then gnawed the cuticles, before saying, finger in her mouth, “Yeah, I know. Talking to her comes so naturally. I have conversations with my mom on a regular basis. In my head. Out loud. I miss her sooo much.”
“I bet,” I said.
I grabbed an unopened bottle of champagne from the fridge. There was no way I was going to play by the rules anymore—play the grown-up. Their games were too screwed up, even by my standards. From now on, if I wanted a drink, I’d have one.
“I’m so sorry if I hurt your feelings,” Jen murmured. “I was feeling dishonest. I didn’t want you paying for a fake trip to Italy.” She didn’t want to look me in the eye, her knees now drawn up to her chest, as she still fidgeted on the stool. Regarding her again more closely—yes, she did look nineteen. I’d been so gullible. Such a bumbling, gullible fool. They were teenagers without guidance. They needed an adult to straighten them out.
“Look,” I said, “this is all a bit overwhelming. You’ve hit me with humdinger news about your mum already being dead, that you’re only nineteen… you are nineteen, I hope? You’d better not be under eighteen. I mean, if you’re all still minors—children in the eyes of the law—I could get in trouble.” Jen breezily smoking that joint came to mind. Good Lord, I could even be arrested or had for kidnap!
“Don’t worry, we are nineteen.”
Trusting the triplets would be a huge leap of faith now. I wished I’d paid more attention when Juan bought the house. Although I had verified with the real estate agent and Mrs. Reed that the triplets existed, I had never looked at their IDs, never double-checked.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “This house. Did it really belong to your family? Or is that another total fabrication? Because, Jen, I don’t even know who you lot are! I’d like to see your passports, actually. That would make me feel much more at ease. I mean, not because I don’t believe you, or that I mistrust you—although I have to admit you’ve been pretty shady with me, concocting your elaborate backstory—but if something happened, anyone could get run over by a bus, any time, any day!” I used Mr. Donner’s favorite expression. Something clicked: every time Mrs. Reed had come to clean, the triplets hadn’t been home. I needed concrete verification.
“I’ll show you my I.D., sure,” Jen said easily. “I’m sorry, we’ve been totally out of line. I can understand why you’d never want to give us another chance.”
“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say I wouldn’t give you another chance. I think everyone deserves another chance. Well, almost anyone. I just need you to be straight with me from now on. All of you.”
“Straight as a dice. As a die,” Jen said with finality.
Twenty-Six
A week later, the triplets hadn’t gone anywhere, least of all to Napoli to eat the best pizza and gelato in the world. Things carried on as normal. Better than normal, apart from my bouts of depression about Juan and my sleep-deprived, sweaty nights. The triplets behaved impeccably and were being more attentive and sweet than ever, helping around the house, doing the shopping, cooking lovely meals, and always cleaning up after themselves. They were on their best behavior.
On the days I wasn’t at Mr. Donner’s and when the triplets were at work, the house fell silent without their banter. Staring at the view—the ocean a shimmering blanket of blues and afternoon golds—I felt loneliness creeping into me, crawling along my flesh, giving me a taste of how it would feel if they weren’t living here. The chill of it made the hairs on my skin rise. I imagined myself alone again, encased in the lonely womb of Cliffside for good. No more fun dinners. No more of Dan’s pontifications about science and physics. The girls’ wide smiles and Jen’s cheekiness a memory. And something else was battering at the threshold of my mind: the anonymous warnings had stopped the moment I became friends with them. I could swear their presence was keeping me safe.
I was glad I had let them stay on.
Later in the day, as I was cleaning up in Jen’s room, I found a photo album she had made. Pictures of all of us. At the beach. Laughing. Playing charades. She had carefully drawn hearts and flowers in the margins. I started humming the song she had written for me, “Pretty Brit Widow.”