I angled my body to look her full in the face. The wash of light from the café’s back window was enough for me to see her expression. It appeared sincere. “Why did you fuck my father, Lily?”
26
Lily flinched. “I didn’t.”
“Liar.” It was a soft murmur. “I don’t care by the way—you didn’t belong to me, could be with anyone you wanted, but why the son and the father?”
She turned to go back into the café. I slammed my palm down on the door to stop her. “Did my mother know?”
She paled. Spinning around, her sleek ponytail flying, she said, “What the hell? Do you think I drove your mother off the road?”
I shrugged.
“You know what? Screw this. I fucked you and your father because I wanted to stick it to your bitch of a mother.” Lips pressed tight. “She treated me like an indentured servant. I liked knowing I’d deflowered her precious son, and screwed her asshole husband. I also liked knowing it was something she didn’t know.”
I remembered how my mother had spoken to Lily, drunk on her power over this young woman with hopes and dreams. A young woman she’d never again be herself. “She wasn’t very nice to you.”
Lily’s face . . . shivered, before she got herself under control. “Shit. Shit. I shouldn’t have said that, not after . . .” She hugged herself. “What I did to you was wrong. You were a kid. The guilt eats at me.”
“You were only three years older.”
“Three very long years.” A shake of her head. “I better go back in, but please tell me I didn’t mess you up sexually.”
I thought of my emotionless hookups with every woman who wasn’t Paige.
Was that on Lily?
Or was that who I’d always been and always would be?
Pulling a cigarette from a pack I didn’t remember putting in my jacket pocket, I said, “Don’t worry about it.”
My answer didn’t seem to satisfy her, but when one of her staff stuck their head outside looking for her, she left with them. As I stood there in the dark, an unlit cigarette in my mouth, I considered what I’d learned. Lily was running a brothel. Which wasn’t illegal if she’d done the right paperwork, paid her taxes, and the location was in a permitted zone.
Just another business.
Depending on how long she’d been running it, that explained her ability to buy this café. Maybe the café was also a discreet way for possible clients to check out the merchandise—no doubt for a fee—and yeah, that was probably crossing the line, but I wasn’t the morality police. Neither was I the neighborhood snitch.
The only thing about which I cared was whether Lily had anything to do with my mother’s death, and I couldn’t see the motive. Even if Lily had started young in the industry and my mother had discovered her secret life, it wasn’t like she could bad-mouth her—the two hadn’t moved in the same circles.
Pulling a lighter from my pocket, I cupped my hands around the cigarette and lit it. A flare of heat in the darkness, and then the tip glowed. I drew in the nicotine, feeling my lungs burn with each breath.
After smoking the poison of it down to the filter, I crushed the butt under my heel.
Then I began to walk home, cloaked in darkness. No sense in moving the sedan when I hadn’t parked it that far from my father’s house. At one point, I found my eyes drawn to a lit window just visible through the trees. Someone was moving in Alice and Cora’s laundry room. I knew the full layout of the lower floor of their house. I’d snuck in there a couple of times as a kid for shits and giggles.
All I’d taken was a banana from the fruit basket to prove to my waiting schoolmate that I’d actually walked around the home.
No Grandma Elei back then. Watching. Always watching.
I needed to talk to her, but she’d say “No English” and shut the door in my face if I tried. But she liked Shanti. I’d use Shanti.
“Just like your father. I wish I’d had a girl.”
My abs clenched at the voice of memory. How old had I been when my mother had quietly said those words, alcohol fumes merging with the rich scent of her perfume? Twelve? Thirteen? I’d pushed her that day, shoving past her so she staggered into a wall.
“Your father’s son.”
The words of regret had followed me out the door and all the