The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(65)

“It was just this once.”

“Oh, really?” The color of her face matched the apples scattered over her nurse’s scrubs. She was pisssssed. “Just this once, was it? Guess who I ran into tonight, Beatrix? Go on, guess. Nothing? Your mind’s a blank? Well, let me help. I ran into Dr. Denise Sheridan, head of the anatomy lab. Ring any bells?”

Uh-oh.

“Oh, she was all kinds of familiar with you,” Mom continued in the Most. Sarcastic. Voice. Ever. “Her mother has been in and out of the ER this summer because of heart problems—”

What do you know. Guess Dr. Sheridan really had been caught up with a family emergency that first night she stood me up.

“—and when I talked to her in the waiting room, she asked how your cadaver drawings were coming along. I, of course, looked like a complete fool because I remember that the last time we’d talked about you doing that, I specifically said you could not under any circumstances do any such thing. That it was gruesome and inappropriate for a girl your age to be sitting in a room full of dead bodies.”

It was at this point that I noticed my sketchbook of Minnie sitting on the seat next to Mom. Hard evidence. No getting around it. I looked to Heath, quietly begging: Help a sister out, dude! But he just stared at the floor.

“And what’s more, you got Mayor Vincent to call up Dr. Sheridan and ask her to bend her rules for you?”

“I didn’t do that!” I argued. “Jack did that without me knowing. He was just trying to be nice. At the time, I didn’t even know his dad was the mayor.”

“I told you no,” she snapped. “I am your parent—not Mayor Vincent!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to win the scholarship money, and I needed authentic art. I wasn’t out drinking or smoking weed—”

“No, but you were running around town with a wanted vandal.”

I stilled, arms clenched against the back of the sofa as my heart galloped against my rib cage. There was no way she could’ve figured that out. No way, unless …

“I’m sorry, Bex,” Heath said, sounding defensive. “It just kind of came out.”

“You promised!”

“And I also told you he sounded like bad news!”

“He’s the farthest thing from bad news. He’s sweet and caring, and he likes both of you, and you threw him—and me!—under the bus?”

Heath grimaced and shifted uncomfortably.

“I never said a word to Mom when you were cruising bars in the Castro at the beginning of the summer.”

“I stopped,” he said angrily. “Did you?”

“Did I what? I never spray-painted a single line. And the two of you have no idea why he’s doing it or what he’s been through.”

“A police officer came to question you, and you lied to his face,” my mom shouted. “Jack Vincent is a felon!”

“He’s the most moral person I know. And I’m in love with him.” There. I’d said it. Out in the open. But what I thought was the biggest news flash of the evening only elicited cruel laughter from my mother. The sound struck my chest like a hammer.

“You don’t know what love is,” she said. “And Jack doesn’t, either, because you don’t drag someone you love into the muck with you. You don’t commit crimes and talk your girlfriend into sneaking around and lying to your own family.”

She really shouldn’t have said that. I completely lost it. All the bolts holding my brain together fell out and dinged against the floorboards. “Oh, and you’re an expert? That must be why you told Heath and me all those lies about Dad, like how his new wife owned a strip club when it was really a jazz club. And how Dad refused to pay child support when you were the one who refused to accept it, because you cared more about your stupid pride than your own children’s well-being.”

Dead silence. Nothing but a police siren wailing somewhere in the distance.

Mom’s anger-red face drained to white while Heath’s mouth fell open.

Too late to take it back now.

“Yeah, I went and saw him in Berkeley that afternoon,” I said defiantly. “He sent me a birthday present—the one you said you’d throw in the trash. He’s been trying to see us, and you refused.”

Mom’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m your mother!” she said in a voice that was out of control, anguished and broken. “He cheated on me. He left me for her. He left all of us.”

“He might be a bastard, but he’s still our father. And you lied to us.”

“What? You’re on his side now?”

“No,” I said. “I gave him the gift back, and I had a huge fight with him. But you could’ve told us he’s been trying to see me and Heath. You could’ve told us he’d moved right across the Bay.”

“He ruined my life. Made me feel worthless,” she said, a single tear running down one cheek. She quickly wiped it away. “I used to tell myself I didn’t want him to make you two feel that way, too. But if you want to know the truth, you were the only thing I had that he wanted. And by withholding you from him, I had control over something. I could make him suffer.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Heath, either. He put his hands atop his head and paced into the kitchen. Everyone was miserable now.