“I bet you are,” I mutter. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye!” she says, and then she hangs up.
And I’m left with my racing thoughts. How do I tell Juniper what I’ve been keeping from her? And how is she going to feel about me when she finds out?
22
IN WHICH JUNIPER FINDS THE FUCHSIA
Waking up in Aiden’s bed feels weird and surreal and way too good. This is not something I should get used to. But that doesn’t stop me from memorizing every inch of how I see the room from where I lie sprawled starfish-style. The side he slept on has long since gone cold, and I’ve migrated to the middle of the mattress. I take in the ceiling fan, impressed by how quietly it rotates, and I examine the way the dust particles dance in the stream of light coming through the window.
I wonder if Aiden has laid in this exact spot looking at that exact stream of light. Did all the dust make him want to clean?
I bet it did.
I am afflicted with no such compulsion. I stretch and then sit up, rubbing my eyes. The revelations from yesterday are nudging and pushing at my mind like passers-by on a crowded street—trying to make room for themselves, forcing me to rearrange the contents of my brain like Tetris blocks so that everything fits and everything makes sense. The fresh infusion of grief is potent, a stain in my heart.
For weeks after my mom died, I would wake up every morning and remember she was dead, and it was like she had died all over again. The same thing seems to be happening now. My time-worn heart shreds itself, tears and rips and busted seams as the full weight of her death hits me once more. It’s heavier, somehow, and more tragic, knowing the truth about what happened to her. Knowing that she was assaulted and possibly even killed by someone she had considered a friend.
I sigh, scooting to the edge of the bed and letting my feet dangle over the side. I just stare at them for a second, at my stubby toes and chipped polish, and then finally get up and moving.
I have things I need to do. I can’t sit here thinking about my mother, or about the dead chicken someone dumped on my doorstep, or about any of the things that are haunting me. I need to find answers, not wallow in my hot roommate’s bed.
As tempting as that sounds.
So where to start?
I bite my lip, staring around the bedroom as I think, trying to organize my thoughts.
It’s my suspicion that Lionel Astor is my father, and that he killed Sandy because she found out he had a daughter. There are other possibilities, but I’m not sure how they would work. So I think it’s best to start with this assumption. And when I fill in the blanks with those answers, I’m left with fewer holes in the narrative.
But one of the biggest is that I have no clue how specifically Lionel and Sandy crossed each other’s paths. It’s a long shot, but maybe I could find more about Lionel’s history with beauty pageants and start there.
So with one last look around Aiden’s room, I walk out the door and head back up to my own room. I need my laptop.
I take the big stairs two at a time. At firstI take the little stairs two at a time as well, but my leg muscles quickly talk me out of that unnecessary exercise. I just hurry up them instead, bursting through my door full of breathless anticipation. I grab my laptop from my desk and then settle on my bed, propping up the pillows behind me so that I can work comfortably.
And then I pull up my search engine.
I run through every variation of Lionel’s name combined with beauty pageant terms that I can think of. And what I’m able to determine, after ten minutes of the kind of googling only an author can manage, is that Lionel Astor has a type.
Tall, busty, and brunette. Sort of like if the Kardashians were super tall. It’sthatkind of woman he always seems to have his arm around. And, when I start digging into family photos, it’s clear that his wife is cut from the same cloth. She’s older now, of course, but she has that same look about her.
I continue scrolling through family photos, pulled along by morbid curiosity, past pictures of Lionel and his wife that have been taken over the years. They don’t have any children, which I find curious?—
Well. I guess Lionel might haveonechild. Me.
I clear the search bar and enter a new search term:Lionel Astor children.Maybe he’s talked about it in interviews before. Someone has probably asked, as rude as it would be. It’s no one’s business why a couple does or doesn’t have kids.
I would argue, however, that in this case it’s at leastpartiallymy business. So I proceed with my search, scrolling slowly at first and then faster as I pass by the string of irrelevant articles.
I switch to an image search instead, sitting up for a moment to adjust the pillows behind me. Then I resituate myself and resume scrolling, slower this time.
Most of what I see are pictures of Lionel Astor with various groups of children—him in front of a school for somekind of ceremony, an orphanage fundraiser, that kind of thing. But my hand freezes when something different shows up, my fingers twitching to a halt as they hover over the laptop.
It’s a photo of Lionel Astor as a child—four or five years old, probably. He has dark hair, bright eyes, and cheeks that still haven’t completely lost their baby roundness. He’s completely cute.
That’s not what stops me, though. What stops me is the bolt of recognition that hits with that photo.
