Eris felt suddenly as if the air was too thick to breathe. “Why?” she managed.
“It’s delicate, this relationship,” Mr. Cole said. “It complicates things for me, for your mother, and for you as well.”
“And for your family,” Eris said, the cold realization washing over her. “Your wife, Jamie. And Leda.”
He blinked a little at that. “Well, yes,” Mr. Cole admitted. “I don’t want them to find out, for obvious reasons. You understand, of course.”
Eris did understand. She and her mom were the dirty little secret he wanted kept buried.
“Now, about your finances,” Mr. Cole said, his tone utterly businesslike now. “I’ve already spoken about this with your mother, though she didn’t accurately convey how dire your situation is.” It’s not dire, Eris wanted to say, her fierce stubborn pride kicking in. We’re doing okay, given everything. “I’m transferring a lump sum to your account, as well as to your mom’s, and I’ll pay you both a monthly allowance as well. It’s already been deposited, if you’d like to check.”
A little shocked, Eris muttered the commands to open up her bank balance—and gasped at the number of zeroes that were now lined up there.
“Is that enough?” Mr. Cole asked, but of course the question was ridiculous. It was more than enough: to move out of the lower floors, buy a new apartment, replace all her clothes and then some. It was enough to buy her old life back. Eris knew what he was really asking: whether she understood the unspoken price. That she never tell anyone he was her birth father. Not even Leda, she thought—or rather, especially not Leda.
He was buying her silence.
Eris didn’t answer right away. She was looking at her father’s face, which she’d been studying all week in search of her own features, except this time she was trying to read his emotions. There was resignation there, and a little fear, and also something that might have been affection. She could see herself reflected in his eyes as he looked back at her, unspeaking.
Her birth father was disavowing all relation to her. It upset Eris more than she would have guessed. She felt lonely, and rejected, and angry. But emerging the strongest of all her warring emotions was a sense of relief that she wouldn’t have to be poor anymore.
Never one to linger once her mind was made up, Eris stood abruptly. “It’s more than enough,” she said. “Thank you, for the scarf—and everything else.”
Mr. Cole nodded, understanding her meaning. “Good-bye, Eris,” he said softly.
Eris turned and walked out of the restaurant without another word, without even saying farewell to the only father she had left.
Abandoned by two dads, she thought sourly. What a great therapy candidate she was turning out to be.
LEDA
LEDA STOOD OUTSIDE the gates of Haxley Park on First Avenue, her eyes darting back and forth along the quiet, tree-lined street. She felt shaky and tense all over. It had been Ross’s idea to meet here at Haxley, where they always used to do handoffs before Leda’s stint in rehab.
She took a deep breath and started into the park, the old-fashioned iron gates swinging smoothly inward on automatic sensors. A flood of memories washed over her. One of the first times she took xenperheidren, when she’d felt so laser focused she did all her homework for the rest of the year. The afternoon she’d smoked relaxants and lay here on the grass, looking up at the animated clouds on the ceiling in the hopes of finding a pattern. The time she and Cord took his Spokes together, and chased a mosquito around for hours until they stumbled back, laughing, to his apartment.
And now she was back again.
Everyone knew that Haxley was the best upper-floor park for getting high. There were tons of ventilators in its ceiling, since it was in a corner of the Tower, where the floor’s overall airflow might otherwise slow down. It had no playgrounds, so there were no little kids or nannies around; in fact, it was conveniently empty most of the time, tucked away like this on the eastern side of a floor that was mostly office space. The only part that ever had any people was the section by the windows, where a couple of restaurants, a seafood place and a French bistro, looked out over the gardens.
Sure enough, the park’s central pathway was completely empty, even on a Friday evening. “Where the hell are you?” Leda said quietly, sending a flicker to Ross.
The Tower’s internal lights were dimming as the evening got later. A chill lifted the hairs on her arms. The centralized ventilation meant that it was always colder toward the edges of the Tower, especially in public places where no one wanted to foot the electric bill. Leda hugged herself, wishing she’d changed after school this afternoon. But she’d come straight from her SAT prep session, not even stopping back at home. She was too eager for a hit.
There was a garden up ahead with a fountain, blanketed in four-leaf clovers. Leda didn’t see anyone in either direction. She’d wait for Ross there, she decided, her ballet flats crunching on the gravel underfoot.
Then she caught sight of a familiar face, and stopped in the middle of the path.
Her dad was seated at that French restaurant, the one with the heavy glass windows that looked out over the rose garden. Strange, Leda thought; hadn’t she heard her mom say he was working late tonight? Maybe he’d gotten out early … but then, who was he with? Leda stood on tiptoe, craning her neck for a better look.
He was with a woman, and she most definitely wasn’t Leda’s mom. Not a woman, she realized, looking at the slight, pale form. A girl. Hell, she couldn’t be much older than Leda.
And then the girl tossed her hair, a gorgeous red-gold river, and Leda realized she knew that hair, even if she couldn’t see the face. It was unmistakable.
What the hell was her dad doing out with Eris?
“LipRead,” she said, focusing as closely as she could on Eris’s mouth, desperate to know what they were saying. A message flashed across her eyes: read obstructed, shorter distance necessary.
In spite of everything, Leda refused to believe the evidence in front of her. Surely there was some other explanation for what she was seeing—surely her dad wasn’t having an affair with Eris. There had to be another reason they were having dinner alone, on a Friday night, in secret.
She watched, dumbstruck, as Eris reached across the table to take something from her dad. Eris smiled. And then she stood up and leaned forward, and kissed Leda’s dad, the curtain of her hair blocking their mouths from Leda’s view.
Leda watched it all as if it were happening in slow-motion. Her feet felt rooted to the ground. She watched as Eris, still smiling, settled a scarf around her shoulders. It was the one Leda had seen in her dad’s briefcase, the ridiculously expensive one with scarlet flowers.
Leda stumbled forward blindly, wanting to scream. Or throw up. Now it all made sense: the weird way her father had been acting lately, the secrets he’d been keeping.
He was having an affair with Eris Dodd-Radson. Or Eris Dodd or whatever the hell her name was now.
“Leda?”
“About time!” she snapped, hurrying toward Ross. “What took you so long?”
“Somebody’s a little antsy.” He was young, with thick auburn hair and a face so beautiful and innocent it might have been surged onto him. His brown eyes were wide, thick lashed, with the slightly dilated pupils of someone wearing contacts—or someone constantly high. He blinked slowly, as if it were an unthinkable struggle to remain awake.
“So,” he said, “I, um, have some bad news. I’m out of xenperheidren.”
“What?” That was the whole reason Leda was meeting him, to get a pack of xenperheidren, and take them over and over until her world wasn’t ripping apart at the seams. “Are you serious?”
He winced. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“What the hell do you have?”
Ross opened his bag and began pulling things out one by one. “So I’ve got BFX, and some potshots, and relaxants, which honestly you need—”