fourteen.
He wasn’t playing fair.
Jude Ambrose was supposed to be an ass, a guy who walked the school halls with either ice or fire in his eyes as he observed everyone, deciding if they were worth his time or not.
That version of Jude would have been a lot simpler to deal with, Marsden thought, a lot easier to just dismiss or ignore. The one who couldn’t hide his devastation, the one arranging to meet her in the covert, was way too easy to understand.
She tugged on a T-shirt free of blackberry stains and left her bedroom. She was about to go into the kitchen for the back door when she heard her mother.
Shine’s laugh, coming from the lobby, was light and silvery and declared she didn’t have a care in the world.
Both fascinated and dumbfounded—her mother never laughed like that, not off duty—Marsden retraced her steps and peeked around the corner.
Shine and Brom, seated together on the love seat in the back of the lobby, half-shielded by a tall houseplant to offer a semblance of privacy. There was a pot of coffee and a plate of food on the table in front of them—two servings of the chocolate berry tart she’d baked just last night, she realized with a twinge of . . . what? Shock? Irony? Irritation? Brom kept talking, his hands moving animatedly from where he sat with his back to her, and Shine’s face as she watched him was girlish, almost embarrassingly rapt.
If Marsden didn’t know any better, she would have assumed they were a couple. An average, possibly even married, couple. Anger washed over her, a tidal wave of choppy ice.
Did her mother think what she did was merely a game? That she could set it aside and pretend she was anything but a whore whenever she felt like it? When her decision to be what she was still echoed in their lives every single day?
With no idea of what she meant to do or say, she walked over and simply stood there. Her mother looked up. Whatever was on Marsden’s face made Shine stiffen. “Marsden.”
Brom fell silent and turned toward her. His smile did nothing to make him less than repulsive to her. “Oh, hello.”
Up close, his features were even blander than Marsden expected, an oval of oatmeal. Weak looking, his chin trembly and soft, and she wondered pettily how hard it was for her mother to work up such enthusiasm. Or if that blandness was actually his strong point—that he was, as far as anyone would say, easy to forget.
She couldn’t work up anything close to politeness when she wanted him gone. “You’re a john,” she said to Brom. “This lobby is for guests. Unless you paid extra for day hours?”
“Marsden.” Her mother’s whisper was properly shocked, unfailingly proper—Nina would be proud. “Please.”
She remembered, then, what she’d meant to ask her mother since yesterday. If she hadn’t been waylaid with dinner, with Red and Coop, with Wynn and Jude, the boundaries of her everyday life, drawn by the boardinghouse, by the covert.
She stared back at Shine. “I need to talk to you about Dad.”
Her mother got up, circled the table, and grabbed Marsden by the arm. “Excuse me for a minute,” she said to Brom. “I forgot cream for the coffee.”
She marched Marsden to the lobby bathroom, locking the door behind them. Shine leaned back against it and lit up a cigarette. “That was extremely rude.”
“None of it was a lie.”
Her mother sighed tiredly. “What is it? What do you need now?”
“The night he died, Dad was at Decks, right? His favorite gambling house.”
Shine’s expression hardened for a heartbeat before slackening. “You already know he was. Why?”
“Who was he with?”
“What? I don’t know. Whoever else was there that night, playing blackjack.”
“No, you once said he was there with friends. The news said nothing, but I remember.”
“The news? What are you—?” Shine’s confusion, if it was an act, was more than convincing. Her eyes roamed Marsden’s face. “There’s been some news?”
“Not new news, no.” Suddenly, she felt bad about not being more careful. Her mother’s reaction surprised her, made her seem closer to the Shine she’d been, when she’d still been theirs and not yet Nina’s. Where was the denial, the tears, the childlike pleading? “I meant from eight years ago. Sorry. I just . . . You said he was there with friends. Who?”
“Your father had a lot of friends—he was well liked in this town. It could have been anyone with him that night.”
“But you must have known his best friends. Wouldn’t they have likely been the ones with him?”
“Well, there was Eugene, but he’s gone now, moved away.” Her mother drew on her cigarette, recalling. “Casper, who’s in jail. Quaid, who died of an overdose last year. And Fitz, down at Seconds.”
Fitz. The pawnbroker who bought Hadley’s skimmed pieces without question.
How much of that was because the corrupt cop gave him no choice? What if Fitz had been the one to suggest it to Hadley?
“Why didn’t any of the newspapers mention they were there?” Marsden asked.
“They had no reason to, I suppose. He was never alone at places like Decks—that night was no different.”
“Why didn’t you ask his friends about what might have happened?”
“It was just one night out of hundreds, them gambling, all the same. I had nothing to ask. And if something had happened, they would have said something.”
“Unless he didn’t leave alone. What if they followed him and—”
“Stop, please.” Ashes trembled free from her mother’s hand. Her face was tired again, shaky looking. “Your father’s friends wouldn’t have hurt him. They adored him, thought he was cool and brilliant. Grant was like that, making people love him too easily. And it’s not like the police didn’t investigate.”
“Hadley was the police.”
“And he declared it an accident. I don’t want to relive this. Let it go.”
I can’t. I need to know it wasn’t me. “Did you ever tell me about him winning money that night? Why don’t you care more about how it was missing?”
