“Haven’t you shown enough of my neighborhood?” I said. “It’s been shown nearly out of existence.”
Edith ignored me. “I drove past your mother,” she said to Sicily. “On the street. In front of abar. Of course I stopped, but she said she didn’t need a ride home. That’s all I know.”
“Liar,” I said. I reached past her for one of the mugs of tea and started wandering around the kitchen with it. So many things to break.
“Aunt Edie,” I said. “What’s a place like this run? Million? Million two? How quickly do the cops arrive at a place like this?” I blew on the tea to cool it. “Or the media?” I said brightly, as though I’d just had a great idea. “Pretty fast, right? You ever had one of those satellite trucks parked on this block? Y’all, they take up somespace. This one time at McPhee’s—”
“I’m telling the truth,” Edith snapped. She sank back against the counter. “Sis, she didn’t need a ride home, but from there she had a specific destination in mind, and she wouldn’t want me sharing it.”
“She would have toldme,” Sicily said. “She was trying to tell me. She called, but I couldn’t hear her with all the…” Sicily backpedaled without looking my way. “It was loud. Where she was.”
“I don’t know how this became such a to-do,” Edie said. “She nevercalled home? She must have been… I should haveinsistedon driving her home.”
“Call her,” I said.
“What?” Edith said.
“Wouldn’t she pick up the phone ifyoucalled her?” I asked. “Since you’re such great friends. Call her. Put Sicily on with her mother so they can have that conversation Marisa was trying to have last night. So Sicily can bereassuredand you can be rid of me. Both of you. All of you.”
Sicily had dropped her defensive stance. She was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t name. She turned to Edith. “Please?”
Edith sighed. “It’s ridiculous. If your mother wants to keep something to herself, she should be allowed to.” But Edith was moving toward the next room, toward a phone, I had to assume. Sicily shot me a smile—megawatt, all that youth, health, and dental care on display—and trailed along behind her.
I placed the cup of tea back on the counter before I accidentally dashed it to the floor. I didn’t even like tea.
Now to find a bathroom and wipe my hands on every single one of Edie’s towels.
I FOUND A BATHROOM TOO quickly, and kept exploring. On the stairs to the second floor, my footsteps were muffled by a plush floral carpet runner. I concocted a few excuses as I climbed, but no one was paying the slightest attention to me.
The master bedroom was as lush as I would have predicted. A peacock lived here, after all. A peahen.
In the hallway, a built-in niche held a few framed photos. I paused to shop them for details. Edith had certainly lived a rich life. The photos were filled with smiles and good clothes, wineglasses lifted, pretty dresses at family weddings, scenic views. Live and laugh.
And love. A lot of the snapshots featured Edith, her hair less silver,standing with the same paunchy man in front of all the globe-trotting landmarks: Eiffel Tower, some ruins, the railing of a cruise ship. In every photo, he was turned in her direction, seeking her out.
One of the photos showed Sicily, Marisa, and Edith with their arms around one another, silly faces and smiling big. Sicily, preteen, still in braces. I picked up the frame and peered closer at Marisa.
At some moment in Marisa’s life, she’d turned from a woman gaunt and needle-tracked along the insides of her forearms, from the mother who had failed me, into this woman, sturdy, tanned. Radiant, with her arm fiercely around a daughter she was willing to raise. When had that dramatic turn taken place?
Sicily’s birth? Or earlier, early enough to pave the way for Sicily, to lay down the red carpet of welcome. Maybe it had been the very moment she’d dumped me on Alex. Maybe I’d been the stone around her scrawny neck the whole time.
I didn’t want to know anymore. I put the frame back and went back downstairs to the powder room I’d found earlier.
I had already done the necessary and was closing the medicine cabinet after checking out the supplies when I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I hadn’t had that shower, hadn’t fixed my hair. I was still wearing what I’d gone to bed in with my leather and fringe over the top.
Well, no wonder. I looked like someone fresh out on bond.
I combed my fingers through my hair, then found in a drawer a little tube of something expensive I could use to scrub my face. A fresh towel and a nicked ponytail holder later, I felt a little more human.
When I opened the door, Sicily was standing there. “Are you singing?”
“No,” I said. Probably. “Did you need the john or…?”
“I just wanted to say, you know, for what you did…”
“Did you talk to Marisa?”
“Edie’s still trying to get through to her,” Sicily said. “But she wouldn’t be trying at all, except you made her. I’m just… uh, really, um…”
