“THANK YOU FOR BEING PROMPT, LILY,” Grandmother said. Somehow I’d managed to fix myself up and hustle over to the main house in time for tea, coming through the door at three thirty on the dot.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, a little out of breath. Hoping she hadn’t noticed that I’d rushed over, I went directly to one of the chairs in her elegant—if slightly dated—parlor. We were surrounded by an overflow of printed fabrics, wood buffed to a reflective sheen, and the smell of lemon-scented furniture polish. The large room overlooked her extensive gardens, and the staff made sure to include several fresh flower arrangements all around the room. Grandmother sat erect in her wing chair, her silver hair styled in an asymmetric bob and her bichon frise, Hamlet, settled on her lap.
“You’re a very pretty girl, Lily; why do you have to wear so much makeup?” she said, her face pulling into a frown as she handed me a cup of tea.
“I was just playing around,” I told her, twirling a lock of my hair around my index finger and suddenly feeling foolish.
My effort to take more care with my appearance had ended in a smoky eye, lots of blush, and false eyelashes look that might have been better suited to a night out at a New York club. Sophie and I used to play around with this exact look when we wanted to feel glamorous and grown-up. I think she’d been on my mind a little too much that afternoon, and I might’ve been influenced both by fond memories of Sophie, and maybe seeing Dad’s pregnant girlfriend in Grandmother’s driveway.
“I saw Jenny,” I said.
My grandmother made a sound of disgust while I stirred sugar into my tea with a small golden spoon. “Can you believe that little tramp actually came here looking to get her paws on the family money?”
I could believe it. “What’d she say?” I asked, feeling a bit smug that Grandmother had referred to Jenny as a tramp.
Grandmother rolled her eyes. “She came here on the pretense of delivering the news that she and your father are engaged,” she told me. “They’re getting married in December, right after the baby is born.”
I nearly choked on my tea. “Was he going to tell us?”
“I doubt it,” she said.
I dropped my gaze to my lap. I don’t know why, but it stung that he hadn’t even tried to contact me about his plans. I mean, I was really, really mad at him, which should’ve acted like a barrier to anything hurtful he could’ve said or done, but I was quickly learning that anger didn’t make my heart bulletproof.
“Lily,” Grandmother said, leaning forward to peer closely at me. “What is it you’d like to do with your life?”
Apparently, we were off the subject of Jenny and onto the subject of me. I hesitated while I thought about my answer. It felt a little like Grandmother was offering me a trick question. At last I decided to tell her the truth.
“I’d like to become a behavioral scientist,” I said.
Her lids closed in a protracted blink. “A…what?”
“A behavioral scientist,” I repeated. “I’d like to work with animals, study their behavior, and try to figure out how to communicate with them.”
This was an idea that’d formed over the summer and solidified in my mind when I was working at the horse sanctuary. Many of the animals that came to the rescue had been terribly abused, and I’d felt such a connection to them. I’d also been so impressed by two of the women who worked there—trainers specializing in assisting the animals to get over their traumas.
One of the trainers, a woman named Rachel, had told me that she felt it was always the responsibility of the animals to try to assimilate themselves into the world of the humans who took care of them, and when the humans were poor communicators, the animals often felt the brunt of that miscommunication in the form of abuse. Rachel had shown me how simply watching a horse or a dog or a rabbit for an hour or so could teach me a lot. She’d been so right and I’d come away with a much bigger curiosity about the world, and why we all behaved the way we did.
Grandmother, however, appeared less than pleased by my aspirations. “You want to study…animals?” she said, as though that was something vulgar.
I squared my shoulders. “Yeah. I think I might go into veterinary science first, and then continue on to become an applied animal behaviorist.”
Rachel had had those exact credentials, in fact.
Grandmother’s next reaction left me cold. She laughed. She actually laughed at me.