“The phone works both ways. Besides, you said she’s perfectly content with her freelance job, her little apartment—”
“With the old windows—”
“—and don’t forget she’s never had the same ambitions my Amy has.”
My Amy. How often had I heard those words? My sister, the golden child, the girl wonder, the rising star actor living in LA who’d been blessed multiple times over by the Good Gene Fairy and had fallen into the Unlimited Pool of Talent. Me, the dispensable forethought, the unnecessary prologue to my mother’s childbearing life. I’d always known I was the tubby one. The dowdy one. The disappointment. Now, as the toxic green-eyed monster inside me snarled, I pulled its leash tight. Bitterness, jealousy and resentment had to be some of the most unattractive traits bestowed on mankind, and—in my case at least—the hardest ones to change.
“I don’t know why you’re insisting on giving Eleanor anything at all.” My mother’s voice had filled with her special blend of acrid determination that brought the fiercest of opponents to their knees, accepting their fate with bowed heads as she readied her proverbial sword.
Not this time, I decided, not with a sick man, my dad, as her victim, but before I could take a step forward, she spoke again, her next words changing my life forever.
“You’re forgetting one thing, Bruce,” she said. “Eleanor isn’t your daughter.”
CHAPTER THREE
ELEANOR ISN’T YOUR DAUGHTER.
I felt my face contort itself into a bizarre grimace as my breath caught in my throat. I put a hand against the doorframe to steady myself, tried to stop the hallway from closing in on me. For a few seconds I worked hard to dislodge my mother’s words from my brain. Shook my head to rattle them around my skull long enough for her sentence to make sense. Any sense. The attempt didn’t work and I remained in the hallway with my mouth open, brow furrowed.
“Of course she’s my girl.” My father’s voice broke the deafening silence, sounding stronger than he had in days. A rush of relief flooded my body. I’d misheard. Misinterpreted what she’d meant. But Dad coughed and continued, his voice strained once more. “I’ve always treated Eleanor as if she were mine. How many times have you said I love her enough for the both of us?”
My hand flew to my mouth as I tried to stop the cry from escaping between my fingers. It couldn’t be true. Dad was exactly that. My dad. There had to be some mistake, they had to be talking about someone else.
“You’re missing the point,” my mother snapped. “You can’t—”
“We should tell her.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me, Sylvia. She should—”
I’ll never know what he was about to say next because as I leaned in to hear more clearly, my heavy bag swung off my shoulder. It banged against the door with a loud thud, forcing it open with a croaky creak.
Dad’s head turned. “Eleanor. You’re here.”
My mother spun around, following Dad’s cancer-patient-in-the-headlights gaze until her eyes landed squarely on mine. She didn’t waver, but lifted her chin, signaling her acute annoyance at my presence as she observed me in the way a spider might watch a fly trapped in its sticky web.
“How are you, Freckles?” Dad’s use of the nickname my nose and cheeks earned me one blistering summer two decades ago was an obvious but unsuccessful attempt at masking the tremble in his voice. “I was hoping you’d come. Did you—”
“Is it true?” I took a step and put a hand on the soft, sky blue armchair—the one I’d spent three nights in during the past week alone—to make sure I didn’t stumble. My bag felt as if the weight of the sketchbook and camera had multiplied tenfold, and it slipped farther down my arm. I let it drop to the floor with a dull clunk, put one foot in front of the other despite my brain screaming at me to turn and run. “You’re not my dad?”
My mother spoke first. “Look, Nellie—”
“Eleanor,” I said, teeth clenched. “Didn’t you hear what Dad said about your stupid nickname? Why don’t you ever listen to him?”
“That’s quite enough, Eleanor,” she said. “There’s no need to make a scene.”
“A scene?”
Her shiny red lips pursed as she exhaled through her nose, nostrils flaring. I prepared for another of her pointed rebukes, wrapped myself up in the imaginary armor I’d developed as a child, held up an invisible shield to deflect her attack, vowing I wouldn’t let it hurt me this time. One thing I’d mastered while living with a dragon for years was the ability to recognize when it was about to open wide and incinerate me.
“There’s no need for you to be so dramatic,” she said evenly, eyes ablaze.
My hands went to my hips, ordering me to stand my ground, make myself larger to scare off the enemy I knew so well, yet had never come close to understanding.
“But there’s always drama with you, isn’t there?” she continued. “You thrive on it—”
I snorted. “How rich. You’re the one who always—”
“Stop it, both of you. Please.”
The pain in Dad’s voice tore my gaze from my mother’s face and made me look at his instead. He must have pushed himself up before realizing it was too much effort, and slumped down again. His pillow had slipped, too, so he now lay lopsided, resembling a skinny rag doll, left on the bed in an abandoned heap.
I lunged, slipped my hands under his arms, tried to ignore how the only thing I could feel was skin and bone, not the bulky biceps he used to bear-hug me with. Once he was upright again, the pillow set firmly behind him, I offered him a drink of water but he waved his skeletal hands.
“No,” he said. “Thanks, but not now.”
I lowered my voice to a whisper, pretended my mother wasn’t there. “Dad...you have to tell me the truth. Are you... Are you my dad?”
He stared at me. One second. Two. Three. I wanted him to smile and say, Yes, of course I am, silly. Needed him to tell me this was all a terrible mistake. The silence grew, stretching out between us. After another long moment, he slowly shook his head and I swallowed hard, felt my legs tremble.
“But...but...then, who is?”
“He—”
“Bruce.” The word was a sharp warning from my mother. “We agreed. It’s in the past.”
“But it’s my past,” I said, doing my best to ignore her death stares, a thousand tiny needles piercing my skin. “And it’s my present. Can’t you see? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why didn’t either of you think I should know?”