Chapter 2 - The Packing of the Silk
The driveway of the Lake Forest house was long, gravel-paved, and lined with iron lamp-posts that clicked on automatically at five o'clock every evening, regardless of whether the sun had set or the sky was simply turning the color of an old kettle.
By ten o'clock, the last of the guests had cleared out. They had gathered their coats from the cedar chest with averted eyes, murmuring things into their wool scarves like “family matters” and “let’s give them some air,” their Cadillac and BMW doors closing with the heavy, expensive thud of people who had homes to go to where the walls didn't smell like vinegar and burnt flour.
Upstairs, Lily was sitting in the middle of her lavender-and-white quilt, her legs tucked under her nightgown, while a bowl of warm water and a washcloth sat on the nightstand.
“Did I do it wrong?” she asked.
She hadn't spoken since the conservatory. Her voice was thin, reedy, like a bird whistle left out in the rain.
“Did you do what wrong, bird?” I asked, kneeling beside the mattress and dipping the corner of the flannel into the basin.
“The candles.”
“You blew them out in one go, Lily. Exactly the way you practiced.”
“Then why was she mad?”
I didn't answer right away. I took the washcloth—warm, smelling of lavender soap—and pressed it gently against her forehead, soaking the crust of green-tinted lard that had settled into her hairline. The dye in the frosting had turned the strands of her dark hair a sickly, neon moss color.
“Vanessa wasn't mad at you,” I said, and for the first time in three years, I told my daughter something that didn't have an asterisk attached to it. “Vanessa was mad because she’s a small person living in a big house, and she wanted to make sure everyone else looked small too.”
Lily considered this. Her eyes, so large in her small, sharp-chinned face, looked past my shoulder toward the door, where the shadow of the hallway light fell across the carpet.
“Is she gone?”
“She’s packing her silver boxes,” I said. “And then she’s getting into her little white car and she’s driving back to her mother’s house in Winnetka, where people probably throw cake at each other every Tuesday for sport.”
A tiny, dry sound came out of Lily’s throat. It might have been a laugh, or it might have been the last of the air leaving her lungs after four hours of holding her breath.
Downstairs, the front door didn't click shut the way a normal door did; it rattled in its oak frame because Vanessa was slamming it with her hip while her designer luggage—four matching pieces of monogrammed calfskin—tumbled down the three concrete steps into the rain.
I left Lily with her books and went down to the landing.
Vanessa hadn't left yet. She was standing by the trunk of her Mercedes, her hair plastered to her skull by the Lake Michigan mist, her silk dress stained with mud where she had apparently dropped her garment bag while trying to shove it past the spare tire.
“You’re throwing away six million dollars,” she said without turning around as I stepped onto the porch.
“The house is mine, Vanessa. The firm is mine. The only thing you brought into this relationship was an opinion on how I should treat my child, and frankly, the market is oversupplied.”
She spun around then. Her face wasn't pretty anymore; the cold had pinched her nose into a sharp beak, and her lipstick was smeared across her chin like a bruise.
“You think you’re a hero, Julian? You think because you defended the brat today you’re some kind of martyr? Her mother died because she couldn't afford to live in this zip code, and you know it. You brought her here to this mausoleum because you couldn't stand being alone with her memories, and then you expected a twenty-eight-year-old woman to step in and wipe her nose for ten percent of your gross income?”
The words didn't burn. They were too old for that. I had heard them six months ago during a dinner party in Kenilworth, and twelve months ago in the kitchen when she thought I was in the cellar.
“She died of an aneurysm, Vanessa,” I said quietly. “In her sleep. In the house her grandfather built. You read the autopsy report when you moved in—you made sure to check if there was any debt attached to the deed before you unpacked your shoes.”
“She was weak,” Vanessa spat, her voice rising above the sound of the lake crashing against the seawall a hundred yards down the slope. “And so are you. That child is going to grow up hating you because you didn't have the stomach to give her a proper home.”
“A proper home,” I repeated.
“A mother who wears pearls, Julian. A mother who knows which fork to use. Not a man who smells like motor oil and spends his Saturdays building wooden birdhouses with a mute.”
Lily wasn't mute. She just didn't speak to people who barked.
“Get off the gravel, Vanessa,” I told her. “The tires are slipping.”
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She didn't answer. She climbed into the driver’s seat, the leather squeaking against her wet coat, and put the car in reverse with a savage jerk of the shift lever. The Mercedes didn't roll; it leaped backward, its bumper clipping the brick corner of the milk house before roaring down the drive, scattering the gravel like buckshot into the hydrangea bushes.
I watched the red taillights disappear into the blackness of the tree line until they were nothing more than two smears of arterial blood on the wet road.
