Say You Still Love Me(7)

Hell, we drove here in her Porsche!

The truth is, she may not have been born into money, but she has slid into the role of a prim and proper socialite wife to a business tycoon husband so smoothly, no one would ever guess her modest upbringing.

Though, I fear that role is about to change to that of ex-wife.

“So making me do this has nothing to do with you and Dad wanting the summer alone to sort out the details of your divorce?” I finally dare ask, my voice cracking slightly at that last word. One I never imagined uttering in relation to Kieran and Alison Calloway.

Mom shoots me a look but doesn’t offer an answer, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel instead. Her official stance has always been that marital problems are between the adults and not up for discussion with the children. The fact that I know about the “mistake” my father made with a redheaded architect in LA and that a divorce lawyer’s business card slipped out of Mom’s wallet a few weeks ago hasn’t affected her refusal to divulge anything thus far.

“Mom . . .”

“I’m spending a few days at your aunt Jackie’s and then heading out to the summer house so I can think.”

“And are you going to let Dad visit?” I press, a hint of a pleading tone entering my voice. Their raised voices have carried to my bedroom more than once, as of late. My father, insisting that he fly out for the weekends so they can “work things out and move on.”

My mother, insisting that he not.

“He said he was sorry, Mom,” I offer more softly. It feels like the right thing to say in a situation that I’m still struggling to wrap my head around. It also feels like a last-ditch effort to avert what I’m guessing is inevitable.

Her eyes blink in rapid fire to fight the threatening tears from spilling. “I’m trying, Piper,” she whispers hoarsely. “But what he did was—” Her lips purse tightly, as if to seal away the rest of that sentence from escaping, as if too much has already been divulged.

My chest tightens with this rare display of vulnerability from my mother, who keeps her mask of confidence and self-assuredness in place at all times.

What he did was break her heart.

I swallow against the forming lump in my throat and try a different angle. “I deserve to know if I’m coming home to a ‘For Sale’ sign on our lawn, don’t I?” I haven’t seen any real estate agent cards slip from her wallet as of yet.

It’s a long moment before I catch the soft sigh and subtle nod. She clears her throat, and the calm, collected fa?ade is back. “You and your father have a special bond, and I don’t want to say anything that might damage that,” she begins carefully. “Our problems don’t begin and end with his . . . indiscretion.” Her jaw clenches with that word. “Things have not been going well for some time.”

“Is it because he works so much?”

“That certainly doesn’t help.”

For Kieran Calloway, time has always been a valuable commodity, awarded mostly to one business meeting or the next, and never wasted. He’s rarely on time for dinner, and usually comes late to our family vacations and leaves early, granting us no more than five or six days at a time, half of that spent on the phone or his computer.

And yet, for as long as I can remember, he has always found time for me. I used to sit on his lap in his office and make him explain the latest building designs to me over and over again, a thousand “why” questions rolling off my tongue, his display of patience a rarity, seemingly available only for his baby girl. I remember looking out on the city as he’d describe with passion how he wanted the skyline and the downtown core to look one day, drawing in the air with his fingertip. I’ve always been in awe of him—of how he can take an idea and then convince all these people to help him make it a concrete-and-glass reality.

Now we go for days with our paths never crossing and, when they do, he’s usually grilling me on my grades, my tennis scores, and any boyfriend who he needs to approve. Every so often, he’ll poke his head into my room at night—his tie hanging loose around his neck, his face drawn from exhaustion—to see if I’m awake and, if I am, he’ll settle down beside me and tell me about the derelict factory he just bought or the famous architect he just hired. Details of his day that my mother and brother have no interest in hearing, but that I absorb like a blanket of comfort as I curl against him, hanging onto every word.

“Just tell him to work less, then. He’ll listen.”

Mom chuckles, and it’s an oddly dark sound. Oh, you na?ve girl, I hear it murmur. “Your father is not an easy man to be married to, Piper.”

I’m not as na?ve as she thinks. I’ve read the papers, heard the whispers around school of kids echoing what they overheard their parents mutter about doing business with Kieran Calloway. I know that my father is successful because he is formidable. He can be a tyrant when it comes to getting what he wants, and a vindictive bastard when he doesn’t get it.

He’s just never been that way with me.

I let my gaze drift over the grassy fields and milling teenagers again, ready to shift the conversation away from our pending family crisis. “You’re right. This is so much better than spending the summer in Europe with Ava and Reid,” I murmur dryly. My best friends should be landing in Rome right about now, chaperoned by Ava’s stepmother, a twenty-seven-year-old model who has no clue about her basic obligations as a parental figure. Ava plans on taking full advantage of that.