The Bad Daughter(59)

“Robin,” Blake called again, opening the door a crack, then stepping inside. “Sorry. Were you asleep?”

“No.”

He walked to the bed and sat down beside her, the mattress dipping slightly with his weight. “How’s your stomach?”

“Better. What’s happening downstairs?”

“Not much. Your brother has decided he’s going to sleep in the mudroom.”

“The mudroom? It’s a mess.”

“Says he likes it that way.”

Robin looked toward the window opposite the bed, catching their reflection in the glass and thinking that they complemented each other well. “Do you believe that guilt is the coward’s way out?” she asked.

He seemed puzzled by the question. “I’m not sure I even understand what that means.”

She smiled. Her father would never have admitted to not understanding anything. “There’s nothing the matter with my stomach,” she told him. “It was a panic attack.”

“I thought it might be.” He squeezed her hand.

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not telling you the truth in the first place.”

“I’m the one who owes you an apology.”

“My turn to ask for what?”

“For thinking you were exaggerating when you talked about your sister.”

She laughed. “Thank you for telling her to fuck off earlier.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“In her defense, it’s been difficult—”

“She doesn’t need you to defend her.” He shrugged. “I guess everybody has a story.”

“I guess.” She paused. “What’s yours?”

Robin waited for him to smile and say that she already knew his story, that all things considered, he’d enjoyed a life of relative ease and rare privilege. He was smart and good-looking. His family was both wealthy and well connected. True, his parents were divorced, but the divorce had been amicable and both were now remarried and settled comfortably on the East Coast, his mother in New York, his father in Connecticut. She knew he had an older brother who was off teaching English in China and a younger brother who’d died as the result of an asthma attack in his early twenties. They’d discussed all that when they first started dating. She’d assumed that because he rarely spoke of his family, there wasn’t much else to say.

She should have known better.

“My brother didn’t die because he was asthmatic,” Blake said now.

“What?”

“He died because he overdosed on a combination of cocaine and heroin. Actually the coroner said he had so many drugs in his system that it was a wonder he’d survived as long as he had.”

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe I thought you had enough on your plate. Maybe I thought another fucked-up family would scare you away. Maybe I just didn’t want to deal with it.”

“You didn’t trust me,” Robin acknowledged quietly.

“No. I…”

“It’s okay. I didn’t trust you either.”

He smiled sadly. “So what do we do now?”

Robin exhaled a long deep breath. “We make the decision to trust each other. Or else what’s the point?”

“You think it’s that simple?”

“I think it has to be.”

He nodded.

“Tell me about your brother,” she said.

“It was such a stupid waste.” The words tumbled effortlessly from his lips, as if they’d been sitting on the tip of his tongue for years, just waiting for a push. “He was this charming, charismatic guy. Which I guess was part of the problem. Everything always came so easily for him. He never had to try, never had to put himself out there. School, job offers, women. All he had to do was smile. A movie producer actually spotted him on the street one afternoon and offered him a small part in a film. The lead actress was supposed to walk into a party and grab some random guy and start making out with him. Naturally she picked my brother. He told me that they spent all day making out on set and all night fucking in her mansion overlooking the ocean.” Blake shook his head at the memory. “You can still see that dumb movie on TV sometimes. Don’t ask me what it’s called. House Party? Pool Party? Frat Party? Something like that.”

“Did you ever watch it?”

“I did—once. But it was too painful. You can see he was stoned out of his mind. Goddamn drugs.”

That’s why you never take so much as an aspirin, why you were so concerned about my taking Valium.

“He was only twenty-four when he died. He’d had asthma when he was a kid, so my parents decided to tell everyone he’d suffered a fatal attack. Pretty soon I adopted that story as well. It was easier that way.” Blake brought his hands together, as if to signal the story was coming to an end. “Anyway, my parents divorced soon after that, my older brother took off for China, and I buried myself in my career.” He looked directly into Robin’s eyes. “Then one night I reluctantly agreed to accompany a colleague to a party, and who should walk in…but the love of my life.”