Selling Scarlett

chapter Five

~ELIZABETH~

I don't know if it's the thought of Cross locked up where I can't get to him or the knowledge that he'll never have the super special come-out-of-your-coma N-therapy again, but something hits me in the chest and a sob slips out my lips.

Suri's arms come around my shoulders and I smell the cinnamon rolls burning as she hugs me tightly. "I can't believe they're doing this to him." She pats my back and I hide my face in her chest, feeling like a child—I never cry—but unwilling to pull away because I know how hideous I look when I do, and I don't want to subject Suri to that even though she's seen it a time or two.

When I finally compose myself, there's a definite smoky smell in the kitchen. Suri squeezes my arm once more before dashing to the oven and yanking the cinnamon rolls out. They look like they've survived a volcanic eruption at close range.

"I'm sorry!" She looks anguished as she stares down at the cinnamon rolls.

"Suri." I can't help laughing, because this is classic Suri, dealing with a crisis via yummy foods, concert tickets, fruity daiquiris, and spa trips. It's actually pretty great, and I’ve enjoyed it since we were kids.

"I don't care about the cinnamon rolls," I say, unable to swallow a laugh at their horrible appearance. "It's the thought that counts." I smile, although my tears have started up again. "Do you want to go out or something? Maybe we can break Cross free from that shithole and move him here."

"That's the thing," she says, her voice going all high-pitched like it does when she's really distressed. "Adam is making me fly to New York tonight. Some special occasion he won't tell me anything about."

Despite my leaking eyes, my brain shifts gears. "Do you think that he's proposing?"

"I don't know, but he better not," she says, waving her arms. "He knows how I feel about New York, and he can be a literary agent on the West Coast much more easily than I can run Northern California Interiors from New York! His clients are all virtual. Mine have homes."

She bares her teeth and mimes a cat scratch, and I know things must have gotten really rough with Adam. I think it's safe to say he's not proposing.

"So the two of you are still at an impasse about where to live?"

She nods miserably but quickly finds a smile. "Maybe he's finally going to give in. I would so accept a Cali-shaped cupcake or...I dunno, Alcatraz earrings."

"Alcatraz earrings." I smile a little, and Suri giggles.

"I can hope," she says.

She pulls a napkin from the pocket of her apron and dabs at her eyes, and I put my arm around her. She wraps hers around me, and together we walk over to one of the windows. I'm not sure who steered us here: her or me. It's like a game of Ouija Board; maybe we both needed a look outside.

It's quiet inside the house, so all we can hear is the low whoosh of the heat through the vents down by our feet, and the utter quiet beyond the glass-paned windows.

When Suri speaks, her voice is high and shaky. "Remember when we were in seventh grade and Cross invited you to Fall Ball?"

I nod, smiling at the memory. He came to my house to ask, wearing a black leather jacket and jeans with holes. I frown next, because I remember how his parents never drove him anywhere. It was always Renault, the Carlsons' butler.

Suri inhales softly, and I watch her face as she sucks her lips in and makes a classic Suri Thinking face. Then she drops a bomb. "Ever since then I kind of had a secret crush on him."

I shriek. "Suri, you have got to be kidding me!"

She shakes her head, blushing three shades of pink. I slap her arm. "How could you harbor such a huge secret?"

"I don't know." She smiles, and shakes her head, and I know the answer before she says it.

"I guess I just met Adam and...that was that." Her eyes tear again. "I still love my Cross."

"Me, too."

“I want to do something for him,” Suri says.

I do, too. In fact, I have to.



*



Maybe it's because of Mom that I freak out. I don't have that many childhood memories of her being whisked away to rehab, and I think that's mostly because she never went. Not until I was a teenager. But she was locked away from me in other ways. Always in and out of altered states, sleeping just like Cross is now.

I have too many memories of watching from the foot of her bed as one of the many private nurses Mom went through hooked up saline to the IV stand she stashed in her make-up room. Sometimes, when I was really little, I would cry and my dad would tell me she was sleeping.

"She loves you, honey, but she's sleeping today."

After Suri leaves, I feel gripped by that old sensation, panic at my lack of access to someone that I love. But I'm not a child anymore. I grab my car keys and race to my old, powder blue Camry. I'm out of breath by the time I crank it, but that doesn't stop me from speeding to Mom's house, a massive, white Southern antebellum-style home with a huge wrap-around porch, situated in the rolling hills fifteen miles northwest of downtown Napa.

The gate password is still the same. It's been a month since I've been here—several weeks after Cross's accident—but I notice no cobwebs stretched between oak trees as I fly down the arrow-straight driveway. I remind myself that a maid service is still coming; I hired them myself after Cross got hurt, mainly to check on the house so I don't have to drop by regularly.

