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I’m happy that my sister is so tickled, but also sad her joy is so contrived. She doesn’t have the normal life of a teenager, where they learn the ways of the world under the watchful eye of parents, doing minor silly and stupid things that carry no great consequence other than learning a lesson or two that gets chalked up to ‘life experience.’
That was never in the cards for her, just like it wasn’t for me. When you have to raise yourself and your sibling, there’s very little about life that is carefree.
Because of that, the lack of normalcy in her life, this new, unexpected chapter might be a step-up, although an unconventional one, to a different sort of happy life.
Beggars can’t be choosers, yo.
When the girls arrive, they shower Evie with a barrage of nosy questions, which she handles like a champ. I hover in the background in case she needs me to run interference, but she diverts the attention from herself to the house and compound. Loaded with Cokes in their hands, Evie proudly shows them around, starting with her bedroom. This is where I let them do their thing, oohing and ahhhing over Evie’s nice, new digs. I want to think she’s not showing off or bragging, but I let it go. She’s got to learn to use good judgement, and no amount of my hovering is going to help that develop.
Hell, she’s going to be seventeen soon.
“Mmmm, that looks good,” I say.
One of the gazillion security guards finishes stuffing a mini-sandwich in his mouth that he swiped from a catering tray. He blushes when I catch him and gulps it down so fast I don’t know how he didn’t choke.
“Oh, um, Miss Gates—”
I laugh and make him a plate of the small sandwiches. We have so much, anyway, and if we don’t feed our employees, what the hell are we doing feeding guests?
“Take this back to the guard house so everyone can have some. And really, help yourself anytime,” I say, pressing the plate into his hands.
He glances in the direction of the housekeeper, who I see scowling at him, and I make a mental note to talk to her later. In the past, it might not have been typical to share the catered food with security or other members of the team, but since I’m basically the ‘lady of the house’ now, I make these decisions.
Lady of the house. What a stupid, old-fashioned term. I need to come up with something better. I mean hell, I freakingshota man. Actually, I shot two men, and killed one of them. I’m so much more than anylady of the house.
The guests begin to arrive, a carefully curated list of club members and others from outside the club. In spite of ‘obligations’ and crap like that, I convinced the guys to omit any of our ‘difficult’ members like the pervy old Alexei, and include only those we knew would be sure to appreciate a nice party, and who are capable of behaving.
There will be one guest I’m not too pleased about—thePakhan—but the guys insisted there’s no way around inviting him. Even if he never shows up, he still has to be on every invitation list, they tell me.
Oh, and I nearly forgot Dominika. Since I’m not at the club much these days—security concerns, and all—she’s pretty much fallen off my radar. But her strange collection of photos still gnaws at me, and I don’t get why the guys let it go so easily.
Something about ‘picking battles,’ they said, and insisted she be included.
But seriously, someone scratching your mother’s face out of a bunch of family photos? If it were my mom, I sure wouldn’t let it go as easily.
Which reminds me. We made a final trip to my father’s apartment before the landlord came to clear it out, and I found a box of photos albums in the back corner of a closet he must have forgotten. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in the ten years since Mother has been gone. I only peeked at it, intending to bring it home to the compound and take my time going through it later.
What a treasure it turned out to be. There were photos of my parents before they were married, looking so happy and carefree when every possibility in the world was ahead of them, and there was nothing they thought they couldn’t do. But life has a way of wearing on people, and the stresses of having children and a barely-surviving pawn shop didn’t take long to show in their expressions, replacing the happy fullness of their younger faces.
Especially for my mother, her face became a map of the hardships of life with my father. She was still pretty, of course, but the light in her eyes was somewhat dimmed, her complexion dry and sallow. The worry lines between her eyebrows were, by that time, permanently etched.
I opened an album, the last one she must have filled before she died—my father had no interest in documenting our lives either before or after Mother passed—and in it were photos of a small birthday cake with ten candles. I’m smiling behind the little flames, no doubt on the edge of my seat waiting to blow them out, and I am happy the way a ten-year-old is with few cares in the world beyond who’s coming to my slumber party. I looked at the date and realized it was only two days before my mother was murdered. That’s a knife to the heart, and the pain that I thought was mostly gone reared its head again, an unkind reminder that I’ll never be okay about losing my mother as a ten-year-old.
The guys were calling me to come down for dinner, so I stuffed everything back in the box, unsure of the right time to share it with Evie, when something slipped out of the back of an album.
Happy 10thbirthday to my sweet Charleigh,the outside of the envelope said.
She forgot to give me my birthday card.
I flipped it over between my fingers for a minute, debating whether to open the seal on it and figured, why the hell not. The card was intended for me and even though ten years have passed, I have it now. I carefully break the glue on the seal and unfold the card to see the inside message.
My beautiful girl, know that I will always be with you. Love, Mom.
Well, that did it. I looked around my bedroom like someone had planted this thing or was playing a mean trick on me. But I know it’s from Mother thanks to her unforgettable handwriting and the cheap Dollar Store cards she always chose.
That card was sitting in that box for ten years, waiting for me. What are the chances? If I hadn’t found those things, they would have gone to the dump with Pops’s other things, and probably incinerated as if they never existed.
As if my mother and I never existed.
