“She probably cheats, too,” he says. “It isn’t like they have some grand passion.”
“She loves him,” I say softly. “She’s never cheated on him.” “How do you know all of this and I don’t?”
“Because I’ve been there, Rhyson.” Pent up emotion pushes my voice out louder than I intend. “You left and never looked back. I’m the one who stayed. I saw what happened."
“What did you see?” His eyes never leave my face. Maybe he’s really seeing me for the first time since we were kids.
I hear my father screwing that girl as if I’m standing down in the foyer again.
“I heard him.” I draw a deep breath, releasing it on a shaky exhale. “I went home after spring break but didn’t tell them I was coming. As soon as I walked in the house, I heard them upstairs. Someone having sex. Like loud, so I knew they didn’t think anyone else was in the house.”
I lean forward, propping my elbows on my knees and scooping my hair away from my face before going on.
“There was this part of me that was happy.” I shake my head, remembering the goofy grin I wore thinking I’d caught my parents making love. “I never thought they loved each other. I knew they were. . . partners, but I didn’t think of them as having sex. Of enjoying each other.”
“Yeah, neither did I.” Rhyson clears his throat. “And then what happened?”
“Then Mom walked through the front door.” I meet Rhyson’s horrified eyes. “Yeah. She walked in and heard him fucking someone upstairs. And I was standing right there, thinking the whole time it was her.”
I pop up, on my feet and pace around my office, because even the memory agitates me.
“She wasn’t shocked.” A staccato laugh chokes me. “Devastated, but not shocked. She was used to it. She accepted it.”
“Why doesn’t she just leave him?” Rhyson asks. “If it hurts so badly, why not just leave? Is it the business?”
“No, that’s what I thought.” I walk over to join him at the window, setting one hip on the windowsill and leaning my shoulder against the pane. “She brushed it off like it meant nothing, but later that night, I found her drunk and crying. Just . . . this pathetic person, nothing like our mother at all.”
I bite my lip, as if I can physically hold back the last of a dirty secret, but it’s about to spill out of me.
“She loves him. She doesn’t leave because she can’t. She loves him desperately.”
I tip my head back, preferring the ceiling to the perplexed look on my brother’s face.
“She has vodka for breakfast to get through the day,” I say. “Did you know that? Bloody Marys if she’s in public, but at home, she just drinks vodka first thing in the morning.”
“Are you saying our mother is an alcoholic?” Disbelief, horror, smudge the clear gray of Rhyson’s eyes. “How could I not know all of this?”
“Like I said, you weren’t around.” A wry grin tilts my mouth. “And you were already running from us. As if you needed more reason to stay away. I didn’t want to tell you now that you’re finally trying with our parents. I didn’t think any of this would endear us to you.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Rhyson pushes his fingers through his unruly hair. “What to think. It’s like there was this whole world going on that I knew nothing about. Our parents. The cheating. Mom’s drinking.”
He gives me a direct look that probes for anything else I might be hiding.
“You and Grip. What does all of this have to do with the two of you?”
I lean my temple against the cool glass and don’t respond. I don’t want to talk about this with him. We go years without talking about anything but music and business and shit that doesn’t matter, and he wants to go excavating my brain while our first release rockets up the charts.
“Grip isn’t our father.” Rhyson turns my chin with his finger until I have to meet his eyes. “And you’re definitely not our mother.”
“Aren’t I?” I shake my head, lowering my eyes to hide anything else from him. “You don’t believe that. You know how alike we are.”
“Not in the ways that count,” Rhyson says. “I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t trust you when you first came back into my life. I thought she could manipulate you. You know that.”
“So did she. That’s why she didn’t completely lose her mind when I left New York to come here. She thought she could get to you through me.”
Rhyson’s jaw becomes granite.
“I know that.” He looks at me, his eyes losing some of their stoniness. “But she couldn’t. She didn’t. You’re not her.”