“Not until I’m twenty-one,” Beth said. “And it isn’t a lot. I still have to get an allowance from my father.”
“An allowance,” Lily said. She took a step toward Beth, pulled a glove off. “You’re going to get an allowance and marry a rich man, and someday when Julian is dead you’ll get that, too. And me? I’ll just disappear.”
Beth watched Lily’s bare hand. Something about it disturbed her. She was so drunk, and she knew now that she shouldn’t have talked about this, shouldn’t have told Lily those things, but she couldn’t say why. “You won’t disappear,” Beth argued. “You’ll stay here. You’ll have Mariana and me.”
“Will you let me visit at Christmas?” Lily asked. Her hand touched Beth’s hair where it came out from beneath her wool hat, stroked down the silky red strands. “Will I be allowed to sit on a chair in the living room if I stay quiet and wear my best dress?”
“What are you talking about?” She didn’t like Lily touching her hair. Lily wasn’t a toucher; she didn’t like to be hugged, held, or even to hold hands. She found the touch of other people repugnant, but now she was running her fingertips down Beth’s hair.
“Do you know what I think?” Lily said. “I think you’ll marry some rich, boring man and decide you feel guilty about me. And you’ll invite me over for Christmas, and when I get there you won’t be able to think of a single thing to say.”
Tears stung Beth’s eyes, because that hurt. “You know that isn’t true. I don’t want to marry anyone.”
“You will, though, and I’ll be no one. I’ll take more pills, and then I’ll take the wrong pill and I won’t be able to stop, and one day I’ll take enough of them that I’ll never wake up again. Because no one is coming to save us, Beth. We aren’t little girls anymore, and it’s time to face the fact that no one is coming to figure things out for us and make them better. We have to decide for ourselves or disappear into nothingness. Sometimes I think the only way to be someone is to do something bad.”
Her fingers were still touching Beth’s hair. Beth’s hands were numb inside her gloves, and she didn’t want the wine anymore. In this moment—despite the absurdity of it, despite the fact that there was no evidence and no reason—she could see Lily pushing David off that edge. In this mood, Lily was capable of anything. When she’d been home last year, when David disappeared, Lily had been seething with anger. And this year was worse. “Lily, you’re scaring me.”
“Women don’t even get to do that, do we?” Lily said. “The really bad things. We get to be the girlfriend.” Her voice rose, shrill. “?‘Oh, he seemed so nice. He seemed so charming. I never believed he could hurt anyone.’ Why don’t you ever hear of a woman in a clock tower?”
Beth was confused now. “Why would you want to go into a clock tower?”
The fingers stopped their stroking, and Lily put her hand back into her glove. “I wouldn’t,” she said. “I’d have no reason. Why don’t we go home now? I think you’re tired.”
Beth was tired. And after Lily was gone yet again, that entire night, that strange conversation, seemed like a dream. Lily was a teenage girl, not a—whatever Beth had thought she was. It was ridiculous, really. No one would believe a pretty blond teenage girl was capable of truly bad things.
No one would believe that at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
December 1970
BETH
The Christmas Beth was sixteen, Lily didn’t visit. Mariana said that Lily was “busy,” but Beth knew the truth: Lily wasn’t invited. This year, Julian and Mariana took Beth to a Christmas party instead.
Mariana bought Beth a dress to wear. It was high-necked, sleeveless, dark green, belted at the waist, the hem falling to the floor. When Beth put it on, she looked like what she was: the daughter of Claire Lake’s richest and most prestigious couple, a debutante with all the money in the world. She felt like a fraud, and she snuck a bottle of schnapps from her father’s liquor cabinet and drank as much of it as she could before they left for the party.
She was worried sick about Lily. Lily had turned eighteen—a legal adult who didn’t live with foster parents anymore. Had she moved out already? Where was she living? Beth would sneak Lily money if she knew where she was, how to reach her. But in the periods between Christmases, the girls had never had any contact. Part of this was Julian’s rule, because he hated Lily and didn’t want Beth to talk to her. But part of it was Lily herself. “You don’t want anything to do with those people,” she’d say about whatever foster family she was living with. “I don’t want them talking to you on the phone or reading my letters. It’s better for me that way.”
Beth had respected that, even though she longed to talk to Lily sometimes. But now Lily was gone, and no one knew where. She hadn’t even left a forwarding address. It hurt.
Julian drove to the party. He was wearing a tuxedo, his longish hair neatly combed, his face freshly shaved. Beth’s father was handsome, but the creases around his eyes and the soft sag beginning in his jaw hinted at the truth: Life wasn’t always easy on him. He spent more and more time at work, or golfing in summer, or “meeting with clients.” Beth was old enough to wonder now if he had a girlfriend, or more than one. She was old enough to wonder where he went when he’d “visited friends” every Christmas of her childhood. She was old enough to wonder where her mother went, too, since she had no family to stay with, only “bridge friends,” who didn’t seem very friendly. She was also old enough to know that neither of them would ever tell her. Silence was a great talent of the Greer family.
Mariana had ironed her blond hair smooth and sprayed it into a perfect formation, rising from her hairline and sweeping back and down to her shoulders. Her dress was gold lamé; her coat, mink. Her eyes were made up so heavily she looked like she was in disguise, though the effect was also strangely sexual. Her elegant, narrow hands fidgeted in her lap, grasping for a cigarette as she stared silently out the passenger window.
Beth wished, for the first time, that she had one of Lily’s little white pills. Maybe that would make her forget whatever was about to happen tonight.
“Remember your manners,” Mariana said into the silence of the car, as if a conversation had just been happening. “These are people from your father’s company. You have our reputation to maintain.”
At the wheel, Julian snorted. Beth agreed with him. She couldn’t imagine what kind of reputation Mariana thought they had.
“Just be nice,” Mariana said, her voice thin with exasperation, like she was on the edge of tears. “Be nice. For once. That’s all I ask.”
In the back seat, Beth stared out the window, unable to look at her mother anymore. She’d skipped school for two weeks before the school finally called her mother and reported it. She hadn’t had any reason to do it, except that school was boring and she was curious how long it would take for the school to get up its courage and call home. The result was predictable: Mariana showed up at the school, wearing her mink at eleven o’clock in the morning, demanding answers about where her daughter was. Claire Lake didn’t have any private high schools, so Beth went to the public school, which made the scene even more exciting.
Beth knew that she should probably be embarrassed, but instead she’d felt a detached curiosity, because the whole thing was theater. No one, including Mariana, actually cared where Beth was. The school cared about pleasing the wealthiest family in town, and Mariana cared that Beth wasn’t nice. It was all a drama, like on TV.
Lily was the only one who really cared about Beth, about whether Beth was happy, about whether she would get what she wanted. And now Lily wasn’t coming. Most likely, now that she was an adult and not a helpless little girl, she would never be invited over again.