Wild Swans - Jessica Spotswood Page 0,6

eyes are pretty. They’ve got little gold flecks near the center.

I glance down to collect my composure, and when I look up, he’s examining Dorothea’s pictures again.

I’m so stupid. Connor isn’t interested in me; he’s interested in the Milbourn legacy. He wrote a whole paper on my great-grandmother.

It stings more than it should.

“You don’t know anything about me. You have no idea what it means to be a Milbourn,” I say.

“So tell me,” Connor says, and for a minute I am tempted to do just that. Spill all my messy secrets.

“Ivy? Connor?” Granddad’s loafers squeak against the floor outside his office, and then his footsteps pad down the stairs. “There you are. Good to see you, Connor.”

“Hey, Professor. You’ve got a beautiful house.”

“Thank you.” Granddad’s voice sounds like a thread about to snap. I want to ask him how the phone call went, what Erica said—but not in front of Connor. “Ivy, the timer’s going off in the kitchen. I could hear it through the vent. Is that lunch?”

“Oh shit. The bread!” I can’t even make lunch right.

“Language, Ivy,” Granddad chides.

“Sorry.” I run for the kitchen.

They follow me. “It’s our housekeeper’s day off, so Ivy made us lunch,” Granddad says.

“Thanks, Ivy,” Connor says, but I wince. Here I am whining about my family history, and he probably sees a privileged white girl who doesn’t realize how lucky she has it. He wouldn’t be wrong. I’ve grown up with every advantage. My college applications are going to be amazing.

But I’d trade every one of those private lessons for a normal family.

“You should come over for supper sometime when Luisa’s here. Her spaghetti and meatballs are not to be missed,” Granddad brags.

Connor smiles. “That sounds amazing. I miss my mother’s cooking.”

“Luisa’s like a mother to me,” I say, and immediately wish I could shove those defensive words back down my throat. It’s true, but I don’t owe Connor any explanations. Why am I letting him get me all rattled?

Connor nods politely, his face inscrutable.

Great. Now he must think I’m crazy. Or awful enough that I have to pay someone to act like my mother.

• • •

Lunch is awkward. Granddad and Connor talk about poetry while I stare out the window at the choppy, gray waves beating against the shore. I think about my mother. Wonder what she’s really like. I’ve heard stories—not from Granddad, who seldom speaks of her, but from Amelia when she comes over for faculty parties and has a second glass of pinot grigio.

People in Cecil love to gossip about my family. I’ve grown up with old ladies calling me a poor dear and then whispering behind my back. They talk about how troubled my mother was, or they say she was a real handful, that she drank too much and slept around and put the poor Professor through the wringer.

Then there’s my grandmother. Some people say it was a real shame what happened to Grace. Some say she was selfish to leave her daughter and husband. Others say it was fate—that the Milbourn women are all reckless and bound for bad ends. Dorothea went and had that affair and got herself murdered, didn’t she? And her mother… Well, Charlotte Milbourn didn’t intend for any of her children to escape that train. Dorothea started keeping a journal soon afterward, a practice she kept till the day she died. She wrote plainly about everything else—plainly enough to make me blush sometimes—but not about the collision that took her mother and sisters’ lives. That, she referred to just once. As “the accident.” They never proved it was purposeful.

Cursed. Doomed. Crazy. The words are a drumbeat in the back of my mind. Once I found an old videotape of my mother singing in her middle school chorus. She was tall and blond and coltish, not grown into her arms and legs yet, gawky as hell. Amelia told me Erica was in a band later. Does she still sing, or did she run away from that too?

“Ivy?” Judging from the way he and Connor are staring at me, expectant, it’s not the first time Granddad has called my name. I drag my attention back to their conversation. “I was saying that you should show Connor your work sometime.”

“My work?” I choke.

“Your poems. The ones you’re planning to submit,” he clarifies. Thank God he doesn’t ask me to go get them. This brings back mortifying memories of command flute performances of “Silent Night” at the English department Christmas parties. “Connor’s a talented poet.”

“Of course