“You did?” I try not to act surprised, but my heart has lodged in my throat for a second. Why would he visit my mother?
“We ate lunch and caught up. It was like old times.” He passes me a water bottle and then takes a swig of his Cherry Fizz. “She said she wished Daisy was around, that the house was too quiet without all of you girls there.”
“Stop,” I tell him, standing up and setting the sushi on the desk. It feels like fool’s food, a trap, something you give a three-headed dog before sneaking into a treasure cove.
He frowns. And I can’t tell whether it’s real or fake. Honest or deceitful. “What’s wrong?”
“You don’t know me,” I refute. I return to my tubs of clothes, but I don’t want to squat down in front of him.
“I do know you,” he lies.
I spin around and realize he’s casually leaning against the front of my desk. “Can you please leave?”
“I don’t get it. I say one thing about your mother and you throw a tantrum.”
I glance at the camera. I don’t want to vilify my mother to the nation. I don’t want to cause her that pain. She’s a good woman even if she does bad things sometimes. But the more he pokes me, the more these thoughts and feelings resurface, the more I can’t bite my tongue. That’s Connor’s specialty. He’s the river that idly passes between mountains. I’m the volcano that destroys a village.
“What is it?” he taunts, his voice anything but kind. He wears an antagonistic smile. “She didn’t buy you a diamond necklace? She forgot your eighteenth birthday?”
“My mother would never forget my birthday,” I tell him. “She’s always been there for me.”
Scott shrugs like I’m insane. Maybe I am. Maybe my feelings are irrational. Maybe I’m losing my mind with all the stresses in my life. “She was upset that she was an empty-nester. It’s normal, Rose.”
“I don’t want her to take Daisy back,” I suddenly blurt out.
Scott frowns again. “Why not? Do you have some perverse fantasy about raising her, becoming a mother because Connor won’t have kids with you?”
“Fuck you,” I curse. I grab my handbag and lift one of the tubs awkwardly in my arms. Scott doesn’t offer to carry it for me (not that I would let him). “You can see yourself out.”
“My pleasure.”
I struggle to open the door with one hand. This time, I don’t have Connor behind me to scoop up the box and help. I manage fine at first. I breeze through the door and head down the hall, breathing sporadic breaths that slide down my throat like brittle knives.
The tub drops out of my hands by the elevator. The lid cracks, and I hurriedly fold each article of clothing before placing them back inside.
I don’t want to float inside my head, but the longer I take, the more I feel the past whisper against my neck like a cold, familiar ghost. I see my oldest sister, Poppy, who grew tall before the rest of us, who was out the door, married and pregnant in practically no time at all.
When she left, my mother focused her excess attention on me, pressuring me to continue ballet, attending every practice and recital, filling my schedule with dinner dates and functions. And I wanted to make her proud. How else can you give thanks to someone who gives you everything you desire? Who showers you with things that glitter? You become someone they can gloat over; you become their greatest prize.
Connor is right. He talks of monetary values. Of benefits. Opportunity cost. There is a price that you pay growing up in luxury. You feel so undeserving of everything around you. So you find a way to be deserving of it—by being smart, by being talented and successful.
By building your own company.
With Calloway Couture, I could make my father proud—to show him that I could follow his entrepreneurial footsteps. The failure of my company feels not only like a failure of my dream, but a failure of my place in the family. Of my right to have these beautiful things.
But I have to remember what else my company means to me. What it has been. How it’s saved me. It was an outlet where I could be creative despite my mother’s constant nagging. I used to come home, rub my abused toes from pointe shoes, and sketch on my bed, in private. I was twelve. I was thirteen. Fourteen. I found solace in fashion. I found peace and happiness.
It was something for me. My mother couldn’t take my designs. She couldn’t make them hers. I created each dress, each blouse and skirt. They were the clay that I could mold, even if she continued to try and mold me.
And then I left for Princeton when I turned eighteen. My mother lost me, the daughter who she fought the most with, but only because I was the daughter she turned to, the one she talked to, the one who spent nights listening to her prattle, who heard her advice, even if I chose not to take it. I love that she loves me. I just wish she let me breathe for a moment in my life.
My mother still had Lily after I left. But she brushed over her, believing she was set for life with Loren Hale, the heir of a multi-billion dollar company almost as lucrative as Fizzle.
So that left Daisy.
I knew exactly what would happen to her the moment I went to college. I knew she’d take my place as consummate daughter, ready to say yes to my mother the moment I shut the door. But as a teenager, I fought my mom each step of the way. I was bitchy and obstinate.
My sister is none of those things.
I cried when I finished unpacking my dorm room. I was smart enough to see what would happen. And I couldn’t do anything about it. Daisy would bend to my mother’s desires, to her selfish ways. She would sign Daisy up for so many classes to where she couldn’t see straight. She would make her date whoever she chose. She would dress her in fancy ball gowns with too much frill and lace. And she’d parade her around like a toy doll with no voice and no brain. No matter how much I called Daisy to check in, to listen to her words crack before she layered on the false optimism, I couldn’t change the course of things.
I thought for sure Daisy would turn to drugs.
I thought for sure she’d party too hard to try to reach the air that my mother always sucked dry.
I coped by scribbling in a sketch book at that house. I couldn’t see that as a path for Daisy. I only saw blackness. And I’ll never forgive myself for what happened, how blind I was.
I was focusing on the wrong sister.
Lily was heading down that dark road, feeding an addiction that not many people understand.
Daisy wasn’t even close to that yet.
But I fear making the same mistake—not helping Daisy like I was too late for Lily. I don’t want my mom to exploit Daisy with her modeling career just so she can brag to her tennis club friends. I want my sister to watch late night movie marathons, have slumber parties and eat too much ice cream. But her childhood already consists of stumbling home with tired eyes from a midnight photo shoot, from going on go-see after go-see where people pinch her waist and call her fat.
This is my price I pay for my wealth.