“I’m sorry, Ms. Fairchild, I tried your phone but there was no answer.”
My phone, I remember, is by the bed. “What is it?” I ask, alarmed. “Is it Damien?”
“No, no, nothing like that. But there is a woman at the gate,” he says, referring to the gate that Damien had installed at the property entrance after the paparazzi got all crazy during his murder trial. “Ordinarily, I would simply send her away and insist that she make an appointment, but under the circumstances . . .”
“What circumstances?”
“Ms. Fairchild,” he says, “the lady says that she’s your mother.”
Chapter Four
My mother.
My mother.
Holy shit, my mother?
My knees go watery and I have to force my arms to stay at my sides so I don’t reach out automatically for Tony. There’s nothing on the beach that I can use to steady myself, and right now I really need steadying, so I stand perfectly still and smile and hope Tony doesn’t yet know me well enough to pick up on the fact that I’m totally and completely freaking out.
“I wasn’t expecting my mother,” I manage to say. “She lives in Texas.”
“I knew she was from out of state, Ms. Fairchild. I checked the lady’s ID. Elizabeth Regina Fairchild, address in Dallas. I assume she’s here for the wedding.”
“Right. I just—she’s not supposed to be here until Friday,” I lie. I conjure what I hope is a bright smile, but I fear it looks like something out of a low-budget Halloween thriller. “So, right. I guess tell her to drive on up to the house. If you could buzz Gregory and ask him to settle her in the first-floor parlor, I’ll run in and get dressed,” I add.
“Of course, Ms. Fairchild.” If he has picked up on my nerves, he is either kind enough or well trained enough not to say anything.
I hurry back up the path and take the stairs to the third floor. I want to ensure that I don’t see my mother until I’m dressed and made-up and looking polished and pretty enough that maybe—maybe—she’ll wait an hour or two before she starts in on me.
Once I’m in the bedroom, the first thing I do is grab my phone off the table and dial Damien. The second thing I do is end the call before it has the chance to connect.
I sit on the edge of the bed and suck in air. My heart is pounding so hard, my chest hurts, and I am holding my phone so tightly in my right hand that it is making indentations into my palm. My left hand is curled in on itself, and I concentrate on the sensation of my fingernails digging into my palm. I imagine my nails cutting through skin, drawing blood. I focus on the pain—and then, disgusted with myself, I hurl my other arm back and toss my phone across the room. It shatters from the impact, an explosion of plastic and glass, a smorgasbord of sharp edges now glittering on the floor, tempting and teasing me.
I rise, but I am not heading toward those shards. I will not touch them, not even to sweep them away. They are too tempting, and despite the fact that I’ve grown stronger in my months with Damien, I do not trust myself. Not now. Not with Elizabeth Fairchild just two floors below, waiting like a spider to draw me in, wrap me up, and suck the life right out of me.
Shit.
My mother.
The woman who locked me in a dark, windowless room as a child so that I had no choice but to get my beauty sleep. Who controlled what I ate so meticulously that I didn’t make the acquaintance of a carb until college.
The woman whose image of feminine perfection was so expertly pounded into her daughters’ heads that my sister committed suicide when her husband left her, because she’d clearly failed at being a wife.
The woman who said that I was a fool to stay with Damien. That once you passed the ten-million-dollar mark one man is pretty much like another, and I should move on to one who came with less baggage.
The woman who said that I’d ruined the family name by posing for a nude portrait.
The woman who’d called me a whore.