“In Dad’s office. I was gonna show him the art I did at school, but they were yelling.”
Monica sighed. “Your Aunt Eva has a bad relationship with your Grandma. They don’t get along. Your grandma…” No, she shouldn’t mention this here. Not like this. Inthisplace.
But Abigail stared at her, spoon in her mouth, ready for answers.
“Your grandma never really loved your Aunt Eva.” She probably didn’t love Henry, either, but that was harder to tell.
Abigail dropped her spoon. Neither she nor Monica got up to get another one.
“Why would she not love Aunt Eva? Everyone loves her. I love her.” Abigail kicked her legs out in front of her, banging a foot beneath the table. “Don’t you love her?”
It was asked with the frightful conviction of a girl desperate to know that the world functioned the way she had figured out.She’s still figuring it out.Monica still was, too.
“Your grandma likes perfect girls. Perfect women. People who act just like her. Eva has never been that kind of person. Neither am I.” She smiled. “That’s why I love your Aunt Eva as much as you do. I don’t like people who pretend to be perfect. There’s no such thing.”
Abigail continued to stare at her mother.
“Everyone in our family as it is loves each other very much. Your daddy loves me and his sister. Your auntie loves your aunt Nadia and me. Your aunt Nadia lovesyou.We are a house full of love. Partly because none of us had a lot of it growing up.” Well, except for maybe Nadia, but Monica didn’t know enough about her childhood to know for sure. “We all love you. We would all do anything to protect you. Remember that, Abby. Even when what we do might not make sense, it’s because we love you and want you to grow up smart and healthy.”
She was quiet for another moment. Then, “Mom?”
“Yes?”
Those blue eyes cast downward. “You love me, right?”
Her heart was on the verge of breaking in the middle of a frozen yogurt parlor. “Sweetie.” She kept her cool, despite her desire to cry. “I would do anything for you. Even die.”
“You’re not gonna, though, right?”
“No. Not for a long time. It’s a figure of speech.”
She finished the dessert on the car ride home. Abigail clung to her while staring out the window, her eyes foggy and her thoughts too distant for her mother to penetrate.
When they arrived back at Warren Manor, Monica was intent on creating a calm atmosphere for the family. They would eat as a small unit in their wing’s more intimate dining room, and Monica would put in a word to the chef on duty that night to whip up Abigail’s favorite cookies if he had time.Maybe Henry will finish work early enough to play a game with us tonight.
She had guided Abigail into their home just in time to hear yelling in Henry’s office.
“What did you expect us to do? For her to do!” That was Eva’s voice, and it stopped Monica in her tracks as Abigail hid her face in her mother’s side. “I don’t care what you think, Hen! We got results, didn’t we?”
Monica put a hand on her daughter’s head. “Wait here. I’ll see what’s happening.”
Abigail sat on the couch in the living room as Monica marched toward her husband’s office on the other side of a long hallway.The thing about Eva…Her voice carried. Far.
“You could have suffered.” Henry’s voice almost stopped Monica again, but she pushed forward. “You could have been…”
She stopped in the office doorway. Eva turned around from the window, her nail between her lips as her other arm clutched her torso to protect herself from whatever she shared with her brother. Henry, meanwhile, lowered his arms from where he stood behind his desk.
“What’s going on?” Monica asked. “We can hear you all the way out in the living room.”
Although Eva’s face softened, Henry’s remained tense. “Apparently,” he began, gaze boring into his wife, “Eva has been receiving calls from Jackson.”
Monica controlled her reaction, but only because she had seen the man for herself the day before. His contacting Eva was news, yes, but not surprising. Once he dug his fingers into someone, Jackson didn’t let go until he got bored. “Concerning.”
“Not quite as concerning as what she’s also just told me.”
He knows.Eva probably gabbed half the details because she was overwhelmed by her brother’s idea of interrogation, but it wasn’t his sister that Henry now silently demanded answers from. It was Monica.
So much for doing this on her terms.
