The Beautiful Daughters (18 page)

It was beyond patronizing, but then Harper would redeem herself by making scrambled eggs with cream cheese or offering to give Adri a back rub while they watched old episodes of
Seinfeld
on DVD. It was impossible for Adri to stay mad.

But the engagement had tipped the careful balance of their complicated world. It seemed to Adri that the ring she wore was an unspoken point of contention between them, and the harder she tried to act as if everything was normal, the more Harper set out to prove that it was not.

“I am not jealous!” Harper shrieked in the face of Adri's accusation. “I am the farthest thing from jealous. I feel sorry for you. I think you're making a huge mistake.”

There were a dozen things that Adri could have said, but she chose “Marrying the man I love is a mistake?”

Harper didn't even have to answer. The look on her face was enough of a reply.

“You can be a real bitch, Harper. You know that?” Adri regretted the words the second they were out of her mouth, but it was too late to take them back.

Harper blinked at her for a moment, completely stunned. And then she burst out laughing and enveloped Adri in a hug that squeezed the air right out of her.

“I am a bitch sometimes,” she said, almost gleefully. “And you need a little bit of that in you, Adri-Girl. Really, you do. The world is a scary place, my sweet friend. You gotta fight back.”

Adri didn't agree with her. Either that the world was a scary place or that you had to fight back. And she didn't understand how they had gone from arguing to hugging, but she was too interested in peace at any price to argue.

“She's a little loco,” Adri told David, a couple of days later. They were at the estate because Victoria had invited them over, just the two of them. It was one of the few times that they left ATU unaccompanied by the rest of The Five, and although David was acting moody and strange, Adri savored the hours alone. Supper with Victoria had gone okay, and now the two of them were sitting on the edge of the hot tub, dangling their feet into the all but boiling water as a light snow fell around them. The air was unusually warm for January.

“Who, Harper?”

“Of course, Harper.”

David gave her a sideways look. “That's cold, Adrienne. She's your best friend.”

“Since when do you call me Adrienne?”

“Since when do you call your best friend crazy?” David pushed himself up from the edge of the hot tub and grabbed a towel off one of the snow-dusted lawn chairs. He wrenched open the French door and slammed it behind him.

Adri was dumbfounded. “Are we fighting?” she shouted over her shoulder. Yanking her own feet out of the scalding water she spun on the concrete edge of the hot tub and took off after him.

Adri hated fighting, or she thought she did, but something about the exchange exacerbated the fears that she already nursed when it came to her relationship with David. She might be wearing his ring—or rather, her mother's ring—but she had doubted the veracity of their relationship from the very beginning. Following David, she took the steps to the basement two at a time and whipped around the door of his bedroom, still trickling chlorinated water from the hot tub.

“Use a towel,” David said, tossing the beach towel that he had already used at her. “You're dripping all over the hardwood.”

“Excuse me,” Adri huffed. “What do you expect? You just sided with Harper.”

“I did not side with Harper.” David was pulling on a pair of
jeans, though only minutes ago Adri had imagined that there would be no need to get dressed again that night.

“You did! You know how I feel about . . .” she faltered. “You and Harper.”

“Me and Harper?” David barely glanced at her, but Adri was eager to engage, to spar with him like she had sparred with Harper. And then make up in the heady glow of the aftermath.

“Yes, you and Harper.” Adri hadn't meant to go in this direction, she didn't really even believe the things that she was saying. But all at once she understood that she had gotten it all wrong when she fought with Harper. Harper wasn't the jealous one, Adri was. She was jealous because she couldn't bring herself to believe that maybe David really did love her. That maybe he really would—and had—chosen her over her exquisite best friend.

Once the thought entered her head, it spread, as fast and vicious as a wildfire. David didn't really love her, he couldn't. But Adri was a safer choice in a wife than Harper, a choice that his mother might actually allow, even if she didn't entirely approve. Maybe David had chosen Adri because it was a way to keep Harper close. A way to have the best of both worlds: the temperate, decent wife and the tempestuous, desirable lover.

Adri told him as much. She didn't mean to shout, to be so shrill and angry and unreasonable, but it was a living, breathing fear inside of her. A desperation she couldn't control. She was ruthless and ripe with accusations that had no bearing and no proof. She was out of control.

He slapped her.

It came out of nowhere. His hand. The bite of his fingers on her fury-blushed cheek. It was open-palmed, not the brutal, backhand blow that, somehow, Adri had always imagined a man would use to hit a woman. Yet the pain exploded in her cheekbone, along her jaw, and for a split second, she was too hurt, and too surprised, to respond at all. But then, before she realized what she was doing, before she could consider the implications
of her impossible, impulsive action, Adri cocked her arm and hit him right back.

She put every ounce of the fury she felt into her swing, and when her palm made contact with his face, it whipped his chin to his shoulder. He didn't even try to look up at her.

The room echoed with silence.

“Oh, David.” Adri groaned. Her hands were on her mouth, trying to shove the words down, to swallow the awful thing she had just done, and take his sin with it. But she couldn't do it. It was too much, too big, and she couldn't undo what had happened between them. As much as she wanted to smooth it all over, make it go away and pretend that it had never happened at all, she couldn't. It was done. And her fiancé couldn't even bring himself to look at her.

The snow was falling harder when she fled to the stables. Her hair was still wet, but common sense had prodded her to throw on dry clothes and grab a coat. Adri was grateful for those small mercies as the cold air stung her ears, but it never crossed her mind to turn back. She couldn't face David and all the things that had broken between them.

