said. “Like, ask to see a picture of your dad, at the hospital when you were born.”
Marlow already knew that there were no pictures from when she was born. She had asked about them when she was a kid; she wanted to see her mother bare of makeup. “I’ve told you this,” Floss said when she asked. “We couldn’t take any photos. Nobody’s phones were working, and it was pitch black most of the time. Besides, sweetie, I assure you—I was wearing makeup.”
Grace stood up. “We should go now,” she said. She stopped with her hand on the door and turned back. “I really feel so bad, Marlow,” she said, quietly. “About this, but about everything with Honey, too. That’s why I had to tell you—I owe you. I always felt like it was my fault.”
Marlow felt the start of tears. She pinched the bridge of her nose to stop them. “No, Grace,” she said. “It wasn’t. That’s not how I see it at all.”
Then the door was open and they were back in the hall, Grace telling loud, specific lies about test results, and things looking fine after all. Marlow nodded, playing along. In her mind she saw her father, young beside her bike. This time, when she remembered that day, she felt the rope slip from her waist.
* * *
The party was beginning, Marlow saw from her car. Guests were winding around the side of her mother’s house, accepting drinks from a bot who nodded as each person made its tray a little lighter. Marlow looked up at the roof. Instead of bothering to weed, she saw, her mother had merely covered her whole overgrown roof garden in gaudy blue fabric.
It was Ellis who found her sitting there. He yanked the car door open, puncturing the pleather vacuum. “What are you doing?” he said. “You know my boss is here, right?” His hair was perfectly dry—Marlow recalled him telling her that, at the surfing simulator, no one actually got wet.
She let him pull her into the kitchen, where Jacqueline was dropping sprigs of mint and sliced cucumber into a pitcher of water. “There’s the hot mama!” she sang.
Floss was across the room in a folding chair. She stood when she saw Marlow and stamped across the room. One of her eyes was sludgy with gunmetal shadow. The other was bare, vulnerable-looking. “Where were you?” she demanded. “You know it takes at least an hour to do anything with your hair, and people are here already.”
The makeup girl stood poised with her brush in the air. She was the only real human hired for the day—no one liked bots so close to their eyes. “Should I keep going, Mrs. Clipp?” she said. “Or do you want me to start on the mother-to-be?”
Marlow straightened her spine. “I need to talk to my mom,” she said, forcing herself to sound firm. She borrowed a phrase from Floss. “Can we have the room, please?”
It was amazing, once Marlow started talking, how quickly Floss’s full range of dramatics kicked in. It was a symphony of fidgets, everything firing at once, like an emergency alert had gone out to her nervous system. Floss fluffed her roots like a maniac. She pursed her lips into a tight bud. She dabbed at her lower lash lines with her ring fingers. These weren’t just antics for antics’ sake, Marlow knew. Her mother had taught her the trick once: “When someone confronts you,” she said, “don’t respond right away. Give it a second, so that as many followers as possible have time to tune in.” Now Floss was breathing in and out loudly, letting her eyes fill up.
“Don’t you dare cry,” Marlow snarled. She felt like she could shake Floss, could bang her head on the glass—oh, how her thoughts could startle her, without Hysteryl to keep them at an even chill—and she closed her eyes for a moment to drain the image from her mind. “I’m the one who should be crying, Mom,” she said, when she opened her eyes again. “Me.”
Floss ignored her, unleashing a long soprano sob. “Why are you so obsessed,” she said, “with ruining this day? I worked so hard on this day.”
“You lied to me all my life,” Marlow hissed. “I don’t care about a party. I have a different father? Who is it? Does Dad know?”
Floss eyed her, her lower lip trembling. “I’ve always tried to do what’s best for you,” she said. “And so has Aston. That’s what makes someone