There Is No Devil (Sinners Duet, #2)(16)

“Do you have a picture of her?” Mara asks.

“Upstairs. There’s none in here.”

I can’t hide the bitterness in my voice. Mara presses her lips together, understanding.

“My father wanted anything he couldn’t have. I guess that’s the one thing we shared. He had a chip on his shoulder and wanted to prove himself to anyone who’d ever looked down on him. But he was petty and vindictive. He didn’t just want acceptance—he wanted to rub their noses in it. That extended to my mother. He had to have her, but once they were married, he treated her like she had been the enemy all along. Like she was the one keeping him out of the Pacific Union Club.”

“She told you this?” Mara asks, brows drawn together in sympathy.

“I read it in her journal. She was confused how the man who wined and dined and complimented her could turn into a completely different person the moment they were alone in his house.”

I close my eyes, quoting from memory the words she wrote out in her delicate script: “It’s like he hates me, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what I’ve done. He used to kiss my fingertips and tell me I was the most exquisite thing in the world. Now he snarls if I even touch him …”

”Why did he change?” Mara asks.

“He never liked anything once he actually had it. It took him years to get this house—he had to bully and threaten the old woman who owned it. Had to fight with the zoning commissioner and the society that was trying to get it named a historic landmark. Once he moved in, he never stopped complaining that it was cold and drafty, and the wiring was ancient.”

“You’re not like that,” Mara says.

“No. To me, something has value if it’s rare.”

“I value things if they make me happy,” Mara says.

“But why do they make you happy?”

Mara considers. “Because they’re beautiful or interesting. Because they make me feel good.”

I put my hand on the nape of her neck, rubbing her gently. Making her purr. “That’s because you’re a pleasure kitten. You like anything that feels good.”

Mara cuddles up against me, comfortable even in this destroyed space.

“That’s true,” she says.

I continue the story.

“He was cold to her. Cruel, even. She wrote in her journal that she wanted to leave, but by that point she knew him well enough to be scared of what he might do. And then she found out she was pregnant.

“At the same time, my uncle Ruben came back to San Francisco. He’d burned through his money and was beginning to see the value of a place in my father’s firm. My father gave him a job immediately.

“My uncle was clever and could work hard when he wanted to. In fact, he was doing so well that my father promoted him again and again, until he was the acting VP, second only to my father.

“That wouldn’t have been a problem, except that my father now had an heir. At one point, Ruben might have believed that he would inherit the company, or receive equal shares in it. I was a complicating factor. Very much in his way. Especially after my mother died.”

I feel Mara stir against my side. I know what she wants to ask me, but she hesitates, knowing instinctively that this is the one wound inside of me, never healing, always raw.

I promised to answer her question, and this is a part of it.

“It’s alright,” I tell her. “You can ask.”

“What happened to your mother?”

Why is it still so hard to say the words out loud?

I hate that it hurts me. I hate that I care.

“She hung herself,” I say.

Mara winces. She takes my hand, squeezing it tight.

I look down at her hand, wondering why that feels so good. Why it comforts me.

Maybe because no one knows better than Mara what it feels like to be young, frightened, and deeply alone.

“I felt like an orphan. I had no warmth or connection from my father. Ruben terrified me. He was already showing his aggression, as much as he could get away with. He tripped me on the stairs. I broke my arm. He said it was an accident, and I was too young for my father to believe anything else. Later, he tried to drown me on the beach below the house. He kept pushing me under the waves, over and over again, laughing like it was a joke. All I could see was his teeth and the wild look in his eyes, and then he’d shove me under again, before I could get any air.

“That time my father saw it. He hauled me out. It was the first time I saw him truly angry at Ruben. Ruben was more careful after that. But I knew he hated me. He was jealous when my father gave me attention. He sabotaged me any chance he got.”

Mara rises from the couch to inspect the photograph once more. She brushes the glass out of the frame, frowning at Ruben’s handsome face, clear and uncovered.

“It was around that time I started to draw. I had always liked tinkering with machinery, working with my hands. My father encouraged that because he could see the use of it. He didn’t like me sketching. He didn’t care for the arts at all. He only donated to them because he knew philanthropy was part of empire-building.”

“What made you start drawing?” Mara asks me.

“At first I was sketching designs of machinery I wanted to build. The designs became more experimental, more aesthetic. Sculptures instead of machines.” I pause, because this makes me curious in turn. “What was the first thing you drew?”