never got to finish my sentence, because my office door swung open and my mother walked in.
Most people saw my mother as formidable, even scary. She was tall and still beautiful. Her gray hair was swept into a severe but stylish bun. She had what is called Resting Bitch Face, though no one—including me—had the guts to say that to her face. Her personality was as frosty as her usual expression, and ever since my father’s arrest it had been even frostier than usual. The only person she wasn’t frosty with was me.
I was the cherished son. Ever since I was born, my mother had hung all of her hopes on me. I knew it perfectly well. I also knew that to my mother Sophie was a disappointment, while I could do no wrong. Between Sophie and me I definitely had the better deal, but being the golden boy had its own disadvantages. Unlike Sophie, I had expectations to live up to, the highest possible ones. My mother had never called me on my bullshit or told me when I was being an idiot, which meant she hadn’t taught me much. I’d spent my adult life keeping my mother at a distance while I learned everything I needed to on my own.
Today she was wearing dark tailored slacks and a black cashmere shawl. Her makeup was perfect and not a single detail was out of place, including the small but expensive diamonds in her ears. She walked into my office without knocking, which is what she always did, but she stopped when she saw Penny.
I groaned inwardly. I should have prepared Penny for my mother. I was such an idiot sometimes.
“Mother,” I said, standing straight from where I was leaning on my desk and coming toward her. I gave her one of my charming grins, because they never failed to put her in a good mood. “What are you doing here?”
My mother had only looked at Penny for a brief moment, her surprise making her pause. Then she turned all of her attention to me. “I heard a rumor that the woman you’re engaged to is here,” she said as if Penny weren’t in the room.
I hadn’t been able to keep the engagement from my mother, of course, though I hadn’t told her that it was a condition of the merger. I’d simply told her that I’d met a nice woman and intended to settle down. She’d besieged me with questions at first, especially about the woman I was marrying and “the quality of her character,” but I’d kept her mostly under control. Then the scandal happened with my father, and the topic of my engagement had gone to the back burner. For months, my mother had been too consumed with humiliation and hatred for my father to badger me too much.
But now Dad was in jail, Penny was here, and I had a situation.
“Mother,” I said, “This is Penny Gold. My fiancée. Penny, this is my mother, Gloria Kane.”
My mother turned to look at Penny again. She looked like she’d swallowed a lemon, and the temperature in the room definitely went down by a few degrees. “I see,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Kane.” Penny held out her hand. She must have noticed how icy my mother was—it was impossible to miss. But she didn’t let on.
My mother looked at Penny’s hand for a long moment in silence. Then she said, “You’re George Gold’s daughter.”
“Yes,” Penny said, her hand still hovering in the air. She finally dropped it.
“And he is…in a monastery, I believe?” My mother said it the same way as if Penny’s father had decided to live in a toilet.
“He’s in Tibet,” Penny said calmly, as if my mother wasn’t being rude. “He’s very happy there.”
“Is that so.” My mother didn’t say it as a question.
I stepped to Penny’s shoulder. She was doing fine on her own, but still. “Mother, this isn’t an interrogation. Be nice.”
My mother looked at me, and her expression softened just a little. I’d made myself immune to her games over the years, and it always struck me anew how other people weren’t prepared for it. My mother was very good at wounding people.
That was how I knew that her next words were going to hurt. I opened my mouth to silence her, but she spoke first.
“Wesley, you’ve had some very beautiful women over the years,” she said to me, again as if Penny wasn’t in the room. “This is who