Life and Other Inconveniences(4)

I ate one of the oatmeal cookies I’d baked the day before. I had an online appointment—this client liked messaging rather than video conference, and that was fine with me. His problems were chunky—PTSD from a wretched childhood—and it was easier to be wise if I had time to think.

Then the landline blared, and I jumped, because who ever used landlines? The harsh ring of Pop’s 1970s phone was horribly loud, and I snatched it up immediately. Probably a telemarketer. Since it was a phone from the days of yore, we had no caller ID or even an answering machine.

“Hello?”

There was a pause, and just as I was about to hang up, someone spoke.

“Is that you, Emma?”

Her voice punched me in the stomach, the unmistakable, blue-blooded tone of the Gorgon Genevieve herself, immediately recognizable even after seventeen years.

I hung up.

Almost immediately, the phone rang again. I let it, and the sound brayed through the quiet house. Two times. Three. Four.

“Mom? You gonna answer that?” Riley called from upstairs.

“Sure thing, honey!” I said, snatching it up again.

“Don’t be childish, Emma,” Genevieve said. That voice, so elegant and frosty, always with that tinge of disappointment.

The store. She was probably calling to tell me about the store. “What do you want?”

“I see we’ve lost all social graces,” she said.

“Why would I waste them on you?”

She sighed. “Very well, I’ll get right to it. I have cancer. I’m dying, so you have to come home and do your familial duty. Bring your child.”

My mouth opened and closed noiselessly. A) Cancer wouldn’t kill her, because she was just too mean. B) I wouldn’t go “home” if I had a gun to the back of my head. And C) she’d kicked me out seventeen years ago. Her final words hadn’t exactly been a blessing.

“Funny,” I said, “you talking now about family and duty. Oh, gosh, look at the time. I have to run. Have a nice death!”

“Don’t hang up, Emma, for heaven’s sake. It’s so like you to fly into hysterics.”

I clenched my teeth. “I’m not hysterical, and I’m not coming home. I am home, as a matter of fact.”

“Fine. Come back to Connecticut, Emma, and say goodbye to me as I live out the last of my days.”

“You haven’t called me since I left, Genevieve. Why would I care about the last of your days?”

There was a pause. “We’ve had our differences, it’s true.”

“You kicked me out when I needed you most. Why should I care if you need me now?”

The frost of her voice turned to sleet. “You were irresponsible.”

“And pregnant, and eighteen.”

“As I said, irresponsible. At any rate, it’s just for a couple of months.”

I snorted.

“Must you make that unladylike noise?”

“Genevieve, I’m sorry. I don’t care enough about you to uproot my child—it’s a girl, by the way—so I can change your diapers in your dotage.”

“Nor am I asking you to, Emma. I’m simply asking you to come home so I can see my granddaughter and great-granddaughter before I die.”

“You blew your chance on us a long time ago. Besides, don’t you have a son? Ask him.” Not that my father had ever taken care of anyone very well.

“This is not work for a man,” Genevieve said.

“It’s not work for me, either.”

“Emma, it’s not my fault that you were a floozy who couldn’t keep her legs crossed and threw away her future.”

“Sweet talk will get you nowhere, Gigi,” I said, using the only nickname she’d allowed back then. God forbid I’d just called her Gram. “Besides, do you really want a floozy taking care of you?”

“I’ll pay for your travel expenses and give you some money in the meantime.”

“No, thanks. Hanging up now.”

“Jason is separated from his wife, you know. Oh, but I forgot, you and he are still so close. Of course he’s already told you.”

My stomach dropped. The Gorgon had me there. Jason had not told me. And given that he was the father of my child, my one experience with being in love and my closest male friend, that stung.

Then again, Genevieve was the master of stinging. She was a wasp in every sense of the word.

I curled the cord around my finger. “The answer is still no. Please don’t call again.”

“Very well,” she said. “Would you accept a bribe? Come home, and I’ll make your child my heir.” There was a pause. “My only heir. Even if she doesn’t have a real name.”

Riley was my grandfather’s last name, my mother’s maiden name. Another sting from the queen of wasps. “What about Hope?” I asked. “You’re cutting her out of the will?” Hope was my much younger half sister, the child of my father’s brief second marriage, and she lived not too far from Genevieve at a home for children whose medical needs were too complex for their families to handle alone.

“Hope has a trust fund for her care that will last all her life.”

“Good. Make me her guardian. Otherwise, we have nothing to talk about. Bye, Genevieve,” I said.