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Nice one, idiot. Not infatuated at all.
I leave with a huff, knowing deep down that I should sell this damn theater, and yesterday.
Another week passes.
Riggs is in town—back from Finland. Arya took Louie to visit a friend in Omaha, which means Christian is not out of commission for a change. We meet at the Brewtherhood. Riggs is wearing a baseball cap and keeps his head down, trying to go incognito. I never understood his fascination with women. I find tolerating one person to be too much, let alone multiple every week.
I knock down one Japanese beer after the other and flip through my astronomy book every time the conversation takes a boring turn, which is often.
At some point, the discussion spills into the territory of parents. All three of us are orphaned. In fact, I’m the only one who had a father not so long ago. Christian and Riggs have been like this since early adolescence. Not that Doug could be considered anyone’s parent.
“We know your father was a poor excuse for a dad, but what about your mom?” Riggs elbows me to catch my attention.
I dog-ear a page and send him a disgruntled stare. “What about her?”
“You never told us about her.”
“She passed when I was six. I hardly remember what she looks like, not to mention any personality traits.”
And what I do remember, I don’t trust. I grew up with the notion Patrice Corbin was a real monster, an agenda promoted by Douglas. The gist of it was that she cared more about Calypso Hall than about me and spent her days as far as humanly possible from the Corbin clan.
I knew she had an apartment in Manhattan, and that she stayed there regularly when I was a child. She also had a lover, Douglas made a point of lamenting to me, probably in order to erase his own wrongdoings. From my few recollections of her, Patrice was mild and pretty. But again, what did I know? I was just a stupid kid.
“Did you have a good relationship?” Christian asks.
“I was six,” I reiterate. “Back then, I had a pleasant relationship with everything other than broccoli.”
“We’re just trying to figure out what made you the way you are,” Riggs explains, grinning from ear to ear. He flings an arm around my shoulder. “You know, a total nut job who thought Gracelynn Langston was a good idea.”
“Ah, yes. Because I’m the only one here who has a messed-up relationship with the fairer sex.” I return my attention to my book.
“It’s not just that,” Christian explains. “That you don’t remember your mother very much is not out of the ordinary. The fact that you haven’t put any effort or resources into learning anything about her . . . now, that smells fishy to me.”
I down my beer, pick up my book, and bow them farewell. “Thanks for the psychological assessment, gentlemen. Keep your day jobs.”
With that, I leave.
At home, I take out an old photo album—the only one I have—and flick through pictures of my mother and me before her boating accident. Christian and Riggs aren’t completely wrong—I haven’t spared a minute of thought about my mother in decades.
There was little point. She was a terrible human, possibly worse than my father.
The first picture is of her holding me when I was a newborn, staring at me with pride. She looks exhausted, so I’m guessing I was as difficult a baby as I am an adult. The second is of her standing above me, holding my hands, as I wobble in what must’ve been my first steps, wearing only a diaper. In the third one, we’re both throwing yellow-orange leaves in the air, dressed for autumn. The fourth is of Patrice and me making a cake together, looking messy and happy.
She doesn’t look like the devil my father made her out to be. In fact, she very well could have been a saint. I will never know since both of them are completely and thoroughly dead.
The truth, unfortunately, was laid to rest right along with them.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WINNIE
“What do you mean, gone?” I ask Jeremy four weeks after The Seagull premieres.
“Disappeared. Not here anymore. Missing. Poof!” Jeremy snaps his fingers in a magic gesture.
“How can the poster just . . . vanish?” I look around us in the lobby, still hoping to find it rolled and tucked in a corner. “It took over the entire hall.”
Jeremy flings his arms helplessly. “Sorry, Miz Ashcroft. When I got here this morning, it wasn’t there anymore.”
The big poster, starring Rahim and me, is no longer here. My guess is some punks took it. Stealing Broadway memorabilia was big when I attended Julliard. But people usually stole small stuff. Keychains and tiny props left onstage. Not an entire poster.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this.” Lucas wiggles his finger in the air, already on his phone. He is so distraught his hat fell off, and he hasn’t bothered to pick it up. “I’ll go up to management and ask to see the tapes from last night. Could be the cleaning people, trying to make a fast buck on eBay.”
