“Hullo.” Whitley plopped on the edge of my desk, swishing her magnificent ash-blonde hair with a smile. “You have a visitor downstairs.”
“I do?” I perked up instantly, ashamed of how excited I was, then cleared my throat, rearranging myself in my seat.
Whitley’s smile broadened, coated with enough lip gloss to fill a bowl of slime. “Oh, honey, I think it’s wonderful that you’re reconnecting with her. Even if the reason for your new relationship is what happened with your father. Should I buzz her up?”
I blinked rapidly before the penny dropped. It took everything in me not to groan.
“No, I’ll go down to see her, thanks.”
“Arya! I’m so glad I got the address right. I thought your father mentioned something about you working on this street.” My mother tugged her white leather glove from each of her fingers before removing it completely. She was clad in one of her more iconic dresses from my childhood.
“Yes, Mother. I’ve been working here for four years, give or take. We have biannual parties for our clients on the roof. Conrad used to come.”
He used to help me clean up afterward too. My mother, however, tossed my invitations into the trash unfailingly.
She had the good sense to look embarrassed, smiling apologetically. “Arya, can we talk?”
With a head jerk toward the nearest coffee shop, I led the way. I allowed my mother to pay for our coffees, knowing she was going to make a fuss about it if I didn’t. When she sat down, she produced something from her Chanel bag.
“I got you a present for your birthday.”
“That’s a first,” I couldn’t help muttering, but I opened the thing anyway. The box was lovely. Blue velvet. I thought it’d be a bracelet or a diamond choker. My mother had a soft spot for fine jewelry. But when I swiped away the fine tissue paper, I found something completely unexpected. It was a framed picture of me and Aaron when we were babies. We were both on our bellies, staring at the camera, wide eyed.
I coughed to cover my emotions. “We looked so different from one another.”
My eyes were green, his dark brown. My hair was brown, his blond.
“Yes.” My mother wrapped her delicate fingers over her coffee cup. “I went through IVF treatments. When I fell pregnant, it was with triplets. But your father only wanted two children, and it was a high-risk pregnancy, so the doctors sided with him. You were supposed to have another sibling.”
My head flew up from my present, my eyes widening. “You never told me that.”
She shrugged. “You never asked.”
“What were you expecting? Hi, Mom, what’s for breakfast today? Oh, and by the way, did you ever have a selective reduction when you were pregnant with us? Yes, pancakes are fine.” But before she could answer, I frowned. “Wait, Conrad didn’t want any more kids?”
I had always thought it to be weird that my mother hadn’t fallen pregnant again in the years after losing Aaron.
“No. I could barely get him to agree to have you two. Of course, it worked out well, as you are his pride and joy now.”
Was, I was tempted to correct. Surprisingly, I didn’t have any trouble believing my mother about Conrad controlling the number of kids they’d had. It was just another horrific revelation to be added to the chain of evidence mounting against him.
So I guessed we were having this conversation now.
“Forgive my bluntness, Mother, but you didn’t exactly act like you were eager to raise the one child you had left.” I took a sip of my coffee. Noticed my hand was shaking.
My mother put her cup down, snatching my hands across the table. “Look at me, Arya.” I did. Not because I wanted to but because I had to give her the chance to explain herself after all these years. “It was a defense mechanism, okay? Your father would often threaten to take you away. In fact, whenever he and I fought, whenever I wanted to walk away, he would use that card against me. He said he’d have full custody over you, because I was such a bad parent, before I even had the chance to become a bad parent. Then I realized it wasn’t going to matter. He’d have done as he wished with or without my efforts. It was a catch-22. I was conditioned not to become too close to you, because I never knew if he’d let me keep you. And he is a very persuasive and manipulative man, as I’m sure you’re starting to see. I didn’t want to get attached to you. Didn’t want my heart to break even more after Aaron.”
My chest was hurting so bad I was surprised I could still breathe. I felt like my walls were crumbling down brick by brick, and I had no way to stop it. I’d always carefully constructed my reality into a digestible picture. Dad was the saint, Mom the sinner. She was the villain in my story, not the victim, and my reality, the one thing I’d thought I had that was stable and true, no longer made sense.