“Everyone came back around when your father died. I was on all the magazine covers, in all the newspapers. Everyone was talking about me. Salvatore Romero’s grieving widow. I got three film roles from it, remember? They were good roles.” She looks up at me, a wistful smile on her face that makes me shudder. “I had fun. Remember?”
“I do remember,” I answer, using every ounce of acting ability I have to keep my voice steady. She’s talking about my father’s death like it was nothing more than a way to boost her faltering career. I’ve always known she used it as such, but to hear her talk about it so calmly, so rationally even while I’m sitting in the middle of this…it’s chilling.
“But then time passed and everyone went away to other stories and other stars. I needed something big,” she tells me as she pushes herself off my lap, her eyes wide and pleading. “You understand that, right? I needed something huge to bring the attention back.”
“So you choose a crazy daughter.”
“Just think of the headlines,” she tells me dreamily. “You’re so famous, so sought-after, so perfect. Just imagine how the press would explode if you lost it. If you ended up having to be locked up for a while…I would be there at your side, of course. Making sure you were okay. Being the best mother I could to you. You’d win that Oscar, baby—Hollywood wouldn’t be able to deny it to you when the role made you literally go crazy. You wouldn’t be there, of course, but I would put on a brave face and accept in your honor. And then—”
“That’s enough.” Ian’s voice cuts through hers like a scalpel, and then he’s standing up and reaching for my mother. Pulling her to her feet. Pulling her away from me.
It’s just in time, too, because my stomach revolts—too many pills and too much sorrow all mixed together.
I bolt for the bathroom, barely make it to the toilet before I’m throwing up what little is in my stomach. Then I’m dry-heaving, again and again and again, my body shaking and shuddering even as I strive to shut it all down again. To shut the insanity of this morning far, far away from me.
“Veronica.” Ian’s voice slams into me and I realize suddenly that it’s not the first time he’s called my name. “Goddamn it, baby, answer me. Veronica!”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your baby. I’m not your anything.”
He bites his lip, looks like he wants to say something else, but then he just nods.
He looks distraught. He looks like hell and for a moment, just a moment, I want to scream at him. To demand to know how he can look so broken when I’m the one who’s been used. When I’m the one who’s been lied to. When I’m the one who’s broken.
No. I shy away from the word. Not broken. Not—
“Baby, are you okay?” My mother calls from the chair by the window. Ian must have sat her there when I got sick.
No, I’m not. I’m not okay. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.
I don’t say that though. I don’t say anything, and I’m saved from any more of her explanations when the doorbell rings.
“Why don’t you go get that,” Ian tells me roughly.
“Me?” My eyes dart between him and my mother and the gun that is lying, discarded, on the bed.
“I’m not leaving you alone with her,” he grates out as he drapes a robe around me and ties the sash. “Now go.”
I don’t have the energy to argue, don’t have the energy for anything with my mother’s Xanax or whatever the hell she drugged me with weighing me down. So I just nod, and make the trek to the front door.
I have enough peace of mind to check the security cameras to make sure it’s Dr. Reece and his small entourage before I open the door. His eyes widen as he gets his first look at me and then he’s moving in, instructing his nurse to take care of me as he asks for directions to where my mother is.
I start to take him there, but reaction is setting in and I’m shaking so badly that I can barely hold myself upright. The nurse directs me to the closest chair and then Ian’s there, at the top of the stairs, calling out directions to the doctor even as his eyes are fastened on me.
It all happens quickly then, so quickly. The nurse is barely done taking my vitals before Dr. Reece is back. My mother is with him, stretched out on a cot carried by two orderlies in scrubs. She’s sleeping peacefully, a small smile on her face.
Dr. Reece stops to talk to me—and check me over—as the orderlies carry her out to the big, black SUV in my driveway. He’s shining a light in my eyes, pressing a stethoscope to my heart, taking my pulse. And through it all, he’s talking—about my mother, about the Valium she’d admitted to crushing up and putting in my coffee, about the fact that he’s going to admit her to the hospital for a few days, just for observation.
He’s saying it all, saying so much, and I’m barely tracking. Everything seems to be coming from so far away. And then Ian is there, his hand rubbing soothing circles on my back. I want to scream at him to go, want to scream at him to leave me alone, but I know that doing so will only delay Dr. Reece’s departure. Will only have him looking at me with even more concern. Already, he’s making noises about me coming by his office in the morning and talking to him.