“No, Bree,” I assure my sister. “They weren’t all true.”
But it didn’t matter. Not then, and certainly not now. Lita was pathological about her lies but her promises were another story. She’d left me with the cruelest choice she could think of. But then, that was the idea.
“I figured as much,” says Brigitte with a wise nod. Funny how I always think of my sisters as very young, even though I’m only a year older than Ava and barely two years older than Brigitte.
My sister winds the end of her brilliant red hair around a forefinger with a troubled expression. It’s eerie how much she resembles Margaret O’Leary, film goddess from the last century. She has the kind of face loved by the camera. Suddenly her eyebrows knit together. “I should probably tell you something. The other day, that parasite Cate Camp let her guard down and said something about the show having some contact with Lita. She realized right away she’d made a mistake mentioning her and started falling all over herself to cover it up, telling some spontaneous lie about how Lita was demanding that her name be kept out of the show altogether.”
The sound of my mother’s name is a sour one and I feel my face scrunching up. “I thought that was always the idea. But escaping publicity doesn’t really sound like Lita.”
“I didn’t think so either but who knows? I haven’t heard from her in over two years, not since I turned eighteen. She didn’t even want to know about it when Ava had her baby. Supposedly she’s holed up in her mansion in Beverly Hills, waiting for her meal ticket to stop breathing so she can enjoy the fruits of California’s community property laws. God, she’s a bitch.”
I find it hard to picture my mother. The last time I saw her was the morning of my father’s funeral three years ago. We didn’t even speak that day. “Gary and his minions swore from the beginning that there wouldn’t be any Lita. It’s the one condition I had, although now I realize I should have added a few more.”
“Hmmph,” grunts Brigitte.
“What’s that mean?”
She wets her lips and leans across the table. “Did you get an attorney, Ren? One who wasn’t on Gary’s payroll to look over the show contract?”
I hadn’t. I couldn’t exactly afford to retain an entertainment lawyer so when Gary offered to have his legal team broker the arrangement I didn’t come up with a reason to turn it down. “No,” I admit slowly.
Brigitte slumps down with a grimace. “Me either.”
“So what are you worried about exactly?”
“I don’t know. But I also don’t really know what the hell it is I signed.”
I can’t really make myself care about the show or the contract or whoever might be listening to us at this point. Once upon a time I used to flatter myself that I was the sensible sister. In reality, I’m just a scabbed wound, so closed off that simple honesty is a foreign language.
Bree seems to sense my thoughts. “He could have been colluding with Gary from the beginning. Who knows, maybe it was even Oscar who started feeling around to see if there was any tabloid interest in the half-forgotten Savage family. I imagine there must have been something there, a desire for revenge or whatever. I know it’s been a long time and you guys were just kids but time does funny things to people.”
Of course I’d thought of that the minute he showed up. Oscar hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about the circumstances surrounding his sudden arrival. He danced around difficult questions with course teasing and watched me with those dark, inscrutable eyes. And then tonight…
No, it’s too fresh. I can’t stand thinking about the feel of him all over me. I can’t even bear to examine what led me to stubbornly climb into his truck as soon as I heard he would be leaving.
Sooner or later I’ll have to come to terms with how Oscar and I crashed together, fucked like enemies and ultimately resolved nothing. We just used each other as a way to forever kill what we once had.
Yet whoever Oscar’s become, there was once a sense of honor in him. I won’t let myself believe that’s a quality that just disappears completely. He was right. I don’t despise him at all. I don’t even know why I said otherwise.
“No,” I finally say. “If he was out to humiliate me and make a few dollars in the process, he had his chance and he threw it away.”
“So Monty wasn’t just talking out of his ass? Oscar really left?”
“He did.”
“Oh,” Bree frowns. “Better that way I guess, although I’m going to predict Gary and company will be shitting bricks tomorrow.”
“Gary can suck it.”
Brigitte smiles. “He doesn’t have to. I hear Cate Camp does it for him.” She raises her voice, yelling at the air. “Did you catch that? Did you?” She winks at me. “Not wearing my mic.”
I look at my sister. She isn’t perfect. But I love her and she loves me. We both need as much of that in our lives right now as we can get. “I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. I’m sorry.”
She gives me a faint smile. “I suppose I’ve done a few things to deserve it.” She loses her smile. “Look, I know all of this isn’t your idea of success. I know you’re here because we asked you to be. And I’m not sure I ever thanked you for that. Or for the fact that you’ve always been more of a mother to all of us than Lita ever was.”
I swallow. There’s a bitter taste in the back of my throat that won’t disappear. “I’m not going to pretend like anyone’s twisting my arm. It’s my choice to be here, Bree.”
“Fair enough. But I’ll only forgive your worst assumptions about me if you quit using that wretched nickname. It reminds me of childhood.”
A small, rueful grin creeps across my face. “Not a chance. Habits die hard, or in my case, never. It’s my chief flaw.”
“Oh, Ren. We’re all flawed.” Brigitte rises from the table, heads toward the door and then spins suddenly, dropping a graceful curtsy. “Terribly, savagely flawed.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Five Years Ago: The End
Mina Savage is dead.
A week ago Ren stood right beside Oscar as they learned the news together. Her father was the one to say the words. August had summoned her to the house along with Oscar and for a defiant moment Ren was sure it was because August planned on confronting them about being together.
She was ready.
With Oscar next to her she could be brave enough to face the censure of her parents, even if it meant she lost them. She didn’t care a bit how it would look to the world, or that they were only seventeen or that her family would have hysterics. No one would take Oscar away from her.
But when they reached the paneled study where her father spent most of his days he sat there alone, looking far older than he had just that morning when she’d caught a fleeting glimpse of him. Then, in a halting, sorrowful voice he told them what he’d learned an hour earlier over the phone.
“Her heart was weak. So many years¸ so many pills. I don’t have the whole story but she’d apparently been stealing another patient’s meds and she took them all at once. It was a full cardiac arrest. Very quick. There will be no funeral. She’d arranged to be cremated immediately upon death. Oscar, you hear what I’m telling you? Do you hear me?”
“Yes. I hear you, sir.”
Oscar hadn’t cried at all until much later. And then he cried only to her.
Life stayed quiet for a few days. The girls were unusually somber, Spencer kept on being Spencer, August closed himself in his study and even Monty stopped hassling Oscar, giving him space to mourn.
Ren spent every moment with Oscar, even climbing through his window to lie in his arms for a few hours while the rest of Atlantis slept. She worried about the watchful glare of her mother. Sometimes it seemed Lita was everywhere – haunting the front porch of the big house, lingering by the staircase of the brothel. Always with the same impassive mask and never saying a word. The fact that her mother had stopped speaking to her was no great loss to Ren, but she’d spent seventeen years learning to mistrust the woman. The flat, dead-eyed look in her mother’s eyes chilled her more than she could admit.