“You were wearing a denim skirt and a paisley shirt with short puffed sleeves and you had earrings like feathers that matched the red in the shirt. You looked very pretty.”
Logan saw his mother’s face change. “Do you mean you were the child who tried to come into the house? Through the laundry?”
“You’re the kid who went through my schoolbag,” interrupted Brooke.
“Yes.” Savannah turned to Brooke. “You shouted at me too. That same day.”
“Well, you were stealing my banana,” said Brooke defensively.
“I was starving,” said Savannah.
“Still, that didn’t give you the right to—”
“You don’t get it,” said Savannah. “I was literally starving.”
Her tightly clenched tone stilled them all. A space seemed to open up around her.
“What do you mean?” faltered Joy.
“Just that.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Joy. “You couldn’t have been starving. I know for a fact your brother ate well. He had to, to play at that level.”
“My brother lived with my father,” said Savannah. “I lived with my mother. Harry ate rib eye steak and potatoes every day. If he was going to play at Wimbledon, then I was going to perform with the Royal Ballet. That’s what my mother said. My brother needed to be strong, I needed to be ethereal.”
Her lip lifted on the word ethereal.
“But … what about your father?” asked Joy. “Didn’t you tell him you were … hungry?”
“I tried,” said Savannah. “I tried to tell my brother too. But my mother told them I was making it up. Being dramatic. I only went to my father’s place one night a week. It had to be a weeknight because on the weekend Harry had his tennis commitments.”
She said “tennis commitments” the way someone gives the name of their ex’s new partner.
“I used to stuff myself on that one night a week at my father’s house. That’s where I perfected my binge-eating skills.” She gave a ghoulish kind of grin. “Anyhoo.”
“Oh, Savannah.” Joy dragged her fingertips down her cheeks. All that red-hot anger seemed to have left her as suddenly as it arrived. She looked sad and exhausted and old, and Logan remembered the feeling of disbelief, as though he were witnessing a natural disaster, when his mother’s legs gave way on Father’s Day. He moved closer. This time he’d be ready.
Joy said, “All I remember is that you and your mother lived in South Australia.”
“We moved there a year after Harry’s first lesson with you,” said Savannah. A chatty dinner-party guest quickly summing up her life story. “I didn’t see my dad and brother anymore. It was like they forgot I existed. Dad sent money. I was just an annoying bill he had to pay. Like the electricity.”
“I’m so sorry.” Joy’s hands fluttered helplessly.
“Oh, no, it’s fine,” said Savannah, as if Joy had apologized for cutting in front of her in a queue. “I mean, there were some really bad years in Adelaide…” She stopped. No longer the chatty guest.
She breathed deeply, widened her shoulders, pushed them down and back, as if waiting for the music to begin.
She said, “But then I gave up ballet. Best in the neighborhood, one of the best in the state, but I was never an extraordinary dancer, the way Harry was an extraordinary tennis player. When my mother finally realized I’d never be as good at ballet as Harry was at tennis, she lost interest. So no more food deprivation—hooray!”
Logan and Brooke exchanged glances. He could see his own doubt reflected on her face. Was any of this bizarre story even true?
Logan knew that Savannah had taken the story she’d told him from that documentary. He knew that she’d lied to Troy about his father. So wasn’t it possible she’d also taken this story of a starving child in their midst from somewhere else? Did it even matter now? The facts kept slithering from his grasp. Trying to see Savannah was like trying to catch a true reflection in a funhouse maze of mirrors. The cadences of her voice, her gestures, her stance: he saw now how constantly she merged and morphed into different kinds of people. One moment she was a genteel middle-aged lady and the next she was a rough, tough-talking teen.
Logan tried to take control with the facts he’d gathered, the facts he knew to be true. “Savannah, I went to see your boyfriend. Dave. That story you told about him hitting you. It never happened.”
Savannah lifted her chin. “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
“You lied to us,” insisted Logan. He needed her to confirm the truth of this so he could find his footing and they could move forward. “I know it’s a lie.”