I did?” she said, walking back. She put a cup in front of him, but he didn’t reach for it.
Yes. She’d left her father’s life in ashes. He’d moved out of that beautiful house. A messy, public divorce had commenced. His daughters wouldn’t speak to him. Stella hadn’t been his only affair, not by a long shot. There was a whole other family, apparently, another woman, other children. Women he worked with, when the news hit, came forward to tell of his aggression in the work place, his unwelcome advances. A wealthy philanthropist, bastion of the community, revealed as a serial adulterer, a workplace predator. It wasn’t big news. But it was news enough. He’d been removed as CEO of his company, last she heard.
“That’s not how it works,” Pop said softly. “Not how it’s supposed to work.”
“Maybe that’s how it works for me.” She didn’t sit, started gathering her things. “Maybe sometimes it’s about more than money. Sometimes it’s about making people pay for the things they’ve done.”
“Never leave them with nothing left to lose. Didn’t I teach you that much?”
“I have my own way of doing things,” she said. “You’ve never had a bigger score than that. Have you?”
He offered a deferential nod. “The student surpasses the teacher.”
“Is that what we’re talking about? You think I’ve surpassed you. Is that what she is?” She pointed upstairs. “Your new student?”
“Of course not. She’s just someone who needs us right now. In this world, you make a family where you can find it.”
“You just need someone to worship you.”
He shook his head, looked down again, this time at the grain of the wood on the table. “I’ve taken care of you, Pearl. Haven’t I? Good care of you? I’ve loved you like my own child.”
That anger, it boiled over, was a siren. But she stood stock still. She almost never lost her temper.
“Children grow up,” she said quietly.
Pop looked at her as if she’d slapped him.
She went upstairs. She could pack her things, everything that meant anything to her in twenty minutes. She did so. Through the wall, she could hear the stranger still weeping. The sound was low and despairing, toxic sadness, leaking in through her pores.
Fuck. This.
When she got back downstairs, Pop was waiting by the door.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “We can be a family.”
“I need space,” she said. “I need to figure out who I am.”
He smiled, expansive, understanding, took her into his arms and held her tight. She found herself sinking into him, almost changing her mind. But then she hardened inside again. He seemed to feel it, released her with a kiss on the forehead.
“Come for Sunday dinner,” he said. “Children may grow up. But they can always come home.”
She walked out the door, opened the trunk of the car she’d bought with her own money and put everything she owned inside. A glance in the rearview showed Pop in the doorway, waving, and the shadow of a girl in an upstairs window.
Her anger subsided; Pearl, Anne, Elizabeth, or whatever her name was now, felt nothing at all.
THIRTY-THREE
Cora
“What is it, Mom?” demanded Selena.
Cora clutched the iPad, still staring in disbelief. Her daughter’s face was a mask of confused anger. “This woman on the street with Geneva—” Cora still couldn’t quite believe her eyes.
“Oliver,” said Selena, looking at her son. A tear trailed down his cheek. “Go to bed, sweetie. This is a grown-up conversation.”
“But—” the boy said, staring back and forth between them. “I’m sorry.”
“Now,” said Selena, too sharply. She shut her eyes, as if summoning patience, then softened her voice. “Please, honey. Please.”
Oliver opened, then closed his mouth, finally storming off, the door swinging behind him. Cora heard him stomping on the stairs, had the urge to chase after him, to comfort him. He’d be upset because he was a sensitive child.
Selena took the iPad from Cora’s hands and touched the screen, the glow lighting her face as she watched the video.
After a second she gasped, sank into the seat behind her with a thud. She shook her head, seemed to be puzzling.
“Do you know her?” Selena asked finally.
“Do you?” asked Cora.
“I—met her on the train,” Selena said, sounding a little dazed, incredulous. “She’s been—texting me. I saw her again for a drink in the city.”
The revelation pulsed through Cora. “Oh my god.”
“Who is she? Mom?”
The words jammed up in Cora’s throat. There were so many things that she’d never told her daughters about their father, the things he’d done.