The Beautiful Daughters (25 page)

David didn't seem to notice or care. His free hand was once again in his hair, yanking fistfuls of blond waves as if he intended to pluck himself bald.

“I asked you a question.” Harper took the glass from him, too, and when she discovered it was empty, set it beside the bottle. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

David seemed not to hear her. He dropped his hands to his sides and stood there staring off into middle distance, his lips slightly parted. “I'm a bastard,” he said.

“Yes, you are.”

“No, really.” He looked at her suddenly, and his eyes seemed to carve right through her.

Harper groaned. “I know you are, David. We all do. And we love you in spite of it. Don't ask me why. But this . . .” She couldn't finish.

“What, Harper? What do you want to say to me?”

“This is unforgivable.”

His laugh was brittle and unexpected. “You really have no idea.”

“Don't play with me, David Galloway.” Harper couldn't believe that she had thought to hug him only a moment ago. He was being impossible. She didn't feel sorry for him, not one bit, and though she had come to talk some sense into him, or hit him or something, she found that the only thing she really wanted to do was leave. The room was filled with sparks of every unspoken word and inexpressible hurt, each unthinkable wish and longing that she had felt about David since the moment she first saw him. The apartment was a tinderbox. A dangerous place to be.

Harper tore her eyes from the intensity of David's gaze and hurried toward the door. In a couple of seconds she would have wrenched it open and been gone, but David caught her from behind and yanked her close. She couldn't tell if he was drunk or not, but it didn't matter. His arms were locked around her, his body pressed along the length of her back. And though she didn't want to feel what she was feeling, his breath on her neck made her weak.

They stood like that for what felt like hours, and when Harper finally relaxed the tiniest bit in the coil of his embrace, David's lips brushed against her ear. “It was supposed to be you,” he said.

She had no idea what he meant. The relationship? The engagement? The fight? But in a way it didn't matter. Harper would have taken it from him. All of it. They were one and the
same. They were meant to be, and she knew it the moment he told her so.

David's fingers fumbled on the buttons of her coat and the zipper of her jeans, and she let him struggle. She was too busy damning herself, her fingers trembling so hard on the hindrances of his own clothes that she ripped a seam.

Then lies and regrets and a love so skinny it hardly existed at all. Bones and lust. A wisp of nothingness.

A sigh.

The knowledge that everything she loved had shattered around her. And it was all her fault.

He never even kissed her. Not really.

Harper let go of the bar at the top of the slide. A matter of seconds. Her life upended. And then she shot out of the bottom and landed on her back in the gravel. But the drunken feeling didn't stop, and when Adri knelt down and laid her hand on Harper's arm, she still felt like she was whirling out of control.

“You promised me the truth,” Adri said. “We're not leaving until you tell me one true thing. Just one. That's all I want.”

When Harper opened her mouth, she had no idea what she was going to say. And when she heard her own words, it was as if someone else had spoken them.

“I hate him.”

It was the truest thing she could think to say.

21

A
dri took a deep breath and heald it. Softly, she said, “Sometimes I hate him, too.”

But Harper didn't want to talk about David. Of course, she could have steered the conversation to different ground. She hated her father. And Sawyer, too. But she couldn't say any of that. Sawyer's name was an incantation, an illicit spell to conjure demons.

“We shouldn't speak ill of the dead,” Harper said, pushing herself up from the ground.

“You said it,” Adri's voice sounded hollow, far away.

“I shouldn't have.”

Harper started to walk back to the car, but it was a struggle to hold herself upright. It made her feel old.

When Harper reached the car, she climbed into the passenger seat and pulled her knees up to her chest. Wrapped her arms tight around her shins. She was freezing, and grateful when Adri slid into the driver's seat and started the engine. Turned the heat on high.

Harper forced herself to say, “Sometimes I think that everything I've done, every moment of my life from the day that David died until now, has been determined by that one event.”

“Me, too,” Adri admitted.

“I've made a lot of bad choices.”

Adri thought for a minute. “I've made a lot of careful choices. I live a very rigid life, Harper.”

“I couldn't tell.”

“Tease away,” Adri said, and she didn't sound at all upset. “It's worked for me.”

“Has it?” Harper turned and looked right at her friend, at the sharp angles of her lovely face and the deliberate way that she held her expression so tight and neutral. She didn't look happy. But then again, she wasn't scared either. She hadn't messed up her life to the point of sheer lunacy. If Adri had taken careful, meticulous steps for the last five years, Harper had flung herself out of a plane. Without a parachute. Neither coping method seemed to be working very well.

