Wild Swans - Jessica Spotswood Page 0,12

about this?”

“No. I thought we decided—” Granddad’s voice is a teakettle just about to boil.

“No, you decided.” She purses her lips. “I never agreed to anything.”

Chapter

Four

The pavement is hot beneath my bare feet and the sun is scorching the crown of my head, but I go icy with rage. This is what she and Granddad were arguing about on the phone. It has to be.

Granddad looks over his shoulder at Gracie. “This isn’t… We’ll talk about this once we get the girls settled.”

Erica shrugs. “It’s not up for debate. I told you that.”

Why is she doing this? To hurt me? To prove that I’m nothing to her? The way she stands, head thrust forward, it’s obvious that she’s spoiling for a fight.

But not, I realize, with me. Her gaze never leaves Granddad. Alex was right; her problem is with him. She doesn’t care about me or my feelings at all.

Hurt slices through me, like the time last summer I stepped on a shell and Alex had to carry me back to the house.

If Erica cared about me, she wouldn’t have run off. Or she would have stayed in touch. Christmas cards. Birthday presents. Emails. Visits. Something. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

I guess I’d hoped that maybe, deep down, she still felt something. A little bit of curiosity or interest or regret or—

Love.

Stupid. My mother doesn’t love me. She never has.

My throat aches. Tears well up, and I blink them back. I will not cry in front of her.

Behind us, Gracie jumps off the porch swing with a thud. “Don’t fight already, Mama,” she pleads, all blond bounce and sparkle. “We just got here!”

I glance at Isobel. She’s texting furiously on her blinged-out phone like she’s not paying any attention to our argument. But her body language, tense and hunched, gives her away.

Gracie peers up at me. She’s standing so close I can smell her strawberry bubble gum. “I thought you’d have yellow hair like Mama and Iz and me,” she says.

I finger a wet brown curl. “Nope.”

“Were you swimming?” she asks.

I wonder how often she does this. Jumps in and smooths things over for her mother. A six-year-old shouldn’t have to do that. My frostbitten tongue thaws.

“Yep.” I rewrap the gray towel around my waist. I’ve spent half my life in bathing suits. I know I look okay—not model skinny, but swimmer strong. Next to Erica though, I feel like a goddamn Amazon. “You like to swim?”

Gracie pouts. “I don’t know how.”

I gawk at her. I can’t imagine a life without waves and weightlessness.

Gracie thaws Granddad too. “Well, we’ll fix that,” he declares. “Ivy’ll teach you. She’s going to be captain of her school’s swim team next year. She came in second at regionals in the one-hundred-meter backstroke.”

“No!” Erica’s voice is louder than it needs to be. Loud enough that we all turn and stare. She throws her cigarette to the pavement. “I don’t want you in the water, Grace.”

“But, Mama!” Gracie whines.

“I said no!” Erica snaps, and Gracie wilts like week-old lettuce.

Granddad rubs a hand over his beard. “Erica, she can’t spend the summer here without learning to swim. Don’t be—”

“Don’t you dare say ‘ridiculous.’ Considering what happened, what Mom—” Erica breaks off and her gaze darts past us, past the house to the glittering blue Bay, and for a second I think maybe she does have a heart. Coming back here after so long, back to the place where her mother drowned, can’t be easy. I feel the tiniest pinprick of sympathy.

Doesn’t last long.

“Of course not. I didn’t mean…” Granddad says. “But the Bay’s in our backyard. It’s not safe for—”

“I said no, and I’m her mother.” Erica stalks close, gets up in his face. “I make the decisions for my kids. Or else we’re leaving right now.”

“And going where?” Granddad mutters, but he throws his hands up in the air, conceding. “All right. Fine. But we’re going to talk about that other thing later.”

That other thing being me.

Erica will make the decisions for her kids—except me, because I’m not hers anymore. Not according to her and not legally either. She signed away her rights to me when I was four. Granddad had to hire a private investigator to track her down. She was waitressing at some vegetarian café on the Upper East Side while her boyfriend, Isobel’s dad, acted in plays off-off-Broadway.

Erica sets her coffee down on the hood of her beat-up silver car and searches through her bag. “Where the hell are the movers? They