Her mother shut her eyes, and when she opened them—wet with tears, dark with the exhaustion of a daughter who wouldn’t listen—she was again the Shine whom Marsden had come to know, her struggle everyone else’s. “Don’t you see? Your father always had a winning night. Even if he turned around and then lost it all, he’d still won that night, right? It was always what he told people, what he told himself—that it would always be a winning hand, eventually.”
Marsden was frozen, hearing how her mother had hated her father as much as she’d loved him. “So you think he just . . . bet it away again. Before he died.” She didn’t want to believe it, but she also knew it made sense. Her father had gambled away their family long before that night, again and again—why would he stop then?
Her guilt over his death shifted then, just the slightest bit, and made room for anger. How could he have been so stupid when winning that money would have gone a long in way in saving them?
“Yes, I do think that.” Shine stood up unsteadily and dropped her still-burning cigarette into the toilet. “When he could have used it to pay off his loans, or even just bills. Anything but bet it away. But I can also believe it was simply lost in the Indigo—that was our kind of luck, you see. Now, I have to get back to Brom—it’s not polite that I’ve kept him waiting this long.”
“You shouldn’t be with him out there.” Marsden’s face burned as she recalled the image of them sitting together and laughing, as though he were a suitor. And her father was on her mind, clearer than he’d been for a long, long time—yes, she was angry with him, but her anger didn’t change how he’d once been so alive, and it was somehow so wrong that he was no longer there. How could he not be on Shine’s mind? How could anyone want to be with someone like Brom? “You’re not even working right now, and he’s a john. Can’t you at least pretend you still plump pillows as a housekeeper instead of as a whore?”
Tears gathered and formed pools in the corners of Shine’s eyes. “Let this town talk. You know it’ll say what it wants, no matter what we do.”
Marsden stared at their reflections in the oval mirror on the wall. The pewter frame was ornate, full of scrolling curls, completely feminine. Inside it, her face was young and smooth, her mother’s pale and strained.
“Wynn’s around, and she has no clue what you do,” she whispered, her chest tight. “What would you say if she saw you and asked about him? That he’s your boyfriend?”
Shine came to stand behind her. She smoothed her daughter’s hair back from her face and leaned close. She smelled like smoke and a perfume that Marsden didn’t recognize, something Brom must have bought her. “Look at us. We look so alike, don’t we? More like sisters than mother and daughter.”
They did, it was true. Beneath her mother’s fine lines and her own flushed youth, their bones were the same, their features nearly identical, Chinese in their skin and hair, all gold and black. But her own eyes were wide and alarmed, while her mother’s were glittery with desperation.
“It scared me so much, those men asking Nina about you, and not me. Because I remember what it’s like to worry where your next meal is coming from, or if you’re going to wake up to no heat, no lights. And I swore to myself I’d never live without security again. I would never be alone. I would always be taken care of.”
“So Brom is the answer?”
“He has a steady job.”
“What does he even do? Where is he from?”
“He sells savings accounts for banks, for credit unions. He makes his own hours, which is why he can take a couple of weeks off every few months. He moved here from Seattle a long time ago. He enjoys me. And . . . I’ve known him a long time. From even before I started working for Nina. Your father knew him, too. They were friendly enough.”
“And that’s why he’s been around for years.” Marsden felt faint, and well-played—would she ever be as good as her mother at pretending? Did she want to be? “As soon as Dad was gone and you were free, he was there, waiting. He just paid his way.”
More tears gleamed in Shine’s eyes. “Do you want me to apologize? Would that help?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to not throw up.” She knew how her father had barely been around, and how the family bank account never seemed to have enough. Shine had told her millions of times how he had promised to change, except he couldn’t seem to give up Decks or any of the other card houses in town. He wanted a different kind of reality, Marsden. We were just kids when we had you, and he wasn’t ready to stop being one himself. Marsden knew she was supposed to feel sorry for her mother, to say she understood. But how much longer could she be the reason for Shine’s actions?
“It can’t be shocking to you,” her mother said, “that I needed someone after your father died. How I still do.”
“And Brom’s your way out.” From me and Wynn. How is that any different than Dad and his games of blackjack?
Shine seemed to wilt. “What else am I supposed to do? I don’t have a lot of options. I’m not getting any younger.”
Marsden tensed. She kept her eyes on her mother’s in the mirror. If Shine was still trying to trap her into her life, Marsden thought she might scream. “Don’t put that on me again.”
“I managed to speak to Nina for you,” Shine whispered.
Marsden almost told her she shouldn’t have bothered since Nina had already asked her again anyway. But she said nothing. Her mother had done something for her; she’d chosen her daughter over her boss. She blinked away tears—she had not really felt grateful to her mother since she was young. Since that futile trip to the bus depot, she supposed, when, for a day, Shine had managed to make the world seem bigger than Glory.
“Thank you,” she said to her mother’s reflection. “For trying.”
Shine’s fingers trembled just the slightest as she smoothed back Marsden’s hair once more. “She was not . . . happy.”
Relief washed over Marsden in a wave, and she nearly smiled. “No, she wouldn’t be.” And she didn’t care. Nina could be as mad as she wanted, and it wouldn’t make a difference at all.
“She said she wants to talk to you more about it before you make up your mind.” Her mother lit a fresh cigarette; it shook like a leaf in a windstorm. “For my sake, can you at least pretend to consider it some more?”
Marsden got up, preparing to leave. She didn’t miss the irony in her mother being the one to ask her to pretend. “She’ll have to find me first, but okay, I can do that. And then let’s not talk about this ever again.”