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I hold out his phone to him. He’s motionless, arms at his side, staunch in his refusal to take it back. And for some stupid reason, instead of tossing it on the bed, I shrug and pocket it. “I’ll let you know.”
He doesn’t follow me. Doesn’t beg. I let myself out of his suite quietly and pad down the back stairs, determined not to see anyone else. There’s so much to think about, so muchweirdness.
“Lolly!” Oh, my god. Of course, my mother is in the kitchen. There are no details too small for her to leave to the experts. She just can’t leave well enough alone. “Where did you run off to? I just got here.”
“Not now, Mother. I have to change.”
“May I walk with you? You’re enjoying your stay with Dot, I hear?”
Do you have to? I’d much rather you didn’t.“Sure.”
“Dottie tells me your friend Pippa took care of the online photos?”
Thanks Dottie. Just what I need. Mother knowing there was MORE scandal.
“I wish Dottie had had those kinds of friends.”
My head whips up, a frown creasing my face. Since when does Gwen Spicer have good things to say aboutfallen women?
“She was hounded, you know.”
Someone has kidnapped my mother and replaced her with an alien. An alien who’s sympathetic. An alien who’s halfway clued in to what it means to be a woman in the last one hundred years.
“She says the young man is in love with you. Mariano?”
I look away. I guess he is. I don’t want to admit that. Not even to myself.
“If that’s the case, don’t let him slip away.”
I stop, my blood boiling so furiously I can feel it in my ears. “What did you say?”
“Life is bloody and brutal unless you allow love in. Sounds like you’ve found the real deal.”
“I…” The words don’t come. There are too many of them. Where to begin? Not half an hour ago she was reprimanding me for damaging the brand. And now she’s all Miss Lovey-Dovey? What could possibly have happened in the last hour to make her change her tune? Nothing. I’m hallucinating. That’s the only explanation. The world’s gone mad and taken me over the edge into the abyss. Nothing makes a lick of sense. Mariano gave me his phone and told me to call his not-patroness, and now Mother is making noises I’ve never heard come out of her mouth.
“Screw what the papers say. What do they know? So, you gave the man a BJ in a fancy car. Did anyone die? No. Was anyone injured? No. Are you both of age? Yes.”
The crack in my world is so huge, I can’t listen to another hypocritical word, the past roaring up to greet me. “You said ‘nothing’s changed.’” I point at the main staircase, where the fighting between me and my mother began. This time, at least.
She shakes her head. “Nothinghaschanged. Not really. The woman still carries most of the blame, if there’s blame to be had.”
Wait, what?
The world has been shredded and its confetti pieces thrown in the air. My mother agrees with me? I want to laugh and cry and vomit, but I do none of those things. A door has opened into the past, and, if Alicia’s right, I need to walk through it. “Why didn’t you say any of this when I was fifteen? You made me feel like a whore for…”
She pulls up short, hands on her hips. “I did no such thing.”
Yeah, I knew it was too good to be true. She might be all cool and groovy with me being caughtnow,but she had very strong opinions about it back then.
“I had to get you away from that riding instructor.”
“Say what?” Either Gwen Spicer is the queen of revisionist history, or my entire world has just been flipped on its head. “You didn’t ‘get me away from him.’ You blamed me, ignored me, pulled me out of school, uprooted me, and never spoke of it again.”
“For fuck’s sake.” She’s shaking, though why I don’t know. I’m the one who was wronged. “That’s not what happenedat all.”
THE PAST HAS NOT PASSED
Mariano Arias. The Great House. The Cotswolds, England.
