There’s the gotcha she’s been looking for, and her smug expression infuriates me because I’m trying to help her. I don’t hold back.
“You don’t think you do the same? You’ve got one kid in ballet and the other in sports. You tell your daughter she’s responsible for her brother. You don’t think you’re influencing the waytheythink? Their expectations? You don’t think calling Owen your ‘big smart scientist’ and Sophie your ‘pretty little dancer’ makes an impact?”
“How dare you?” She’s clutching the table as if to stop her hands from reaching for me.
“It’s not daring to tell the truth,” I say. “I accept that we manipulate people. I even admit I’m not completely comfortable with it. At least I’m open to understanding what it is I do.”
She paces again and then stops. “Eric said you told him not to tell me,” she says. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” says my mother. She stands and walks to the sink, hand resting lightly on the counter. “We are very cautious about who we trust with this information.”
Kelsey glares at her. “I didn’t make the cut?”
“As we said, this has nothing to do with you,” Mom says.
I groan internally. That won’t go over well.
My sister-in-law’s lips thin. “As you delight in telling me,” she says dryly. “Tell me, Meilin, what is it that you hate most about me? That I married your son? That I’m white? That I don’t kiss your ass and let you control me the way you need to control everyone else in your family? Do you have a magic potion for that, too? A perfume you wish you could hook up to the vents of my house so we’d finally fall in line the way you want us to?”
“Whoa,” I snap before Mom can answer. “That’s uncalled for.”
She bursts out laughing and then gives an exaggerated wipe undereach of her eyes for the nonexistent tears, as if to demonstrate how downright amusing she finds this. “You, of all people, know better,” she says. “You left town to get away from her.”
“Kelsey,” says my mother, stepping in front of me. “You’re wrong. None of that is true.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kelsey tilts her head to the side.
Mom nods and looks her in the eye. “I would need to care about you much, much more to bother doing any of that.”
The flinty words land like a slap, and I take a little step back. Kelsey is going to lose it. Instead, her face crumples and her nose twitches as if holding back real tears.
“The hell with you.” That’s all she says, and this time I don’t intervene, because Mom deserved that. “You know, I thought Eric was exaggerating about how bad a mother you are. I made excuses for you. Said you were allowed to have your own interests. He was right all along.”
She snatches up the bag with the samples and leaves without another word. Neither Mom nor I bother to stop her, something she seems to be expecting, because she pauses at the door as if waiting for us to call out. When we don’t, she gives her hair a shake and snaps the lock back with such force I wonder if it’s going to break.
Once she’s safely gone, Mom turns the sign back to OPEN. “I told you—”
I hold up my hand. “I don’t want to hear it.”
She creases her mouth. “Fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that you should have listened to me about her. She’s a bitter, jealous woman. The kind you can’t trust.”
The headache that has been lingering in the back of my head all day surges up to make itself known in a very nasty way. “Have you considered that all of this could have been avoided had you welcomed her into the family in the first place?”
“Like your father did?”
I frown. “What did Dad do?” I can’t imagine him throwing a party.
“He did absolutely nothing, and I don’t see you or Kelsey getting upset with him the way you are with me.” Mom rolls her shoulders. “I made the right decision to not tell her. This proves it.”
“Okay, Mom.” Years of experience tell me arguing is useless. In the end, we got what we needed, which is Kelsey taking those perfumes. I have a feeling she’s going to do as we asked, but it might be prudent to point out the consequences to Eric if she doesn’t. I’ll do it later, because right now I want to be away from any family members, be they by legal decree or by blood.
Before I can escape, Mom pulls out two dusters and returns to the main room, where she hands me one and starts on the shelves. “I made her a wedding fragrance,” she says to the wall. “Kelsey. As a gift.”
I wipe the counter free of specks as I search my memory. “Didn’t she wear Marc Jacobs?”
“Yes. Waipo and I worked on her wedding perfume for weeks. She thanked me and put it aside without smelling it.”
There are no words for how deep a cut Kelsey gave my mother, and worse, she probably didn’t realize the care, time, and consideration that had gone into the gift. My family makes scents for some of the most important people in Asia, and Kelsey rejected them for an off-the-shelf Daisy flanker. Any hope of a relationship would have died between them that day, and Kelsey probably has no clue. Mom would never tell her, and Eric wouldn’t care that it had been Mom’s way of welcoming her to the family.
