“Mom,” I said. “Can we please not talk about this?”
“Talk about what?” she asked, pouring another glass. “Your fucking failure to deliver?”
“Mom,” I begged. “Please. It wasn’t right and we both know it. I couldn’t go through with it.”
“Oh, come on, you little bitch,” she snarled. “You fucking give it up for any guy with a hard-on, and you couldn’t sleep with Levi?”
I swallowed hard. I couldn’t even meet her eyes. I always thought my crush had gone unnoticed.
“Don’t play coy with me, girl,” Mom laughed. “I always knew you liked him. Held a candle for him, almost as bright as Kendall’s, except she wasn’t fucking horny for her stepdaddy.”
Oh, if only she knew.
“Your stupid little idea didn’t work, did it?” she asked me roughly. “That fucking letter. He didn’t even read it. And before you could try again, he walked out. You’re fucking useless. Even with your looks, your fucking age, you couldn’t tempt him. Useless little girl.”
She kept on drinking and I stopped trying not to cry. She didn’t even notice.
“All it would have taken was one scandal,” Mom slurred. “One night of fucking indecency. All you had to do was fuck him, Mandy. Fuck him, and we’d have all the money we wanted. I’d get the divorce and shame him into giving us even more when my daughter came crying, saying stepdaddy used her. And you fucking blew it.”
“Mom, I didn’t want to,” I said through the tears. “I didn’t want to do that.”
“Well, too fucking bad,” she snarled. “Sometimes all of us have to make a sacrifice for our family.”
She got up abruptly, getting another glass from the cupboard and slamming it down on the table in front of me. She poured the amber liquid into it and it sloshed over the rim.
“You better drink now, baby,” she said viciously. “Nothing left to do now that you’ve fucked it all up…”15LeviShe was quiet on the ride home.
I kept glancing at her out of the corner of my eye, and Kendall kept staring ahead with her mouth tightly closed and her eyes distant and vacant. I didn’t try to understand what was going on inside her head. I didn’t even want to pretend to understand how hard it must have been to walk away from her mother and sister.
But Kendall was eighteen now, and so was Amanda. They could make choices of their own.
While we were driving, I reached over for her hand and pulled it onto my lap. Her dainty little fingers rested on my knee, and she seemed to relax a little. I knew it wouldn’t be an easy night for her, but I wanted to do everything in my power to make things easier for her.
I was driving us to my apartment in the city, one Barbara didn’t know about.
About six months ago, I’d realized my marriage was well and truly doomed. I knew a divorce was imminent, it was just a question of when Barbara would let me off the hook. But once I came to terms with it, I’d bought the penthouse apartment in the city, meaning to move into it once I finally sorted out the mess that was my private life.
“We’re here,” I told Kendall once I parked up, and she gave me a simple nod but kept sitting unmoving in my car. “Baby girl, come on, let’s go upstairs. We can talk there. I’ll make it all better, I promise.”
I reached for her and tucked her hair behind her ear. She flinched when I touched her and I hated myself for it. She was so fucking vulnerable after the fight with her mother, and I felt like a prick for pushing her. But what else was there to do? We needed to move past this shit.
“I can’t believe she just let me leave like that,” Kendall said quietly, and I stroked her cheek. “She’s my mom. I thought she’d want me to stay.”
I decided to keep my opinion of Barbara to myself. It wouldn’t help Kendall to tell her I thought her mother was a grade A bitch.
“She was upset,” I said placatingly. “That’s all baby girl, it will all be better tomorrow. I promise. Why don’t we go upstairs and get some rest?”
She gave me a small nod and I got out of the car, helping her out on the passenger side. I took her hand and led her into the elevator, her hand small and shaking in mine.
If Kendall was surprised by the apartment, she didn’t show it, apart from one quick questioning look in my direction. I realized when we walked in that she didn’t have a thing with her, and I made a mental note to order some stuff for her online once she went to bed.
“Where am I going to sleep?” she asked softly, her hand gliding along the white leather of the sofa.