She tried to remember what dinners might have been like if Philip Farrow had never come into their lives. If her mother was still Amelia Miller, seven months pregnant and answering phones at the front desk of a law firm in New York City. Maybe they’d live in a little apartment in Brooklyn. Just the two of them and a cat. Maybe she’d take the subway to school.
“Well?” Irritated by the silence, Philip dropped his fists onto the tabletop in twin thumps. At the far end perched Vivienne’s mother, pale and drawn. She, too, had barely touched her plate. The sudden slam made her flinch.
“She’s happy to do whatever you ask, darling.”
“I’d hope so,” said Philip. He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a cloth napkin before snapping it back into his lap. “Do you remember Bill Donahue? He and his family were at last year’s winter pledge campaign. His son, Bryce, took a shine to you, if I remember correctly.”
Vivienne speared the tines of her fork through a braised chicken breast. She wondered if anyone would notice if she retched right into her plate.
“Bryce Donahue is being groomed to take over his father’s company,” continued Philip. “He’s got his own way of doing things, and it’s slowing down the upcoming merger. I don’t need an innovator, I need someone who will roll over and submit. The company is floundering. It’s being swallowed up by a bigger fish. That’s business.”
She signed it just as he said it.That’s business, her right hand stroking over her left. It was his favorite catchphrase. She knew it cold.
Philip narrowed his eyes at her, trying to determine whether or not she was mocking him. She returned the stare with a slow blink, her smile demure.
Wary, he said, “Bryce Donahue needs a lesson in market shares. I’ve invited him and his father over for dinner tomorrow.”
The breath seized in Vivienne’s lungs.
“Philip,please,” said her mother, casting a fleeting glance toward her daughter. “You know how I feel about you bringing your work home with you.”
“I’ll take a big, fat commission on the acquisition once the younger Donahue is out of the picture.” Philip took another bite of his dinner, speaking around a mouthful of chicken. “For that kind of money, you can reupholster every last room in the house, if you like.”
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t sit here another minute, listening to them bicker. Anticipating what came next.
Thatwas business. It was never, ever personal. Not to Philip. Everything he did was for the good of the firm. Every grave dug. Every body buried—ever since that chilly September morning when he’d first happened upon their driver heaving his last breath and saw, in the tear-filled eyes of his trembling stepdaughter, an opportunity.
Electric with disgust, Vivienne pushed her chair back from the table and rose to go. Immediately, the smile slipped off Philip’s face.
“And where do you think you’re going?”
Anywhere but here, she signed.This conversation is making me sick.
“She asked to be excused,” interpreted her mother, with scarcely a look in Vivienne’s direction. Not that it mattered. She could have signedThe Communist Manifestofor all her mother was doing to botch the translation. Taking further liberty, she added, “She’s not feeling her best this evening.”
Philip set down his fork and leaned back in his chair, fingers folding across his stomach. For a long time, he regarded Vivienne through the table’s lit candlestick glow, his gaze assessing.
“Is that right? You’re feeling unwell?”
Lying came easily to Vivienne, and so she nodded.
“We can’t have that, can we? Dinner is tomorrow night. I expect you to be on your best behavior. Cozy up to Donahue. Make him feel welcome. If all goes according to plan, we’ll take him fishing.”
Vivienne stared across the table at her stepfather and wondered what he’d do if she flipped it clean over. If she tore off the tablecloth and snapped all the candlesticks, threw the plates at the wall hard enough to smash them into pieces.
She wondered if he’d weep if she told him what she thought of him, right out loud. Sometimes they did. Weep, that is. They begged. They crawled. They foamed at the mouth and writhed on the floor. All she had to do was scream. She was a piteous Medusa, her mouth full of snakes. A siren, her voice full of venom.
One note, and she sent men to their graves.
She didn’t do any of that, of course. There was no throwing of plates or screaming of screams. She stood like a doll and waited to be excused. She always did, in the end. She was obedient down to her bones. That was the problem. In her fists, her fingernails carved shallow crescents into her palms.
Philip tsked. “Go ahead, then.”
Vivienne turned in a tight pirouette and headed for the door. She didn’t make it far before Philip called her name. When she peered back at him, the gleam had crept back into his eyes. She wanted to cringe away from it. To spit claws like a kitten and scratch the look off his face. Idly, he twisted that wretched signet ring round and round on his finger, the bone-white flush of it too lusterless to catch the light.
“Wear navy,” he said, in a voice that brooked no argument. “Above the knee. We want to make a lasting impression on the younger Donahue, now, don’t we?”
The following day, Thomas drove Vivienne to New Haven without issue. He sat outside the studio and rifled through a workbook on practical skills, bubbling in the self-assessments with a pencil until the nib snapped and his head hurt and he felt more directionless than ever before. When Vivienne was finished, he interpreted a brief, informal conversation with her adviser.
