Page 118

My father is at his desk when I come in, a glass of cognac at his elbow, reading glasses pushed up into his hair. He looks at me over the top of a document like I'm a meeting he forgot he'd scheduled.

"Manon. This is a surprise."

"I know about Maman and Kazik Novak."

His expression doesn't change at all. "That's a very old story," he says.

"I’m sure it won't take you long to tell me your version."

He sets the document down, folds his glasses and puts them on the desk, taking his damn time. Every second he lets pass, moving like a sloth, makes me want to scream.

"They were engaged," he says. "A long time ago. It ended. She married me afterward. I don't see what business it is of yours."

"It ended because you ended it. You paid a man to create fake photos of him cheating. They loved each other, and you destroyed it because of some petty shit you got going on with the Novaks." My voice is becoming shrill and I try to check myself. It’s the hardest thing. "You kept up this silly war between our families over a woman you didn't even love."

Something flashes across his face. I’m pretty positive it isn't shame—more like annoyance that I found out.

"Who told you this?"

"Is it true?"

He picks up his glass and stares at it like that’s going to make me disappear.

"I did what was best for the family," he says. "I needed a wife. She was an acceptable choice. Your grandfather agreed with me. Your mother has had a comfortable life."

"She's had a miserable one, and you know it." I'm shaking now and don't try to hide it. "This feud crap will never end with people like you running things. You married a woman who was in love with someone else and you called it a good match. Then you did the same thing to me."

"I didn't arrange your marriage, Manon. Novak did that."

"But you knew who he was. You knew what his family was to ours, and you let it happen. You smiled at my wedding and gave a speech because it suited you, and because your precious Julien is worth more in your eyes. Never mind that all he does is get into scrapes he needs to be pulled out of." Then comes the thought I’ve been mulling for a while: "You wanted me in that house, didn’t you? A Valmont among the Novaks. You thought I'd be useful to you in there eventually."

He doesn't deny it. He leans back in his chair and looks at me almost like he's proud, which is so much worse than if he'd shouted.

"You were always going to be useful eventually," he says. "That's what a daughter is, in the end. Something you spend when the price is right. I spent you on your brother's life. It was a fair trade."

There it is—the stab in the chest. No guilt or hesitation. He admits to my face he traded me for Julien and he'd do it again. After all, it was merely a business decision. I pace around the office because I cannot sit down. I won’t touch his chairs, his furniture, him … and it hurts to simply inhale the oxygen in this room. This might have been my home one upon a time, but all it is now is the house where the man who made my birth possible lives. That is it, nothing more.

"I never wanted any of this." I wish I’d been born elsewhere. I wish this man were not connected to me. I wish I’d never known this life, or knew anyone in it. "I told you when I got ready for college. I didn't want the family, I didn't want the money, I didn't want a single part of what you do. I built a whole independent life so I'd never have to kowtow to your demands. But you reached into it and used me anyway, exactly like everyone else in this world that you touch."

"You're a Valmont," he says, as if that settles it.

"Charles is dead," I spit out. "A man I loved is dead. My brother nearly went to prison. I lost almost a year of my life, and much more. All of this comes back to you, to your selfish lies from way before I was born."

He shrugs. The son of a bitch.

"You survived," he points out. "That's what we do. We’re one family."

I cannot believe this man. I came here wanting him to be sorry, because I genuinely thought that in some way, somehow, he cares about me. But I see now he isn't capable of it, and I think part of me always has always known that.

"I am nothing like you," I tell him, the truest thing I've ever said to him.

I leave him at his desk and make sure I don't slam the door, because doing so would convey that he got to me, and I've given him enough.

I find my mother in the small sitting room next to the stairs. She's got a book in her lap and she seems deep in thought when I walk in. She’s the glue that held everything together with quiet grace, keeping four decades of suffering buried under the surface. Nothing that good linen, fine china and perfectly organized dinner parties won’t fix. She loves to blend into the background and seem invisible, because that’s what she was meant to be. She’s decoration in this house.

Yet, she’s loved me. She cared about me. She's the only one under this roof who ever did.

She looks up when I come in, and whatever's on my face makes her move the book from her lap to a side table.