hand echoing in my ears as I fall to the floor.
Mother bends down to look me in the eye.
She pushes the hair out of my face, hard, with the heel of her hand, not her fingertips, my head going right along with it. She tugs at my scalp.
“If you want to be a whore, if youreallywant to be an ungrateful little whore, so be it,” Mother whispered to me.
A little incantation.
A little curse.
A little promise.
CHAPTER
11
THE BRIDESMAIDS HOSTEDmy shower at Ladurée Soho. Yes, a French-themed bridal shower, truly the most cliché of selections, complete with a pastel macaron tower in my honor. Useless little things. Aesthetically pleasing to the eye but mediocre on the palate, and that’s being generous. A waste of calories if you ask me, but no one ever questions the bride’s refusal of dessert, as we’re supposed to be watching our figure at all times leading up to the big day.
About seventy-five women I hardly knew were there for the intimate occasion. Haven absolutely refused Calliope’s contemporary suggestion of a coed shower, bucking the latest trend. That was something we both agreed on, because a “couple’s shower” should be the fucking wedding.
It was Wren’s bright idea to have everyone wear shades of pink and red, in the spirit of love, so that all photos would have me, in white, at the center of them. A beaming ray of bridal light amidst a sea ofadoration and support from the women in my life. I could just imagine Gale nodding along with the idea during their planning session, wanting to kill herself in the process, and definitely murder me first. I pretended to be excited about the shower, but the truth was that no one has ever been excited to attend a bridal shower. Including brides. Everything is little. Little sandwiches, little sweets, little favors, little brides—if they know what’s good for them. And the bride must be constantly on and in a genuine state of surprise as she opens each gift, gifts that she literally selected and requested on a public registry that every guest has already viewed and passed judgment on, especially the chosen china pattern. And a bridal shower is not even an occasion where heavy drinking is encouraged to get through the two to three hours. See? Just a little party. Little sips of champagne only. Maybe Grandma gets a sherry. It’s a stale tradition, but it was still tradition, something very important to Mrs.Haven Case.
I made sure Syl was invited. I thought it was appropriate enough to include her by then and I wanted a friendly companion nearby, especially if Gale pulled something like she did at the engagement party. Syl could be a stabilizing force so I could get my game face on. Our lunches were becoming more frequent and we had even indulged in a happy hour or two, sometimes with Collin in tow. He was supportive that I appeared to be making a real friend, something he hadn’t witnessed before. Perhaps the professional boundaries were getting a bit muddled, but she was like my little pet, despite her years on me, always wanting to please me. I loved giving her advice about getting ahead at work and how to impress Collin. I could be a charitable person when it was warranted, unlike Mother. I genuinely wanted Syl to succeed! I wished I could give her dating advice, too. Maybe she would leave her unworthy fiancé and find an upwardly mobile man to exploit and also, for someone like her, to love. Shewould need both, I could tell that much. Essentially, I believed she could be more like me if she really set her mind to it. A little nudge here and there in the right direction could set her on course, unlike Wren Daly, who couldn’t be course-corrected with a cattle prod she was so dense. I was even in Collin’s ear about Syl sometimes, too. I asked him to look out for her career trajectory, without being too demanding. He would nod in approval, smiling, clearly tickled I was taking care of my friend. I shared that with her.
“You don’t want to be an executive assistant forever, do you?” I asked Syl at the shower. We had managed to tuck ourselves away in the corner of the venue with champagne. “The possibilities are endless if you know what you’re doing. You have real potential. I can see it.”
