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Chapter 14
"I don't know," I said after I swallowed a bite of chicken salad on Monday. "They signed the papers, but it doesn't seem like enough. Like, 'here's some proof your parents actually love you, so can you love and forgive me too?' Meh. I need more."
On my desktop computer screen, Jane cocked her head. She looked about as conservative as I'd ever seen her, in a stolid gray shift dress and matching jacket, her black hair tamed respectably. The only thing about her regular style, which usually looked like something off a Sex Pistols poster, were the vintage red frames resting on the end of her nose while she scanned over the adoption papers I had just emailed.
"Looks good to me," she said finally. "But you're the family law expert, chick. I just go after the bad guys."
She took a massive bite of ramen, enough that she had noodles streaming out of her mouth in a way that made her resemble Cthulhu. I laughed when she tried to speak.
"What's that?" I asked. "I don't speak noodle."
Jane swallowed and rolled her eyes. "I said, what does Eric think?"
I narrowed my eyes, and she studiously looked at her desk. I set down my fork.
"Don't play coy," I said. "It really doesn't suit you. Eric doesn't think anything because Eric is not my best friend in the world and the only other person on the planet who knows I am doing this. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Eric was too busy in Chicago this weekend to talk about this, wasn't he?"
Jane bit at her thumbnail and gave me a grimace. "What do you want me to say?"
I pressed my lips together and said nothing at all. Jane sat back in her chair and groaned up at the ceiling.
"Yes, fine, fine!" she cried. Then, pointing at me through the lens of the video camera: "Okay, ClockworkOrange. Stop staring at me like a psycho."
I sighed, but still cracked a smile. "So what happened? I take it not good."
Jane just closed her eyes and sighed. "So you knew he was going to show up this weekend?"
I nodded. "Yeah. I was there when the light bulb went on."
"Why didn't you stop him?"
I grimaced. "It was really that bad?"
Jane toyed with her noodles. "No. It was just...awkward. He showed up at my cousin's apartment at noon. And I..." she trailed off. "Okay, so I might have had another guy in my room with me."
My jaw dropped. "Jane..."
"What, like that's a surprise. I'm single, Sky. And you were my roommate for three years."
"Yeah, but..." I shook my head. "Poor Eric, though. I mean, you guys just barely broke up."
Jane tucked a piece of hair back behind her ear and shrugged, looking guilty. It wasn't an emotion I was familiar seeing on her face.
"Yeah, well," she said. "It's for the best, I guess. You know I'm not the type to sit around in relationships past their expiration date. Neither is Eric for that matter. I'm sure he'll be back to fucking Aryan Barbies in no time."
I bit my lip. The way my friend was twisting her lips around told me there was a lot more to her denial than just a fear of intimacy. But before I could answer, the phone on my desk rang.
"Skylar Crosby," I answered on speaker with a know-it-all grin at Jane.
"There's a Janette Jadot here for you," said Peter, the front receptionist. "Are you expecting her?"
I froze. On the screen, Jane's jaw had dropped completely, revealing another mouthful of half-chewed noodles.
I hadn't heard from my mother in weeks––not since that horrendous moment at Brandon's candidacy announcement, when she and several other people had watched Brandon's and my relationship implode with the revelation of my betrayal. It was a revelation for which Janette was responsible. She and her backstabbing husband, desperate for cash to support Maurice's downtrodden career, had actually had me followed by a private investigator in the hopes that he would dig up enough dirt to blackmail me. In the end, the photos and the record of the abortion had gone to the highest bidder: Miranda Sterling née Keith, Brandon's ex-wife. And she, of course, had gone straight to Brandon, hoping to lasso his attention back to her.
So in a very real way, my own mother was directly responsible for the tenuous condition of my relationship (not to mention the fact that I had fled the party and immediately been abducted). And now she was here. The question was why.
"Send her back, please," I told Peter. "Thanks."
