In the meantime, I thought I might find a way to return to Roxy’s hotel by myself. It might mean more lying, I thought, but I couldn’t help it. Now that I had bitten the apple, I wanted the whole thing. I wanted to know more about her, and even though I wouldn’t admit it, I wanted her to know more about me.
I had been hoping to get home before my father arrived. Most weekdays, he didn’t get home from work until just before dinner, but today he was already there. I was frightened because his presence was unexpected, and I thought maybe, just maybe, he had thought to have me followed after school or something. Maybe he didn’t believe anything I had said at breakfast. I could barely breathe when he looked at me, but I knew I had better do all I could not to look guilty about anything.
“Why do you look so disturbed?” he asked me immediately, however. Papa was great at reading faces, especially mine.
“I wasted my time studying with them,” I said. “All they wanted to do was gossip. Now I have to work harder tonight for tomorrow.”
Papa’s eyebrows rose, and then he laughed. “She’s a chip off my old block, all right.”
I breathed with relief, but I was still nervous. I hadn’t lied this much to either of my parents until now.
“I’ll just put my things away and come down to help you with dinner, Mama,” I said.
“No need. It’s all done, Emmie. We’ll call you when it’s time to eat.”
I nodded and hurried up to my room. I did try to study, but my mind kept wandering back to Roxy. I had always struggled with memories, trying to conjure up anything that would remind me of her. Because I was so young when she left, it took me a while to understand that she was no longer there. I remembered asking about her, but Papa wouldn’t respond, and Mama always told me to do something else or pay attention to something else. I vaguely recalled going into her room to look for her. After a while, she seemed to drift out of my young mind like a passing dream.
She was still dreamlike to me, even after seeing her as much as I had today. How could she look so beautiful and vibrant if she were all that Papa said she was? Maybe most of it wasn’t true. Maybe she was just living on her own with her own friends and had a good job. After all, I thought, how would Papa know? He didn’t want to know anything about her.
Or did he?
Was he secretly keeping an eye on her?
What if I went back to the hotel and he was doing what I was doing? What if he were somewhere nearby watching for her and he saw me? He’d be very angry, but he wouldn’t want me to know he was there, too.
He was more cheerful than usual at dinner. His financial moves had gone well for him today at his investment-banking firm, and he was talking again about an early retirement and our moving out of the city.
“We’ll be in lots better shape than my brother. That’s for sure,” he said.
My uncle was almost as unmentionable as Roxy these days. From what I understood, Uncle Orman sided with my grandfather and was highly critical of Papa for not pursuing an Army career as their father and their grandfather and great-grandfather had. Papa could have been a candidate for West Point.
In my father’s family, when you broke a tradition, it was like breaking an egg. There was no way to put it back together.
I guess I should have expected that Chastity would call me in the evening. Her imagination was taking her in all sorts of directions. First, she saw us as amateur detectives.
“We’ve got to find out more about the escort service. I thought of a way. We need to bring someone else in on this, too.”
“What? Why? Who?”
“A boy. We need a boy’s voice.”
“A boy’s voice? Why?”
“Well, I was thinking, what if we do find out the name of the service and the telephone number? We could get this boy to call and pretend he wants a date with your sister. You told me her French name. If he’s told she’s booked that night, we’ll know, and we can watch to see who picks her up, get the license number or something.”
“Chastity, you’re running away with yourself. We’re not detectives. We couldn’t find out anything if we knew someone’s license number. What’s the point?”
“I think I can. My uncle Tommy is a city policeman, isn’t he?”
She made my heart flutter. “Forget that,” I said. “You’re thinking of things that will make this all worse for me. We don’t tell anyone, especially some boy from our school, about my sister, understand? And if you went to your uncle . . . he might call both our parents. Promise me you won’t even think of such a thing again,” I demanded. ?
?Promise, or I’ll never do anything with you again.”
“Oh . . .”
I was silent.
“Okay, okay. Don’t bust a blood vessel.” She took a breath and went right on to a new fantasy. “I wonder if there is such a thing for girls our age.”