The Dollhouse - Fiona Davis Page 0,10
her father’s care now? Her despair simmered into a dull anger.
The smell of burning rice snapped her to attention.
In the kitchen, she yanked the pot off the burner and turned off the gas. The bottom of the risotto was burned, and the pot would have to be tossed. How would she be able to buy a new one, never mind an entirely new set of cutlery, dishes, furniture? The list went on and on.
Griff came up behind her and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. The pressure was soothing. Maybe this was temporary insanity.
She turned around and his hands slid to her hips.
“Do you think that maybe you’re panicking here?” she asked. He dropped his head and pressed his forehead to hers. Her heartbeat slowed ever so slightly, more like R & B than speed metal for the moment. “Miranda will be fine; you need to give her time. Think of everything we have together.”
“That’s just it. We do have so much, such an amazing connection. But I have to do this for my daughter.”
“But you’re divorced. Who goes back to their ex-wife? It’s insane.”
“You can stay here for as long as you need to, while I work the details out. I’m as confused as you right now.”
Fuck the risotto. Fuck his sad-dog face and soft words that covered up the fact that he was dumping her. Fuck him.
On her way out the door, Rose picked up the vase of peonies from the foyer table and threw it down the hall, sending shards of glass skittering across the rosewood floor.
“He’s an asshole.”
Maddy tossed back the last of her bourbon and followed it with a defiant shake of her blond head.
Rose nodded but couldn’t speak. She kept waiting for a flood of tears to come, now that she was safe in a Hell’s Kitchen bar with her best friend, away from Griff and his lies and betrayal. Her mind was working like some kind of supercomputer, circling around her father, her finances, her future, then back again to Griff, but she was in a daze, perhaps still recovering from the shock. They made quite a pair in the dive bar, Rose dressed in the casual uniform of an Upper East Side power wife, the part she thought she’d been auditioning for, and Maddy in a strapless lilac gown, looking as if she’d just descended from a horse-drawn carriage.
“Looking back now, he has been sort of withdrawing the past few weeks. I just didn’t know why.” Rose took a sip of her bourbon, and for a fleeting moment the liquid’s slow burn provided a distraction. “Thanks for meeting me. I know this was supposed to be a fun night for you, not a sob fest.”
Maddy yanked up the bodice of her dress. “I lost, anyway. To Missy Lake. Her fake boobs were bigger than mine. Typical. I knew I should have gone up a size.”
“Stop. You don’t want to look like a Real Housewife.” Maddy and Rose had bonded the first day of speech class at college, when the professor had encouraged the students to open their throats wide, as if “you’re swallowing the Empire State Building.” Maddy, a beauty queen with champagne-blond tresses, had burst out laughing, as had Rose, and they’d been tight ever since. Even now, if they passed the landmark building in the backseat of a cab, they’d lose it, unable to speak for several minutes.
“So tell me what the clues were.”
Rose sighed. “He called less and less, just to check in. At one point, he said he had a conference call and went into another room, but his tone wasn’t right; it wasn’t work. He was talking to Connie.” Anger and confusion welled up in her stomach, and she thought she might be sick.
“He’s a dick.” Maddy rubbed her friend’s back and signaled the bartender for another round.
“He’s worried about his daughter.”
“You’re being too nice. Who leaves his girlfriend to go back to an ex-wife? He encouraged you to give up your apartment and move in with him. You gave up your apartment for him.”
The loss of her cozy studio apartment, sunny and equipped with a working fireplace, a true find in this city of overpriced hellholes, cut into her like a knife. Someone else lived there now. She’d given up the one thing she’d been most proud of: a rent-stabilized West Village studio. The perfect artist’s garret, at the top of a set of narrow, creaky stairs.
“I’m homeless.”
“No. He told you that you could stay