Adri was still waiting for an answer to all of her questions. Harper knew that she had strained her welcome. Her silence wasn't arch anymore, it was reticent. She had to share something.

“I was in a bad situation,” Harper said.

“What do you mean, a bad situation?” The concern in Adri's eyes was difficult to see; instead of watching her, Harper looked out the window at the pink glow of dawn. Traced her finger in the thin film of condensation and wrote her own name in block letters.

“Seriously, Adri. Don't make me say it.” Not that Harper would have said it anyway. She couldn't.

A pause. “Okay. So. You left.”

As if it was that easy. “Yeah.”

“And that woman in the SUV? The one who dropped you off?”

“A friend.” Harper palmed away the letters, leaving a trail of droplets on the window. She couldn't bring herself to tell Adri about The Bridge or her escape from Minneapolis. It was too sordid, too much like a bad soap opera. People didn't live like that. Not really. And yet, Harper knew all too well that they did.

“Okay.”

“Look, Adri, I got your email and I came. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But I didn't mean to burden you with any of this. That was never my intention.”

“You think you're burdening me?” Adri sounded incredulous. “Harper, you're my best friend. I wrote you because I wanted to see you, I wanted to talk about what happened in BC, what happened to David. But now that you're here I feel like we're playing some sort of game. Except I don't know the rules.”

It took Harper a minute to speak. “I didn't mean for it to be this way.”

“Me neither.”

All at once, Harper felt a crashing wave of love for Adri. Years ago, Harper had kissed her. On the mouth like a lover instead of a friend. They were side by side on Harper's bed in their dorm room, and Adri had said something that caused them both to dissolve into giggles. It was nothing, really, an unremarkable comment that held little meaning. But it made Harper feel as if her life could be beautiful after all. Normal. And she had forgotten for just a moment who she was and where she was and all the rules of the world she had known. Harper leaned over and kissed Adri as she laughed, felt the soft press of her lips and the smooth plane of her cheek, and knew that she had never in all her life loved anyone as much as she loved Adrienne Vogt.

When Adri jerked away, there was a second of confusion, a moment when they looked at each other and everything, everything hung in the balance. Harper could have wept for agony at what she had done, but before she could even take a breath to apologize, to try to explain, Adri gave a little shake of her head. It cleared the air. Erased all but the faintest imprint of what had happened.

“I love you,” Adri said, one corner of her mouth quirking. But her eyes said the rest: Not that way.

And Harper didn't either. It was just an overflow, an unguarded instant when she had tried to embrace the life before
her with every ounce of her being. To let Adri know that she was accomplishing the impossible: singlehandedly convincing Harper that she deserved to be loved.

Harper wanted to tell Adri that now. Maybe even tell her again that she adored her still. Loved her like a sister. She had tried to convince her, in the way that she braided her hair and made her pancakes on test mornings and listened to every late-night whispered wish as they fell asleep across the room. They had shared so much. A life. A dream. A lover. Harper stifled a shiver.

“What in the world did you ever see in me?” Adri asked. It was an odd question, something that took Harper completely by surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Why did you chose me? Those first days at ATU, I felt like you picked me out of a crowd.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Harper sat up straighter, let her feet slide to the floor of the car. “I liked you.”

“That's not enough.” Adri was gripping the steering wheel, her hands white-knuckled as if Harper's answer mattered much. “I was a wallflower. A timid little farm girl. What in the world did you see in me?”

“You were kind,” Harper began, searching for specifics, for the details that had inexorably drawn her to Adri. “You were smart and determined and serious. I think I was drawn to those things because I didn't understand them. I liked them in you.”

Adri gave a small nod, but she wouldn't look at Harper.

“And you weren't a wallflower. You were an observer. Not the kind of girl who would run off at the mouth for no reason or make a spectacle of herself. Not like me. That's a good thing, Adri. You weren't flashy because you didn't have to be. Your character spoke for itself.”

“Those are all nice things to say,” Adri said.

“But you don't believe them?”

Adri shrugged. “I don't know. Sometimes I wonder how we ended up together at all.” She looked quickly at Harper, apparently gauging if her words had stung. But Harper had thought the same thing herself many, many times.

And yet, her attraction to Adri was the most obvious thing in the world. Adri was quiet, but that didn't mean she wasn't confident. She was settled, perfectly comfortable in her own skin and the life that she had been given. Adri didn't know it, but she wore serenity like an aura. Peace like that was something you couldn't fake. Someone had to love it into you, and Adri had been loved well. Harper admired her.

