My phone lights up on the vanity and I lean over to read the screen before the notification disappears.
It is Calla and Kiara in a group text from both of them with a string of dancing emojis and an address downtown that I recognize as the new rooftop bar that opened last month. It is the kind of swanky, luxurious place that costs three hundred dollars for a single cocktail and a breathtaking view of the city.
Every twenty-something in Chicago with Daddy’s black credit card has been trying to get in for weeks.
I tap open the message from Calla that reads:
Babe, you gotta come. We have a table and a drink waiting. All we need is you here. Maybe we can get the V-card punched, baby!
I laugh at her delusions. She knows I can’t leave this place without an entourage of beefed-up bodyguards. I mean I might as well be wearing a chastity belt.
A couple of seconds later a selfie of my two best friends comes in with them smiling and looking fabulous with their daddy’s money buying them a good time.
But my father is not like theirs.
I stand there with the phone in my hand and I let myself want it for exactly ten seconds, the rooftop, the cold drink, the particular freedom of being somewhere that does not require me to monitor my own expression or remember which fork to use or keep careful track of whether I am smiling enough but not too much. I let myself want it the way I let myself want most things I cannot have, fully and briefly and then not at all. It’s easier that way. I reach for the scar over my left shoulder. It hurts the most given the tenderness of the area.
Like I said, fear is an excellent motivator. So is pain.
But still…
The guard rotation at the front gate changes at nine. There is a gap of maybe four minutes between one man leaving his post and the next arriving. I have counted it. I also know thecamera angle on the east garden wall has a blind spot roughly six feet wide near the hydrangea hedge, and the side door off the kitchen has a lock that has needed replacing for two years and has not been replaced because my father considers maintenance someone else’s problem. I know all of these things the way a person who has spent their whole life inside a beautiful cage eventually maps every inch of the bars.
I could get out. But if my father found out, and my father always finds out, the conversation that followed would not be a conversation of words. His leather belt lashing into my skin would do all the talking.
No, thank you.
I text Calla back a rain check as a knock comes at my door.
“Yes?”
My door eases open to reveal a man in a black suit, an earpiece and blank expression.
I move to the door and quietly follow his gesture to follow him. He’s one of the rotating roster of men my father employs to stand outside my bedroom. I don’t bother learning his name. He’ll be here today and gone tomorrow. It’s how my father works. His trust issues are deeper than mine and he doesn’t give anyone a chance to learn too much about our family. This one is broad-shouldered, walks with a limp and prefers no small talk as he leads me down two flights of stairs. He stops at the top of the last landing and gestures for me to continue.
Another rule of my father’s. The hired help is not to be seen.
“Your father waits for you below.”
Ugh. His words make slush against the sides of my stomach. I grab my shawl and slip it over my shoulders, covering my upper back and shoulders.
“Hey, you wanna take the back way outta here?” nearly slips out, but the dutiful daughter in me slaps sense into me with an invisible hand. I swallow the temptation, choose the good-girl words, and say, “Thank you.”
Sweat over the smoothness of my palm makes it hard to grip the handrail as I descend into the belly of the monster.
Instead of cold marble, blank white walls and a whisper of the artificially cool air, my mother has turned her mansion into a jungle of roses.
The thick sweetness of their scent hits me the second I get to the bottom of the staircase. It pushes past the threshold of pleasantness into something almost overwhelming. Curtains of flowers colored from cream and blush to deep crimson are arranged in towering centerpieces that line both sides of the grand foyer. Petals lay scattered along the floor and the walls are draped in roses and vines woven into masterpieces reflecting majestic pieces of art.
To anyone on the outside looking in, those inside this home appear filled with love.
I say be careful of the hidden snakes among the vines and the poisoned thorns aimed for your heart.
I move past the foyer and step through the archway, following the light melody of music.
A string quartet in the far corner of the ballroom plays something sweeping and occasion-heavy and entirely toosignificant for what I assume is a standard political gathering. It’s one of those sweeping pieces that feels like it was designed to make you feel the weight of the occasion. Waitstaff in white gloves move through the crowd with trays of champagne that catch the chandelier light and throw it in small, scattered arcs across the ceiling.
I accept a glass of champagne from a tray and drift along the perimeter of the room. Eyes drift in my direction and there is little I can do but play the poised Governor’s daughter.