Bard was pacing his stall, his restless energy ricocheting off the walls and making the air inside the dusty building feel malevolent. Alive. Adri's hands shook as she tacked him up, but Bard stayed remarkably still in spite of her clumsy ministrations. It was almost as if he could sense her angst. More likely, he knew what the bridle meant—he could run, and that's exactly what he wanted to do.

It was what Adri wanted, too. To run so fast she flew. Or fell. In the moment she swung herself into the saddle, it didn't matter how the ride ended. She just wanted it to end.

Adri swept through the house in her understated charcoal dress. Her dark hair was in a neat chignon; her makeup was perfect. And the memorial had been perfect, too. A tasteful mix of
bitter and sweet, melancholy and hopeful, though Adri wasn't feeling very hopeful at all.

Her father had read “If,” and her heart twisted on the lines that Victoria had chosen: “If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken / twisted . . . Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, / And stoop to build them up with worn-out tools . . .”

And she wondered if they had been picked expressly for her. Adri's heart changed the final phrase (“You'll be a woman, my daughter!”) and knew that in her own inexplicable way Victoria had meant it for all of them. An anthem that allowed for all the broken promises and all the ways that they had tried. Failed, but tried.

People wandered Piperhall like it was an open house, and in a way, Adri supposed, it was. Maybe one of the guests would remember the summer picnics, be gripped with nostalgia, and approach her with a purchase price. She hoped that would be the case. And yet, there was a part of her that dreaded it, too. For, as much as she longed to be rid of the burden that was the home that housed her memories and her former dreams, at the moment of letting go she found that her fingers held fast.

“It's beautiful. All of it. You've done a remarkable job.”

Adri turned to see Mrs. Holt dressed in a cream tailored suit, a fluted glass of wine raised in a toast. To her? “Thank you,” she said. “It was nothing.”

“Certainly not nothing,” Katherine disagreed. “Piperhall hasn't looked this good in years.”

“Agreed.” Clay caught Adri's elbow from behind and brushed a light kiss against her cheek. Reaching out to Mrs. Holt, he took her hand and pressed his lips briefly to her wrist. “The only things that outshine the floor are the lovely ladies before me.”

Katherine gave Clay a censorious look and drew back her hand, but Adri could tell it was lighthearted. She hadn't realized that her lawyer and David's former tutor knew each other, but then, it seemed everyone in Blackhawk was acquainted.

“Victoria would have been pleased,” Katherine said, diverting attention back to the memorial. “Very pleased.”

“I'm glad to hear it.” Adri sighed, and found herself blinking back unexpected tears. It
was
beautiful—the mansion, Victoria's legacy, the evening itself—but it was a fractured kind of beauty, and no amount of cleaning or waxing or maintenance could repair what she longed to fix. If Clay and Mrs. Holt noticed her sudden emotion, they were kind enough not to comment, and before she could be drawn into unwanted conversations about the past or the future of the estate, Adri quietly excused herself.

When dusk settled over the estate, Will lit the gardenia candles that were scattered throughout the mansion. Though Victoria's only real family—the intimidating James Galloway and his equally impressive wife—had left almost immediately after the service, many people were still wandering around, taking in the majesty of the place as if they couldn't get enough. They lapped it up, nibbling on petits fours and thin slices of cucumber soaked in lime juice and sprinkled with sesame seeds and some herb that Adri couldn't place. There were still bottles of wine to open, and though they had all just mourned the loss and commemorated the life of a pillar in their community, there was a definite celebratory vibe in the air. Adri didn't quite know what to do with it.

Wandering outside to the loggia, she leaned with her forearms on the stone railing. It was a cool autumn night, but for once Adri didn't feel the cold. She closed her eyes for a moment and allowed herself the luxury of a dream, a moment inhabited by the life she should have had, a life with David and the airy wishes that she had held for herself in the days before she realized that they would never be quite the people they were supposed to be.

Maybe he would come up behind her, settle a sweater over her shoulders, and pull her close. Better yet, his suit coat. Arms around her waist, mouth against her temple. He'd tell her how beautiful she looked. How lovely the night, in spite of the sad
slant of the occasion, the woman that they loved in their own fumbling ways and would always miss. They'd talk about Victoria, and for just a heartbeat Adri caught the faintest glimpse of the mother she could have had. The life she imagined for herself wasn't a flawless world—so very far from it—but Adri's heart rose all the same.

And then a breeze lifted and the night grazed her arm. She wrapped her arms around herself, painfully aware that David would never walk through the doors behind her. And equally grateful that he wouldn't.

Maybe she was drunk. Adri had lost track of how many glasses of wine she had consumed. She wasn't the sort to take it too far, but she felt tipsy as she clung to the edge of the grand porch and watched the shadows that flirted with the dozens of gleaming cars in the makeshift parking lot of the circular drive.

The night was utterly dark and still, the memorial going strong behind her. Adri was utterly alone in the dark. Alone with her memories and regrets. But as she stared into the blackness, a car came down the winding drive. The headlights were thin and indistinct in the distance, and Adri blinked several times to clear her foggy head of the vision that played tricks on her eyes. The light didn't dissipate.

Adri watched as the car came, an expensive SUV with tinted windows and a pitted paint job, as if the vehicle had been left out in a hailstorm. She could see it clear as a stop-frame movie as it crawled around the circle, and she marveled at the unexpectedness of such a late guest. The South Dakota license plate. At the way this sorry visitor had arrived hours too late.

Something inside her stirred.

The car rounded the corner and came to a stop almost directly below Adri. She watched as the back door opened.