The Watcher Girl
Minka Kent
CHAPTER 1
I shouldn’t be here.
The swell of nausea in my middle intensifies with every step toward the front door of my childhood home. When the taxi disappears from view, I tell myself there’s no turning back. And then I remind myself this isn’t about me.
I park my suitcase at the welcome mat, clear my throat, and wait for my father to answer the door.
A moment later, heavy footsteps are followed by the rasp of a deadbolt and the swing of the heavy door I used to run through a lifetime ago.
“Grace?” His tortoiseshell glasses are crooked on his nose, and his salt-and-pepper hair is tousled on one side. Safe to bet I woke him from a nap. Judging by his white cotton-poly pants and olive-green golf polo, it’s also safe to bet he played a round this morning. “What are you doing here?”
My mother’s peonies bow in the early June breeze, their frilly heads blooming with resilience despite my mother’s twenty-years-and-counting prison sabbatical. The lush Kentucky bluegrass is edged to meticulous perfection along the double-wide sidewalk. The elms are taller than I remember, naturally, but their canopy of shade still extends across the driveway, painting my father’s vintage Porsche a darker shade of platinum.
I should have called—but I talked myself out of it a dozen times, knowing he’d have questions I wouldn’t be able to answer without changing my mind about coming here. Buying a nonrefundable airline ticket and shoving my things into a suitcase seemed like the path of least resistance in this scenario.
“Surprise . . .” I force a smile and splay my hands, a cheap attempt to make this exchange as lighthearted as possible.
His narrowed gaze eases, and the lines on his tanned forehead fade as the corners of his mouth curl one by one.
My father has an impressive knack for acting like nothing happened. It’s an art form, really. The man is bulletproof. Scandal and misfortune have a tendency to ricochet off him and hit the innocent bystanders instead.
And he just . . . carries on.
He always carries on.
Sometimes I wonder how the man views himself when he looks in the mirror—truly views himself. What does he see when he strips back that perfect, persevering outer layer? Does he see a man who failed his wife and family by chasing after a younger woman? A man whose infidelity ultimately cost that young woman her life? A man whose ex-wife rots away in a prison cell an hour from here all because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants?
Something tells me he sees none of that.
His ego won’t let him.
“Was hoping it’d be okay if I crashed here for a bit?” My palm dampens against the purse strap digging into my shoulder. I relax my gaze, tamping down the disgust that always forces its way to the surface anytime I hear his voice or find myself unavoidably in his presence.
“I just . . . you never . . . this is . . .” His expression morphs from wrinkled to relaxed and back. Despite everything we’ve been through, his softness for me has never wavered. I both love and hate him for this, but now is not the time to litigate old memories. “Of course you can stay here. Forgive me, Grace. It’s been so long . . . You’re the last person I was expecting . . . but yes, please stay. We’d love to have you.”
We.
He and his girlfriend, Bliss.
I know all about her despite our never having met—what I didn’t know, however, was that she’d moved in.
My father reaches across the threshold to take my luggage, and I follow him in.
The house no longer smells of my mother’s ostentatious floral arrangements. Nor does it retain a hint of her French perfume that used to leave invisible trails from room to room, since she could never sit still for more than thirty seconds.
My lungs fill with a cocktail of scents that represent someone else’s life.
Lemon dusting cleaner.
A hint of lavender.
An unexpected trace of sandalwood.
Leather dress shoes.
Stale air.
Vintage rugs.
Time.
I think of my mother now, confined to a cinder block cell with a roommate named Angel. There are no flowers to arrange. No windows to open when she craves fragrant petrichor after a hard rain. There are no children to chase after. No mile-long grocery lists or elaborate dinners to make. No company to entertain. No designer-filled closets to organize or dry cleaning to grab between school runs. No coffee shop stops. No neighborhood gossip to secretly enjoy. No summer afternoons lazing by the backyard pool, hardback bestseller in hand.
No handsome, philandering husband to kiss her good night . . .
I imagine her lying on the bottom bunk, reading one of the many used books my sister, Rose, sends to her, her silky blonde strands now gray streaked and straw-like. Her skin paper thin. Her eyebrows finger plucked to nothing. At least that’s how she appeared the last time I saw her, ten years ago. The only reason I visited was to confront her about a true crime novel called Domestic Illusions: The Daphne McMullen Story.
While my mother’s murder conviction legally prohibited her from profiting off her crime or the death of Marnie Gotlieb in any way, it didn’t stop Chicago Post bestselling author Dianna Hilliard from taking a stab at it. She even had the audacity to dedicate it to my brother, my sister, and me.
We’d never met the woman a day in our lives.
The finished product painted my mother as a saint—a slave to her beautiful, privileged life. And it smeared my father as a sex-addicted narcissist. After tearing through paragraph after paragraph of family details only my mother could have provided, I was forced to pause our estrangement so I could share my disgust with her in person.