“You were mad when you were talking on the phone with Harry. You yelled how you didn’t tell anybody, especially some bad-word tabloid reporter.”
Lina yanked the scrunchie out of her hair the way she did when she had a headache. “You shouldn’t listen to private conversations.”
“I didn’t listen, I heard. Are you mad at Harry?”
Adrian really liked her mother’s publicist. He snuck her little bags of M&M’s or Skittles and told funny jokes.
“No, I’m not mad at Harry. Go help Mimi. Tell her I’ll be down in about a half hour.”
She was, too, mad, Adrian thought when her mother walked away. Maybe not at Harry, but at somebody, because she’d made a lot of mistakes when she’d practiced and said a lot of bad words.
Her mother hardly ever made mistakes.
Or maybe she just had a headache. Mimi said people sometimes got headaches if they worried too much.
Adrian got up from the floor. But since helping with dinner was boring, she went into the fitness room. She stood in front of the mirrors, a girl tall for her age with her curly hair—black as her grandfather’s had once been—escaping a green scrunchie. Her eyes had too much gold in them to rate a true green like her mother’s, but she kept hoping they’d change.
In her pink shorts and flowered T-shirt, she struck a pose. And turning on the music in her head, danced.
She loved her dance classes and gymnastics when they were in New York, but now she imagined not taking a class, but leading one.
She twirled, kicked, did a handspring, the splits. Cross-step, salsa, leap! Making it up as she went.
She amused herself for twenty minutes. The last innocent twenty minutes of her life.
Then someone pushed the buzzer on the front door. And kept pushing it.
It had an angry sound, and one she’d never forget.
She wasn’t supposed to open the door herself, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t go see. So she wandered out to the living room, then the entranceway as Mimi marched in from the kitchen.
Mimi dried her hands on a bright red dishcloth as she hustled through. “For Pete’s sake! Where’s the fire?”
She rolled her deep brown eyes at Adrian, tucked the cloth in the waistband of her jeans.
A small woman with a powerful voice, she shouted, “Hold your damn horses!”
She knew Mimi was the same age as her mother because they’d gone to college together.
“What’s your problem?” she snapped, then turned the lock and opened the door.
From where she stood, Adrian saw Mimi’s expression go from irritated—like it got when Adrian didn’t pick up her room—to scared.
And everything happened so fast.
Mimi tried to close the door again, but the man pushed it open, pushed her back. He was big, so much bigger than Mimi. He had a little beard with some gray in it, and more in his hair, like silver wings on the gold, but his face was all red like he’d been running. Adrian’s first shock at seeing the big man shove Mimi froze her in place.
“Where the fuck is she?”
“She’s not here. You can’t barge in here like this. Get out. You get out now, Jon, or I’m calling the police.”
“Lying bitch.” He grabbed Mimi’s arm, shook her. “Where is she? She thinks she can run her mouth, ruin my life?”
“Get your hands off me. You’re drunk.”
When she tried to pull away, he slapped her. The sound reverberated like a gunshot in Adrian’s head, and she leapt forward.
“Don’t you hit her! You leave her alone!”
“Adrian, you go upstairs. Go upstairs right now.”
But temper up, Adrian balled her fists. “He has to go away!”
“For this?” the man snarled at Adrian. “For this she ruins my goddamn life? Doesn’t look a thing like me. She must’ve been whoring around, and she’s trying to pin the little bastard on me. Fuck that. Fuck her.”
“Adrian, upstairs.” Mimi whirled toward her, and Adrian didn’t see mad—like what she felt. She saw scared. “Now!”
“The bitch is up there, isn’t she? Liar. Here’s what I do to liars.” He didn’t slap this time, but used his fist, once, twice, on Mimi’s face.
When she crumpled, that fear dove into Adrian. Help. She had to get help.
But he caught her on the stairs, snapped her head back as he grabbed the tail of curly hair and yanked.
She screamed, screamed for her mother.
“Yeah, you call Mommy.” He slapped her so the sting burned like fire in her face. “We want to