They walked into the dining room, filled with dark leather banquettes that were so widely separated, it was impossible for someone at one table to see the guests at any other. Eris realized she couldn’t hear a single shred of conversation, only the music pumping in over the speakers. Maybe all the tables were equipped with silencers.
The hostess, a dark-eyed brunette in a tight uniform skirt, looked them over. “We’re the Dodd-Radsons,” Caroline said, stubbornly using their old name, or maybe she’d just forgotten the same way Eris kept doing. But the hostess seemed to already know who they were.
“This way,” she said, weaving through the secluded tables to the back corner. “He’s been waiting for you.”
Eris felt a shudder of apprehension and reached instinctively for her mom’s hand. They arrived at the table just as a gentleman stood up from the shadows, and Eris gave a sharp, helpless laugh.
She turned to the hostess. “We’re at the wrong table. I’m meeting someone else,” she said, marveling at the coincidence, because she actually knew this person. It was Matt Cole, Leda’s dad.
But the hostess had turned away, and Mr. Cole was clearing his throat. “Caroline,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “It’s good to see you, as always.” He held out his hand awkwardly. “Eris, thank you for coming.” And she realized, stunned, that there hadn’t been a mistake at all.
Leda’s dad was her dad too.
She and her mom sat down, sliding awkwardly along the banquette so that Eris was between her parents. The silence felt strained and heavy. Mr. Cole was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before, his eyes tracing over her features, probably searching for himself in them. They had similar mouths, Eris realized, and his skin was as fair as hers. But she looked so much like her mom it was hard to tell.
A bot rolled over with a tray of drinks on its surface and began to dole them out. “I’m sorry, I went ahead and ordered,” Mr. Cole said self-consciously. “Caroline, the spritz is for you, and Eris, I got you a lemonade. I remember it’s your favorite, right?” She just nodded dumbly. Yeah, it was my favorite, back in eighth grade, the one and only time Leda had me over.
They sat there idly swirling their drinks, everyone waiting for someone else to speak. Eris refused to be the first to talk. She was still making sense of all this. A thousand moments were replaying in her mind—the way her mom always asked which other parents would be there, before she came to any school function; her seemingly casual questions about Leda, which evidently weren’t so casual at all. Now it all made sense. But—
“When?” she blurted out, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I mean, when did you …” hook up? She didn’t know how to phrase the question, but her mom understood.
“Matt and I met in our early twenties,” Caroline said, watching Eris. “Before I met your father. We were part of the same group of friends, all new to the city. The Tower was just under construction. Everyone was scattered in the boroughs waiting for it to be done. We were all so poor,” she added, turning to Mr. Cole. “We were living paycheck to paycheck. Remember how my first apartment in Jersey City had beach towels for curtains?”
“You couldn’t even afford furniture,” Mr. Cole said, amusement creeping into his tone. “You stacked wooden boxes as your coffee table.”
“In the summers when it was hot, we’d sneak into the indoor farmers’ market and wander the aisles until they kicked us out, because we couldn’t afford air-conditioning.”
Eris looked back and forth between them, totally unnerved by this reminiscing. Her mom smiled softly at the memory, then turned back to Eris, the moment over.
“Anyway,” Caroline said, “that’s when my modeling career took off. I met Everett, and Matt went back home to Illinois for a while. By the time we saw each other again, it was several years later, and I was married …”
And so was Mr. Cole, Eris thought. She remembered that he’d picked things back up with Leda’s mom—his high school sweetheart—when he moved home to take care of his ailing dad, then convinced her to move with him back to New York, to the brand-new Tower. God, Mrs. Cole had probably been pregnant with Jamie when they saw each other again. But neither of them mentioned that particular detail.
“Well, we reconnected, and then …” Caroline looked at Eris. “And then there was you.” She looked away, wringing the napkin in her lap until her knuckles were white.
“Eris,” Leda’s dad—her dad—interrupted, “I had no idea until your mother called me. I never even guessed that you were mine. As you know, Caroline and I haven’t been … involved, for years now.” He cleared his throat in a businesslike way. Of course, Eris thought, he was still shocked himself. “I want to tell you how sorry I am for everything you’re going through,” he went on. “I imagine this is all incredibly hard on you.”
“Yeah. It sucks,” Eris said drily. Caroline squeezed her hand.
“Please,” Mr. Cole said, “whatever I can do to help, let me know.”
Eris looked at her mom. Did he know they were on the 103rd floor? What was he going to tell his family? But as she opened her mouth to ask, Mr. Cole tapped on the center of the table, pulling up the holographic menu. “Should we all get some lunch?” he offered, hesitantly. “The shishito spring rolls here are amazing. If you have time, that is.”
“We’d love to,” Caroline said firmly.
Eris took a long sip of the lemonade she didn’t want, her mind still trying to adjust to this strange new reality. Mr. Cole met her eyes across the table and gave a tentative smile. Eris felt herself soften a little. She thought suddenly of when she’d gone to church with Mariel, the way strangers forged a connection with her through nothing but a touch and a look. And this was her birth father, not a stranger at all, trying in his own way to connect with her.
Whereas the man who’d been her father for the last eighteen years had stopped speaking to her altogether.
Leda’s dad was her dad. It was pretty much the last thing in the world she’d expected. But he was here, and he was trying.
Eris looked up at him and smiled. “Sure,” she said, as cheerfully as she could manage. “Lunch sounds great.”
LEDA
LEDA SAT BOLT upright, gasping, her silk pajama set drenched in sweat. Her hands wound tightly in her sheets, clutching at them with clawlike fingers.
She was having the dreams again.
The lights came slowly to life as the room comp detected her alertness. Leda sat huddled in the center of her enormous bed, her arms wrapped around herself. She was shaking. Her limbs felt too heavy to move, like she had shrunk to some miniature creature standing at the controls of an enormous, unwieldy body.
She wanted a hit. Desperately. God, she hadn’t wanted one this badly since the early days of rehab. Back then she’d had these dreams every night: of drowning in ink-black water; of fingers reaching for her, still and cold as death. I am my own greatest ally, Leda repeated, trying to center herself, but she couldn’t, it was freezing in here and her brain felt muted and all she wanted was a burst of xenperheidren to bring her back to life.
When she finally felt like she could move, she threw back the covers and twisted her hair up, heading toward the kitchen. She wanted a glass of water. She could’ve asked the room comp for it, of course, but she thought walking around might calm her a little. It felt like someone had scraped out her head from within.
The apartment was eerily silent. Leda moved a little faster, her bare feet skirting around the squares of moonlight on the floor just like she used to do when she and Jamie were little, and pretended that touching the light was bad luck. In the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator door and stood there awhile, letting the cool air kiss her face.