Her mother looked at her like she was stupid. “If I can’t afford the rent, I certainly can’t afford the expense of moving.”
So, get a job.
The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she bit down on them.
Her mother had never worked, not once, and she wasn’t all that good with money. Theirs had been a life of feast and famine. Her father’s alimony check would come in, and her mother would drag her out clothes shopping, and they’d get brunch every day for a week. Then the money would dry up, and Opheliawould be eating cereal and Eggos for most of her meals until the next windfall came through.
Clearly, things weren’t much better since she’d moved out.
“Dad doesn’t even like me,” she whined, feeling thirteen again. “It’s just going to tick him off if I show up at his office and ask him to send you more money.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your father loves you. He’ll listen to you.”
Ophelia gawked at her. It was her mother who had told her time and again over her life how little her father cared for her, how he’d never wanted children, how having her—a noble act on behalf of her mother—had ruined their marriage forever. Now, she was suggesting that her father would dote on her so much that he’d merrily sign a check for her to ferry back to her mother.
“He will not,” Ophelia said.
Tears welled in her mother’s eyes, and as they fell, they carried little sooty particles of her mascara with them. Ophelia’s chest tightened painfully. God, she couldn’t stand it when her mother cried. For all her life, she’d been the only one there to catch those tears, to soothe her mother when her breakdowns went nuclear.
One of her earliest memories was of her mother locked in a closet with a kitchen knife, sobbing and telling her that she was sorry, but mommy was going to kill herself. Ophelia had been four.
Through the lens of time, she now understood that her parents had had a fight, and her father hadn’t responded at all to her mother’s escalations in distress. It wasn’t until Ophelia had gone to him sobbing and begging for help that he’d sighed and stood from his recliner, wandering over to ask her mother to calm down with a glass of scotch in his hand.
The memory still dug under her skin. It hadn’t been the last time her mother had threatened suicide. If she pushed this hardenough, Ophelia knew she might threaten it even now, standing in her kitchen.
Ophelia dug her fingers into the fabric of her shirt, grabbing at it as though she was seizing her runaway heart.
“Fine,” she said, the word sticking in her throat. “Fine. I’ll go. Just please calm down.”
Her mother’s tears dried up quickly as she smiled. She fished a tissue from her purse and dabbed at the dark track marks on her cheeks. “Thank you, sweetie. You’re such a good girl.”
She stepped forward and threw her arms around Ophelia, enveloping her in a cloud of expensive perfume. She patted her mother’s back awkwardly, forlorn.
“Well,” her mother said, stepping back. “You just let me know what he says, okay?”
Her eyes darted sidelong at Sam, who stood in the doorway with the screwdriver in his hand, no longer working on anything at all. A shadow fell across his dark eyes, inscrutable.
Her mother shuddered, and Ophelia didn’t blame her.
“I guess I’ll… take off,” her mother said distractedly, frowning at the towering android. “You be safe, honey.”
With that, she was out the door, leaving Ophelia with an impossible task.
CHAPTER 14
Samuel glaredat the door as it shut behind Ophelia’s mother, disgusted by the woman’s behavior. She had clearly accomplished what she set out to do—emotionally manipulate her daughter.
Ophelia was in visible distress.
He set down the screwdriver, and the soft clatter appeared to draw her attention. She stared blankly through him as her chest rose and fell with shallow, quick movements. One hand rested at her throat.
“Are you alright?” he asked, stepping into the hall with her.
She rubbed her cheeks briskly, turning them red.
“No.” Her face crumpled. “I think this might be the worst week of my life.”
He didn’t like that. Not when it had been the week that they met.