No, she realized, as she studied her friend in the early-morning light, she didn't admire or esteem or even love her. She wanted to be her. And she always had.

It was spring, a month before graduation, and The Five had come down to the estate to get off campus. Harper's grand parties were a thing of the past, little more than a collection of fond memories, because they simply couldn't stand the thought of sharing each other anymore. Their days together were numbered.

Of course, things had been different since David and Adri's engagement, but that didn't stop any of them from jostling for time together, moments that would recapture the magic of what they once had. So they stayed up way too late, and drove to the estate when they should have been on campus, studying. Even Adri.

They were changing. In bursts and spurts and stops and starts they were becoming the people that they had to be. David was formidable and dark-humored, Adri pale and serious and withdrawn. Will and Jackson just tried to keep everyone laughing, surprising them all with sudden extravagances in the form of fresh lobster flown in on a Tuesday night (David, of course,
footed the bill) or a screening of
The
Rocky Horror Picture Show
on a bedsheet that they'd draped across the outside wall of David's apartment. And Harper was a girl on fire. She loathed herself, and David, too. But there was more than enough angst left for Adri.

David had said, It should have been you. Harper believed him. And yet, he didn't break off the engagement. He didn't do anything at all. Except screw Harper when Adri wasn't around.

Harper lived in a perpetual state of fear and regret, and every time she walked away from David, she promised herself, never again. But there was always another time.

Sometimes it was a game. It made her feel powerful and in control and alive. And sometimes it scared her so much that she cried herself to sleep like a child, tears hot and silent as they fell down her temples and collected in her ears. She was in love. She was in lust. She was miserable, and she was torn, because the person she loved more than anyone she had ever known was the same person she was hurting the most.

Once, she said to David, “We're sick. You know that, right?” He was buttoning his shirt, his back turned to her, and he laughed a little.

“I guess that means we deserve one another.”

He was her weakness, her very own kryptonite, yet she hated to hear those words from his mouth. She wanted to be a better person. A stronger one. But before she could bite back somehow, David turned and took her in his arms. He folded her close and laid a kiss on the crown of her head, the place where her hair curved along the line of her high forehead.

“You're not just another notch in my belt,” he whispered.

Maybe he thought it was what she wanted to hear, but he couldn't have been more wrong. Although Harper wanted him and always had, she loved Adri more. She wanted to erase what they did, what continued to do. She wanted to give Adri back what she had taken from her. And assurances that David loved her more than a one-night stand were not helpful in
strengthening her resolve. Harper didn't want to wonder “what if?” She just wanted it all to stop.

But not really. Not enough. Because it didn't stop.

“Well . . .” Harper pushed hard against David's chest and his arms fell away. “Maybe I'm not a notch in your belt, but what if you're just another in mine?”

She didn't stick around to see if her words had achieved the desired effect.

The weekend that Harper began to think of as the beginning of the end was the same weekend that Adri came down with a sinus infection. Their plan had been to relax at the estate with some horseback riding and a dip in the recently filled hot tub. It was an unseasonably warm spring, and the tulips were already six inches out of the ground by the beginning of April. But their retreat had been doomed from the start. David insisted on driving to Piperhall, even though he had already been drinking—an incontrovertible offense in Adri's books. She refused to get in the car and instead drove Betty on her own. Even Will and Jackson were out of sorts, uninterested in making the effort to be witty and jovial, mere shadows of their usually spirited selves.

They skipped riding and grazed in the kitchen until they were overfull and too tired to study. Victoria didn't exactly stock her fridge, but Elena, the woman who had catered for the Galloways for years, still came once a week and dropped off fresh produce, a dozen free-range eggs, and a handful of pre-made or easy-to-assemble meals. Victoria rarely touched them, and they were free game for David and his friends. Harper was delighted to find a baking tray with six individual quiches in lemon-yellow ramekins, each one slightly different—feta and spinach, tomato and bacon, a cheesy confection that tasted strongly of Gruyère. Will halved the grapefruits he'd discovered in the crisper, then buttered them and sprinkled brown sugar on top. He baked them with a fat loaf of French bread, which they spread with peanut butter and Elena's homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam.

Adri didn't have a single bite.

“What's wrong with you?” Will asked, shoving the last corner of bread in his mouth and licking peanut butter off his fingers.

“I have a headache,” Adri said quietly.

“It's more than a headache.” Jackson was sitting next to her and he put his wrist against the back of her neck. “She's burning up.”

“I am not.”

“Are too.” Jackson gave her cheek a gentle rub with his thumb, then turned his attention to David. “Would you like some help escorting your fiancée to her bed?”