The front of the house is lit up like usual to deter gate-hopping criminals, and as I see it for the first time in weeks, my heart squeezes, because no matter how much time passes and how much changes, this awful place will always feel like home. I throw the car in park and fly up the square staircase, unlocking the door and stepping inside quickly, so I can disable the alarm whose panel is one room away, inside the piano parlor.

The code is my birthday backwards. I picture Cross pressing the keys, probably standing in this very spot wearing old jeans and one of his bomber jackets, and tears sting my eyes.

I'm here for one thing and one thing only, and that's Dad's number. I don't keep it in my cell, because it's too enticing. I don't allow myself to call him on a whim. When Dad wants to talk to me, he calls, and as soon as we're finished talking, I delete the number from my call log. It's a Salt Lake City number, so it's not one I could accidentally memorize.

When I call from the rotary phone in our vast, dark kitchen, I'm grateful that it's new wife Linzie who answers and not one of her daughters, Fern, thirteen, or Hollow, nine. Her hello is flat and Midwestern; I can almost see her on the other end of the line, clutching a cordless phone and standing in a slightly dated kitchen. The picture of normal: that's Dad's new family.

"Um, hi Linzie, it's Elizabeth."

She pauses for a second, then responds in a crisp, telemarketer-sounding voice. "Elizabeth. Can I help you?" Whoa, her tone is brisk. I swallow back my irritation.

"Yeah. I want to talk to my dad." Biotch. I want to stick my tongue out and tell her he was my dad first, but instead I calmly say, "Is he around?"

"He is." I think she's gone to get him when I hear a breathing sound and Linzie says my name again. “Elizabeth?”

"I'm here."

"I know you are. Uh—" there's a fuzzy sound, like she's covering up the phone's mouthpiece. When she speaks again, her voice is tight. "Elizabeth, is this about your mother?"

"No." Now it's my turn to be surprised. And peeved. "Why do you ask?"

Linzie sighs. "I know that she's in rehab again, Elizabeth."

"Yeah. That's not news." I squeeze my eyes shut, wanting to bang my head against the kitchen wall. What the hell does Linzie care what my mom's up to?

"I know it’s how things are there, but it's not normal here for us." She pauses, like she's rallying herself, and I try to put my armor on, because I can tell this is going to get me right between the ribs. "Your father is damaged from what he went through with that woman. You know how she treated him. But when things happen with her, he still feels responsible."

For some reason, this makes me want to punch Linzie in the nose. "Um, I'm not trying to be rude, but of course he does. He was married to her for more than twenty years." I inhale deeply, fighting to control my off-the-handle temper. "Like I said—I'm not calling about my mom, so can I talk to my dad now please?"

I hear silence, and for a long moment, I think she's hung up. Then my dad is on the phone.

"Elizabeth."

"Hi Dad." In the background, I can hear a girl's voice, and I know it's one of them. Fern or Hollow. 'One of my new girls'. I lean my head against the wall. "Look Dad, I just had a quick question for you."

"Okay. What's your question?"

I wrap the curly cord of the olive green phone around my finger, biting my lip, because I hate to ask this—but I have no choice. "I was wondering if I could get a loan. From the DeVille Trust, or from you."

My words are followed by a long pause, during which I honestly have no idea what he will say. Then I hear a sort-of snort.

"Elizabeth, are you serious? We’ve talked about this. You can't spend money like your mother used to. I know it's hard for you, growing up the way you did, but this is life now and you're twenty-three—"

"Dad, I'm not. I'm not spending any money." I clench my jaw, breathing deeply as my pulse races. "I never buy anything. It's not for me."

Pause. "So you are calling for your mother?"

"No." I grit my teeth as rage builds in me, pooling underneath my breastbone and radiating out over my shoulders like venom from a snake bite. I huff my breath out, so angry now I'm seeing stars. "Dad, did you tell Linzie to screen my phone calls?"

"Screen your calls? Of course not, Elizabeth. Linzie would never do something like that. She cares a lot about our relationship."

I can feel my lower lip tremble. "Why don't I believe you?"

He sighs, and it's the sigh he used to save for Mom. I get the eerie feeling Linzie is standing right beside him, encouraging him, with her deep brown eyes, to stick it to me.

"Elizabeth. You have issues with trust."

“What?”

“There’s money available for counseling—”

His comment takes me off guard and makes me furious. "Oh yeah?" I demand, cutting him off. "You think so? Maybe Linzie could see me. Do herbalists take insurance? I know they’re great advice givers, so maybe I could fly out—"

I'm still going—verbal vomit, that's what Cross would call it—when the dial tone dings.

My mouth stays open and my eyes fill up with tears. "I need counseling?" I slam the phone down with all my might, feeling the impact in my fingertips as I whirl around to face the empty kitchen.

At least, it was supposed to be empty. I was supposed to curl into a ball and sob, because when I get this mad, it's the only thing I can do to discharge my anger. Instead, I find myself staring at Hunter West.