Nicco offered to take Meredith and me home, but I said no. He kept giving me those Is everything all right? looks. I called the car service to pick us up. On the drive, Meredith was silent, her shoulders turned away from me. I saw her reflection in the window, staring out into the night. There was no excited water bottle opening or nervous chatter with the driver. She’d gotten used to all that pretty quickly. It was a quiet, strained car ride.
But at home, things got worse.
Way worse.
All the lights in the house were off. Max didn’t even bark when Meredith and I arrived. Dogs feel the mood of a house. Dogs use their instincts, and he was lying under the dining room table, his ears down, Jacqueline looking over him with her wide, empty eyes.
It quickly became clear why Max was hiding. Upstairs there was yelling. Screaming. It was louder than Jake and Lila’s previous fights. It was more vicious.
Protecting us! Like hell! Lila’s words dripped sarcasm. I didn’t know what this meant. All I could feel was her fury, swirling down the stairs like a cloud of black smoke from a fire, a fire horrible enough to burn the city to the ground. And all I could see was Meredith, my friend whose parents played Mad Libs with her and her sister, standing by me in shock. The outing with Nicco and Carlos didn’t even matter anymore. It was a petty squabble that had vanished the second the earthquake rumbled, because who cared anymore?
Meredith looked at me, horrified. I doubt her parents even raised their voices. Ellen might make a snippy remark when Meredith’s dad was late to a regatta.
“What do we do?” she asked.
I didn’t know. “Let’s just go upstairs,” I said. The just meant I had it handled. That I understood how these things should be managed. Of course I didn’t. You can’t handle an out-of-control blaze. You can’t manage a natural disaster.
We went to my room. Max didn’t even budge from under the table. It reminded me of the earthquake drills we had when I was a kid, where you hunched under your desk.
Meredith and I sat on my bed. She looked terrified.
What did you think? Like you didn’t know? Jake yelled.
One of your guys? One of your guys! Lila kept repeating this. Why didn’t you tell me? You never told me!
Back off. Back away, I’m warning you. Jake’s voice was menacing. That’s such a dramatic word. An R. W. Wright word. But it was the only word for it.
Protecting us, what a joke! A fucking stakeout? Watching us? You’re going to fucking prison! What the fuck. This can’t be happening!
Lila was furious, but she was crying, too. And I knew what this was about. The car on the street. Jake had told me the same thing when I first asked. One of my guys. But now he was telling her the truth. It wasn’t one of his guys. It was a detective. Those paintings, that art—it was stolen, I was sure now.
Back away. Get out of my face!
I could hear a crash and a scream and then a thud. A push, a fall.
“Sydney,” Meredith said. “Jesus! We have to do something. You have to call someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know! Your grandmother. Your father! Nine-one-one! This is scary.”
Something shattered. There was the sound of glass breaking.
“Sydney!”
“Okay! Okay.”
I fished my phone out of my bag. Meredith got up. “I don’t want to hear this. This is so awful,” she said. She went to her room. She shut the door. I didn’t know who to call. Edwina was old and eight hundred miles away.
If his name hadn’t been programmed into my phone, I wouldn’t have even known how to reach him. Jeff Reilly gave his number out to only a few select people. Lila would be angry and betrayed if I called the ghost man that was your father. I remembered the time I went to his house for a few days when I was around ten, when Lila and Trace Williams needed some time alone to work things out. He took me shopping. He wasn’t sure what to do with me, so he gave me stuff. He bought me a sequined top, which I thought was shiny and beautiful, but we got it in the women’s department, and at lunch, he hit on the waitress. Lila was livid when she saw that sequined top. It went missing after that. When I found it shoved in the kitchen garbage can, she wouldn’t let me have it back. I started to sob so hard my stomach hurt. I loved that top. Lila said, A piece of trash belongs in the trash, but I was the one who felt like garbage.
That afternoon with my father, he’d grinned at me across the table at lunch. Daddy’s little girl, huh? he said. And I liked that so much. It made me feel really special. That’s who he wanted me to be in relation to him. Little, and his. A daddy’s little girl, the doll with the adoring eyes he occasionally played with, but only when nothing else seemed more fun.
What was I supposed to do, though? How many options did I have?
His phone rang and rang. Not available, his voice on the message said, which was true in a million ways. You know what to do, but I didn’t.
I hung up. It was just as well. Lila would never forgive me if he acted like a father. I called Edwina.
“They’re fighting,” I said. “It’s bad.”
“It’ll blow over.” Edwina didn’t sound too sure. That fire in the city way back in 1906—it blew over, all right. And over, and over, until the city was consumed.
“She had a black eye. Things are breaking. They’re screaming.”
Edwina didn’t say anything.
“Why is she with him? Why doesn’t she leave?” I wanted Edwina to do something, even if she was old and two states away.
Edwina sighed, as if there were things I’d never understand. And she was probably right, but I was beginning to form my own understanding.
It looked like this: no more. No more, no more, no more.
“Mer?” I said through the door.
“What?”
“Can I come in?”
The fighting had calmed down by then.
“Sure.”
“I called my grandmother. If they start up again, if we ever feel in the least bit scared, we’re supposed to call the police.” Edwina never said that. But it seemed like what an adult should say, so this was what I told her.
“Okay.”
“I can just stay here with you.”
Meredith’s arms looped around her knees. She looked so young. She looked the kind of young you could look when you came from a family like hers.
“That’s all right,” she said. “I’m going to try to go to bed.”
“All right. Mer, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t all the way believe it.
When I went back to my room, I felt sick. I’d wanted to show off all the great things we had. But the awful parts were mine too.