Revulsion creeped over my skin.
My mother knew my father had tried to kill me all those years ago, and she was in on the plan.
Our entire relationship, as I knew it, was a lie. She never cared for me. She had simply bided her time because she knew my father would die one day and wanted to be on my good side when she asked me to marry Louisa.
I smiled coldly, stepping away from her. “Consider the will unfulfilled. You’re poor now, Mother. Although, really, you have been poor your entire life. Money means nothing in the grand scheme of things when you don’t have any integrity. Spare us both the trouble and embarrassment and don’t call me anymore. From now on, I won’t pick up.”
I felt like a rare bird. An explosion of colors, high heels, and outrageous bling as I dragged my faux-crocodile suitcase behind me, slinking into my parents’ suburban house. I could feel the neighbors’ stares heating the nape of my back through their Roman blinds and sensitive shutters.
I was sure there were plenty of things for a thirty-year-old former party animal to do in the suburbs of Boston.
Unfortunately, I had no idea what they were.
Not that it mattered. I couldn’t exactly dance my sorrows away at a roof party, drink to a point of distraction (what a buzzkill you are, Baby Whitehall), or even treat myself to a shopping spree that ended in the same way all shopping sprees should end—munching on an order of Wetzel’s Pretzels cheese dog bites while trying to balance one hundred and fifty shopping bags, their handles digging into the flesh of my forearms.
Wellesley was not known for its shopping malls and cultural landmarks.
Or for anything, really, other than being close to Boston.
But what depressed me the most was that I didn’t even want to snort lines of coke with rock stars in public restrooms or sing “Like a Virgin” in a karaoke bar while my friends toppled over with gusto, because I was anything but. I wanted lame, weird things. Like snuggling next to Devon on his freaking eight-thousand-dollar couch (of course I Google shopped it. What am I, an amateur?).
I wanted to watch his boring, four-hour long documentaries about sustainable plastic bags and killer slugs.
I was curled into myself on the guestroom bed when my dad knocked on my door. Mom was out—she was now a part of the Ladies Who Lunch committee. The irony, of course, was that the ladies didn’t lunch at all. They munched on dressing-free salads and discussed grave topics, like The Dukans or the Zone diet.
Guessed he wanted to see if we were still on talking terms.
Were we?
“Belly-Belle,” he sing-songed. “I’m off to go fishing. How ’bout you join your old man? Can’t go wrong with fresh air and sweetened iced tea.”
“Pass,” I murmured into my pillow.
“Oh c’mon, kiddo.” I admired his ability to pretend yesterday didn’t happen and at the same time suck up to me because of yesterday.
“I’m busy today.”
“You don’t look busy to me.”
“You know nothing about my life, Dad.”
“I know everything about your life, Belly-Belle. I know about your club, about your dates, about your friends, about your fears. I know, for instance, that you are miserable right now, and it can’t just be about me. You went a lifetime pretending it didn’t happen. Something’s eatin’ you up. Let me help.”
Thing was he couldn’t help.
No one could help the lost cause that was Emmabelle Penrose.
The vixen who didn’t care so much about sex after all, but about intimacy. I wanted to know what it felt like to belong to someone. But not just anyone. To a devilish, blue-eyed rake.
“Ugh, why are you so obsessed with me,” I moaned, forcing myself off the bed and dragging my feet along the floor. I wrestled into a pair of daisy dukes, leaving them unbuttoned because of Baby Whitehall, and threw on a baggy, ruffled white top. I didn’t look ready for fishing anything that wasn’t compliments about my killer legs, but here we were.
The drive to Lake Waban passed in silence, punctuated by Dad asking questions about Devon, work, and Persy. I answered with the enthusiasm of a woman facing death row—and just as much liveliness. Once we arrived, he rented a boat, hurled all of his fishing gear into it, and rowed to the middle of the lake.
On the boat, I complained about my early maternity leave from Madame Mayhem. Dad told me that work was a distraction from life and that life wasn’t a distraction from work, and that I had my priorities all wrong. It sounded like a botched inspirational quote by John Lennon, but he was trying so hard I didn’t scold him for it.
“And besides, we need to meet this Devon guy.” Dad flipped his ball cap backward, trying to make me laugh, to no avail.