“Don’t come here again, Christian.”
With that, I turned around and pushed the entrance door to my building.
I went back to the office, tripping over the stairs at least three times. My mind was jumbled. With Christian, with Dad, and with my parents’ Molotov cocktail of a marriage. When I pushed the door open, I was met with Jillian’s stony face. She was holding her briefcase, her lipstick freshly applied, signaling me she was on her way out.
“You forgot about our meeting with ShapeOn. They just called us saying you are thirty minutes late.” Jillian tried to keep her voice down but failed, as she did often when she was upset. I guessed I had forgotten to put it in my planner. Crap. That was the second client I’d messed up this month.
“I . . .” I trailed off, thinking of something to say. Jillian shook her head, pushing past me as she went out the door. I stood rooted to the threshold, wondering what the hell happened.
I tried to reach my father on his cell for the rest of the day. He didn’t pick up. The truth was closing in on me like an envelope, sealed around me one inch at a time.
By the time I left work for the day, I decided desperate times called for desperate measures and called my mother. She answered on the third ring, sounding frostier than usual.
“Arya. You are calling me out of nowhere, so I’m going to go ahead and assume you want to ask about your father.”
Hello to you too, Mother.
“I don’t remember you calling to check in on me either,” I replied, because frankly, I was fed up with her attitude. “And yes. I am, in fact, calling to ask about Dad. He’s not answering.”
I heard her moving across her grand living room, her designer slippers gliding over the marble. Her pocket-size dog was barking in the background.
“Your father has been holed up in his study with his lawyers all day, conducting a meeting I want absolutely nothing to do with. The new evidence and plaintiffs will definitely make things more difficult. Can you imagine what I’ll have to face when I go to the country-club luncheon next week? I’m thinking of canceling the entire thing. Dick pics, Arya! How absolutely tacky.”
Dick pics. That was one term I’d never thought I’d hear my mother say.
Again, she made this about her, not him. I reached my apartment building’s door, punched in the code, and pushed it open.
“Do you think he did it?” I repeated my question from our brunch. Only this time, I wasn’t met with amusement anymore but somber silence. I never could read Mother. Not enough to know what she was thinking, anyway. If she had an obvious answer to my question, I didn’t know.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? We’re his family. We must stick by him.”
Must we? I thought. Even if he hurt others badly? Maliciously?
I pushed my apartment door open, then took off my heels and stared at the antique shelves on my walls. They were full of pictures of me and Dad from vacations, charity balls, and holidays. None with my mother. She never tagged along for anything. Dad had raised me all by himself.
“The financial implications are another thing to take into consideration.” Mom’s voice drifted from the phone I was holding. “The company will head straight to bankruptcy if Conrad doesn’t step down, and even if he does, it might be too late. Not to mention they’re suing him for most of his net worth. I can’t believe he did this to us.”
“Let me sleep on this, Mom.”
“Okay. Oh . . . and Arya?” My mother sniffed on the other end. I stilled, waiting for her next words. “Don’t be a stranger. You can call me, too, you know. I’m still your mother.”
Hardly, I thought.
You were never my anything at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ARYA
Present
I decided to take a day off to decompress. And by decompress I meant totally compress. I wanted to get some answers and dig into the claims against my father. Before yesterday, I’d cautiously assumed Dad was speaking the truth when he gave me a blanket denial. Now, I wasn’t sure. Last night, I’d texted Louie, who’d confirmed they’d received additional discovery requests. Other women were joining the lawsuit, and the sum on the recently filed statement of damages was astronomical; it would strip my father of most of his assets if he lost.
I thought about Christian the whole subway journey from my apartment to my parents’ Park Avenue penthouse. I absolutely loathed that he was right about me taking a step back.
When I got to my parents’ apartment, my mother waited at the door.
“Thank you for coming. I was thinking maybe we could order sushi for lunch or something?” A hopeful smile tugged at her lips.
“Hmm, what?” I wanted to make sure this wasn’t a prank. She’d never offered to do anything with me. And upon getting rejected a few times during my preteen years, I’d stopped trying.
“Sushi. You. Me. I can help you dig through Dad’s stuff.”
Going all Brady Bunch with my mom wasn’t in my plans right now, but I acknowledged that she did make an effort. I patted her arm, brushing past her toward the master bedroom. “Sorry. I work best when I’m alone.”
I reached the master bedroom’s door, using the secret knock only Dad and I had. One rap, beat, five raps, beat, two raps.
“Dad?”
There was no answer. Mom appeared beside me, twisting the hem of her dress. “You know, he’s been moody all day. He wouldn’t even take his lawyers’ calls.”
“Dad!” I knocked again, ditching the secret knock. “Open the door. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me. I need to understand what happened.”
I couldn’t sleep a wink during the night. To think that my father could be capable of such things made me want to hurl myself into the Hudson River.
Mom huddled nearby, serving as a curious audience.
“Go away,” Dad called out through the door.
“Dad, I want to help.”
“You do? Because you haven’t been too helpful so far.”
“I have questions,” I bit out. My growing suspicions and his attitude were a bad combination.