“He cheated on you?” But I already knew the answer to that question.
My mother laughed throatily, tearing off a miniscule piece of sourdough bread and popping it between her scarlet lips. “Cheated, cheating, will cheat. You choose the tense. But I wouldn’t use that term, exactly. Cheating implies I care. I haven’t had an interest in fulfilling my marital obligations in a while. It was always understood that if he wanted female affection, he’d have to seek it elsewhere.”
“Why didn’t you get a divorce?” I spit out, anger humming beneath my skin. I was under no illusion that my parents had a happy marriage, but I’d thought they were semifunctional.
“Because,” she droned, “why should we go through that horrible, tacky mess when we have an understanding?”
“Where’s your pride?”
“Where’s his?” she asked, almost cheerfully. “Virtues don’t age well in upper society. You think slipping in and out of strange women’s beds like a thief is more honorable than my sitting at home and knowing about it?”
My reality as I knew it came tumbling down. I wouldn’t say I put Dad on a pedestal, but I definitely viewed him through rose-colored glasses. Now I wondered what else my parents were keeping from me.
“How many affairs did he have?” I rearranged myself in my seat, feeling a rash coming my way.
Mom waved a hand dismissively. “Six? Seven? Serious mistresses, I mean. Oh, who knows? I wasn’t aware of Amanda, but there were others. His infidelity started early on. Before you and your brother were born, in fact. But after Aaron died . . .”
My heart cracked. Not breaking all the way but enough that she was human and lovable in that moment, not just the woman who’d ignored my existence from the day she’d lost my brother.
“That’s terrible.”
My mother smiled delicately. “Is it? He’s been a wonderful father to you all these years when I could barely look at you. You remind me too much of your brother.”
Was that why she hated me? Why she ignored my existence?
“He never demanded a thing from me, even when it was clear I was no longer the woman he fell in love with. Is it terrible of him to seek love somewhere else or simply natural?”
“What he is being accused of has nothing to do with love.”
Mom mulled it over. “Your father is a twisted man. Can be, anyway.”
“Do you think he is capable of all the things they accuse him of?” I tried holding her gaze, but it was vacant. Empty. No one was home beyond Beatrice Roth’s emerald-green eyes. “Of sexually harassing someone?”
My mother signaled for the check, not meeting my stare. “My, it’s getting chilly. Let’s continue this some other time, shall we?”
“Ari?” Whitley, our office manager, popped her head from behind her Mac screen the following day at work. “There’s someone downstairs to see you.”
I double-clicked on my digital planner, frowning. “I don’t have any meetings until three.” Even that was in SoHo, a few blocks down from my office.
Jillian flashed me an inquisitive look from across the room, as did Hailey, our in-house graphic designer. Whitley nibbled on her cuticle, pinning the intercom phone between her shoulder and ear. “He’s downstairs.”
“Does he have a name?” I arched an eyebrow.
“I’m sure he does.”
“Now’s the time to ask what it is.”
Whitley ducked her head down, asking the person buzzing to come up what his name was. She tilted her head so she could see me beyond her screen. “Christian Miller. He says you’ll be happy to see him.”
My stomach flipped nervously, and a can of butterflies cracked open, filling it with velvety, flappy wings.
“He’s lying.”
She relayed my reply to him, then listened to what he said and laughed.
“He says he knew you’d say that but that he has information you’d like to know.”
“Tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”
I half-heartedly patted my hair into submission, grabbed my phone and sunglasses, and headed for the stairway. Since there was zero chance I was going to enjoy this conversation, I decided to get it over with. No doubt Christian was here to hit me with more bad news. Question was—how did he know where I worked if he’d tossed my business card the day we’d met at the Brewtherhood?
I took the stairs two at a time. Christian waited on the curb, playing with a matchbook, talking on the phone. When he saw me, he lifted his finger up, in no rush to finish his conversation. Only after he gave one of his associates a detailed explanation of how he wanted them to file a motion to compel something in court, he turned off his cell and tucked it back into his breast pocket, whirling to look at me like I was three-day-old moldy takeout he’d just found staring back at him from the kitchen sink.
“Ms. Roth. How are you?”
“Good, until about five minutes ago.” I slid my sunglasses over my nose. “Now I’m wondering what fresh hell you’ve prepared especially for me.”
“You wound me.” He produced a cigar, speaking in a tone that very much didn’t sound wounded. “I would never prepare fresh hell especially for you. Although you are about to be delivered a generous piece of it.”
“Get it over with, Miller.”
“I wanted to tell you in person before you found out through the grapevine. Those lawyers your father hired seem about as competent as a pet rock and can’t even seem to slow the speed at which the trial date is moving.” He lit the cigar. Tragically, even while puffing the stench straight to my face, he looked more like an Esquire cover model than the antihero in a mobster film.