Rebound (Boomerang #2)(73)

Using my crutch, I rise shakily from the sofa. I can’t stand to be close to him anymore. “I don’t want to succeed on those terms.”

“Stop being so goddamned high and mighty. You’ll have your own company to run. At twenty-two years old. Think about it. You can fire that Mia girl if you want. It’ll be up to you. Because I want that for you. Because I got it for you.”

A feeling blasts through me—sharp and gutting. It’s like my chest is suddenly home to a million prickling icicles.

“You have got to be f*cking kidding me,” I say.

My father’s eyes widen, and his tone is quiet and cold. “What did you just say?”

“This is for me? Taking over a business that someone else spent his life—”

“His life? He’s twenty-three goddamned years old. What life?”

“How does that matter?” I cry. “It’s his. It’s not yours. You don’t get to just have everything you want all the time. You don’t get to gobble people up and spit them out. You don’t get to lie to me. You don’t get to cheat on—”

“Stop it, Alison,” my father interrupts, eyes cutting to the doorway. He gets to his feet and starts to push past me, but I grab his arm. I’m aware of how big I’ve always thought him to be. How he towered in my imagination. And now I see he’s not that giant. He’s not very big at all.

“You’re always talking about family. But we don’t matter at all, do we? We’re just . . . We’re like your accessories.”

“I’m done with this conversation,” he says, and pulls away from me. I stagger back, hurting my ankle and struggling for balance on my crutch. I know it’s pointless. I know we’re done.

“Fine,” I say. “Just one last thing.”

“What?”

“I quit.”

My father stalks out of the room, and I stand there, suddenly weak-limbed and trembling. A voice inside me asks, now what? Now I need to do what I can for Adam.

I limp out of the study and head for the kitchen, where I find my mother sitting in the dining nook by the window, staring out at the scrub-covered foothills and, beyond those, at the far off sliver of surf as it pounds against the shore.

“Mom?”

She looks up and gives me a faint smile. “Want some tea, sweetheart?” she asks. Even in the dim glow of the under-cabinet lights, I can see her eyes are glossy, her posture sunken.

Sitting down beside her, I rest my crutch against the table and look at her. “Did you . . . Did you hear us?”

She gives me a faint smile. “Yes, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know. Except that he’d involved you too.”

“You knew?” I ask. “About dad and—”

“I’m not a fool, darling.”

I’m floored and sink back in the upholstered chair, bumping my head on the frame of the picture hanging behind me. A painting my mother had done of Zenith. I don’t remember thanking her for it.

“But Mom, I don’t understand. How could you stay with him? How could you be all right with it?”

“Of course I’m not all right with it. But you and your sister were so young the first time. And I didn’t know a thing about being on my own. It sounds ridiculous, I know.” She shrugs. “But I couldn’t imagine life without your father. Even if it’s meant this . . . this life. And this life affords me opportunities that I’d never have otherwise. All of those charities. I can do so much good.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My mind carries me back through my whole life, to every missed birthday party, recital, and horse show, to every holiday filled with extravagant gifts for my mother. Furs she never wore. Bold, expensive jewelry that never seemed to come out of the boxes. My mother’s small protest, I realize, and my fingers drift up to touch the earrings I have worn every day for months.

I did what she resisted: I let him bribe me.

“He told me it didn’t matter,” my mother says, circling a burgundy-polished nail on the glossy kitchen table. “He said these were just . . . moments outside of our life together. What matters is—”

“Family,” I finish.

I wonder if somewhere along the line he and Catherine had that same conversation. If that’s why she’s so distant from all of us, because she’s been carrying around this secret, too. All of us, played against one another for my father’s convenience.

We’re both quiet. Only the sound of the dishwasher clicking off interrupts the silence. Sitting here, I feel like it’s not just the rug that’s been pulled out from under me but the entire house.

Finally, I ask, “What now, Mom? We can’t just . . . keep going like this, can we? It’s so wrong. And it’s not just us.”

She takes my hand and squeezes it. “I know.”

“So is there any way to stop him? What do we do?”

My mother pushes her chair back and stands. “We go to bed, darling,” she says. “And we get up in the morning.”

I groan and put my face in my hands. “That’s it? We just keep going like this? No one ever stops him? He just steamrolls over everything?”

“I’m not saying that,” she tells me and pulls my hands away from my face. “I’m saying we get some rest so we can get up and fight again.”