Dark Heart (Dark Heart 1)

But I haven’t let my guard down, and for good reason. I found a camera in my bedroom back in January, its lens hidden in my antique chifforobe. I assume my phone calls are recorded, too. There’s a little symbol on the phone that wasn’t always there; it appeared after my mom snapped on the phone’s protective case.

“I won’t,” I promise.

“Make the boys treat you like a princess.”

I laugh as he lets me out of the liquor-scented hug. “Dad, I think you’re drunk.”

“I’m not. I’m happy for my oldest daughter as she rounds out her senior year and gets ready for Columbia.”

“You’re just happy that I didn’t want to go to Harvard.”

“That too. Harvard is too far away.”

It thrills me to hear my dad say that. For months, he’s been checked out. Half the time, he doesn’t seem to notice me at all. It’s nice to know he still cares.

“I think you warmed on Columbia when Mom said you didn’t have to live here with us,” he says. “Unless…mistakes are made.”

I snort, forcing a smile as I look down at my boots. “That’s not true.”

Dad ruffles my hair. “Sure it isn’t, cara.”

I stick my tongue out, and the intercom on his wall crackles. “Franc, will you send shona to my dressing room?”

“I will.” He winks at me. “I think your mother’s got the beauty army ready.”

I stick a hand up in an awkward little wave, feeling weird but kind of happy about all the attention aimed my way tonight. “Bye, Daddy.”

“I’ll be there to see you off, cara.”

Cara. I think about the pet name as I walk down the long hall past our home theater, Mom’s Pilates room, and the art studio and therapy space my parents made for Bec when she was younger.

Why does my dad call me cara? I have some memory of him telling me it means dear little one…or something like that. Daddy calls me cara and Mom calls me shona. I know shona is a Bengali endearment. But Cara?

I feel like maybe cara is Italian. How weird would that be? If my dad knows Italian—and he clearly does—I figure he would have to have learned it sometime in the last few years, for whatever “work” he’s doing with…whoever. But it’s weird because I’ve never heard him speak the language once except that night at the wedding.

The night I met Luca, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I shake my head as I approach the staircases. There are two of them—hanging staircases like frozen ribbons that curl down toward the first floor.

I smile to myself as I ascend the right-hand staircase. Both are made of glossy hardwood and covered with red carpet, such that I have always felt a little like a princess or celebrity as I climb them.

It’s too bad my bedroom isn’t upstairs, or I’d get to do this every night. But only the master suite is upstairs, with its prima views of the river. My room, Bec’s, the suite my parents started using after Bec started using a wheelchair, and all the guestrooms are on the first floor, along with an additional 2,000 square feet for staff. Raya, the chef; Jazmine, the household manager; and Darryl, our security person, live under our roof, and one of the nurses sleeps over almost every night—in a room that adjoins Bec’s—since Mom stopped.

That thought sours my mood, but I try to lift myself out of it. I can hear Ana, one of the newer nurses, singing to Bec as I walk past her room.

I try not to think about the difference between our lives—Becca’s and mine. She can’t even speak, can barely lift her head, and someone that she barely knows is singing to her—music that maybe she doesn’t even want to hear right now. While I’m walking toward my parents’ room to get dressed up for a ball.

Luca can’t pick me up, but I’ll be with him all night. I’m loved by him. Even if he doesn’t come to Columbia with me—and I’m going to make sure he comes to Columbia with me—it’s not as if I’m going to lose him. He’s amazing, and he’s mine. Sometimes I feel like I have the whole world, and sweet Becca has nothing.

And now I’m thinking about it, and I can’t think about it right before I have my makeup done!

Does this make me just like Mom: so willing to move on and live my life?

But wouldn’t Bec want me to do that?

Stop stop stop stop stop! Stop.

I step into a guest bathroom to dab at my eyes. There is nothing I can do about the way things are. Not one thing that I’m not doing. I spent an hour with Bec after I got home from school today, and I’ll go by and see her again after I’m dolled up. Despite my guilt, I know she’ll love to see me in a gorgeous gown—just like she loved seeing my Luca.