It took me nearly an hour and a half to arrive at the front gate. I had been so tense the whole time that it was a wonder I didn’t get into an accident. This wasn’t going to be very pleasant for any of us.
I wasn’t happy about defying their wishes, even though I felt justified. Since Kiera had left for college, I had done everything they asked of me. Although I wanted to succeed in school to please myself and for my mother’s memory, I was also aware of how well
it reflected on them. Until now, I had never done anything to displease either of them. I didn’t violate the curfews they set for me. I avoided parties that could turn into Kiera-like parties. I took good care of everything they gave me and never took anything for granted.
I was aware of how hard Jordan tried to be more than a foster mother to me. I wouldn’t deny that there were many times when the three of us went out to dinner or when they had guests for dinner and I was present that I felt almost like their natural child. I wanted to feel like family. I did the best I could to overcome all that made me hesitate or feel guilty about accepting them.
But I knew that this was going to make things different. Whether Donald was sincere about not wanting me to turn out like his daughter or whether it was just a matter of his ego, I expected that his disappointment was going to have dire consequences for me. It was very possible that he would carry through with a threat and throw me out of the March house. If anything, he would now hammer home to Jordan how smart he was not to have legally adopted me.
I parked and went to the front door, pausing to catch my breath. It seemed like yesterday when I had stood there with Ryder and taken the same deep breath that made him say I looked as if I was about to go underwater. I certainly felt I was doing that right now.
No one was standing there when I entered. The house was ominously quiet and dimly lit. I waited for a moment to see if either Jordan or Donald would come charging out of a room, or even Mrs. Duval might appear, but no one did. Practically tiptoeing down the hallway, I stopped to glance into the sitting room on my right. At first, I saw no one, and I was about to turn to head for the stairway when I heard Donald say my name.
I looked again and saw him sitting under an unlit lamp. With only the reflection of another smaller light across the room illuminating him, he looked like a shadow shaped like a man. He reached up and turned on the lamp. I saw that he was sitting there with a drink in his hand. The sight of him so quiet and so dark frightened me. I didn’t move.
“Please come in, Sasha,” he said.
I entered slowly, looking to see if Jordan was sitting anywhere.
“Jordan’s up in the bedroom,” he said. “She’s taking all this very hard. I had to get her to take her pills to sleep.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Just sit,” he replied in a very tired voice of defeat.
For a few long moments, he said nothing. I felt a great ache in my chest as I forced back my tears.
“It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to predict how your children will turn out,” he began. He sipped his drink. “As hard as it might be for you to believe, when Kiera was much younger, she was more like Alena. I don’t know what changed her. Maybe it was the birth of her younger sister and the attention Alena needed and got, but there were times when I wondered if someone had substituted another young girl in our house.” He smiled. “You know, like one of those Twilight Zone things or a horror movie.
“Anyway,” he continued, “Jordan, especially, liked to believe, probably still likes to believe, that if Alena had made it to your age, she would have been just like you. I don’t know how many times she’s looked out the window at you doing something outside or commented about something you said or did at school and then said, ‘just like Alena would.’ ”
“What was happening to Ryder Garfield and me just wasn’t fair,” I said. “If Alena was the way you and Jordan say she was, she would have felt the same way.”
He lost his smile. “Alena was an angel. It wasn’t in her to be able to betray anyone, much less anyone she loved.”
“Then she wouldn’t have betrayed Ryder Garfield,” I insisted.
“Oh, please. How many times do you think you’ll fall in love before you find someone you’ll marry?”
“I don’t know. How many times did you?”
He put his glass down hard on the side table. “I suggest you go up to your room and go to bed. Neither of us is in the right mood to discuss this intelligently or even calmly. Go on!” he ordered.
I flinched, and then I stood, picked up my travel bag, glanced at him, and hurried out of the room to the stairs. The hard, cold look on his face put speed in my steps. I practically ran up to my room. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I might faint. I stood there after I closed the door and hugged myself. I was actually too frightened to cry. My tears froze behind my eyes.
Still shaking, I put my things away, undressed, and got into bed. I thought I heard his footsteps in the hallway. It seemed that he stopped at my door. I held my breath, anticipating him entering, but he didn’t. It grew deadly quiet again. The moon pushed away the clouds in front of it and sent beams of silvery light through the windows, lighting up Alena’s wall of giraffes. For a moment, they looked as if they were all moving in a gallop, as if they had been frightened by a tiger or something. My imagination was running rampant.
I closed my eyes but immediately recalled Ryder’s look of absolute pain as the police dragged him away. It was a haunting look. All I could think was that he somehow blamed me. Like me, he was surely wondering how they had come to the right motel and the right door so quickly. Did he think I had bragged to my girlfriends, telling them how we would have this rendezvous? Did he think it was all my fault? What was in his eyes?
I hoped and prayed that in the morning, I would somehow be able to speak to him and that somehow we would find our way back to each other. I thought that falling asleep would be practically impossible now, but I had underestimated how much the driving and the emotional strain had battered me. I fell into such a deep sleep, in fact, that it seemed I had sunk into the bed. Even the morning sunlight streaming out of a cloudless sky and ripping away the darkness didn’t wake me. If Mrs. Duval had come to see how I was, she surely had left quietly, hoping not to disturb me.
I would always remember hearing a shrill, piercing scream, even though no one in the March household had screamed. It woke me with the surprise of an electric shock. I shuddered for a moment like someone going into a convulsion, and then I sat up quickly and cried, “What?”
Silence greeted me. There was no one else in my suite. I glanced at the clock. I had slept until almost nine-fifteen. Feeling achy and groaning like a ninety-year-old woman, I struggled to get out of bed and into the bathroom. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw the face of someone who had not slept or, if she had, had tossed and turned through an avalanche of debilitating nightmares. Cold water did little to revive me. I had barely enough energy to run a brush through my hair twice. Then I went to throw something on and go face the music. There was no sense locking myself in my room to avoid it. What was done was done. I was prepared to accept whatever fate had in store for me.
Or at least, I thought I was. How would I ever know?
The silence in the house surprised me. No one was moving about on our floor. Where was Mrs. Duval, the other maids? Why hadn’t Mrs. Caro sent for me? Surely, everyone knew I was home by now. I turned down the stairway slowly and paused. The silence below was just as deep. There was no one in sight. I was like the ghost of myself descending, not feeling my feet on the steps or my hand on the railing. Maybe I had died last night, and my body was still in my bed.