52 Reasons to Hate My Father (15 page)

“I read that he took her death very hard.”

“Yeah,” I grumble, staring down at my fingernails. “So hard that he continues to honor her memory every three years by marrying another bimbo.”

I can feel Luke’s gaze flicker over to me momentarily. “Maybe he likes the bimbos.”

“He doesn’t,” I answer with certainty. “They’re just a distraction.”

“Some people need to be distracted from things they don’t want to think about,” Luke offers gently.

I know what he’s trying to do. And I don’t really feel like getting into a heart-to-heart about my mother’s death right now. Especially not with Luke Carver, of all people.

“Yeah, well, it happened a long time ago and everybody’s over it now,” I say dismissively. I take hold of his elbow and lead him toward the door. “Come on. Let’s continue with the tour.”

He seems to pick up on my attempt to evade the subject and follows me willingly back into the hallway, where the temperature is noticeably warmer.

I lead him to the room directly across from us but Luke stops just short of the entrance and points to the closed door at the end of the corridor. “What room is that?”

“That’s my father’s personal study. No one ever goes in there. He keeps it locked year round.” I keep moving into the next room, and eventually, after a lingering glance down the hall, Luke follows. “And obviously this is the billiard room,” I say uninspiringly, motioning toward the large, handcrafted, red-felt-covered pool table in the center.

He hoots with laughter. “This place is like walking through a game of Clue!”

I run my finger over the smooth oak. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never played it.”

Luke’s mouth falls open. “What? How could you never have played Clue? It’s only one of the most popular board games of all time!”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I just never did.”

“That’s a shame. It’s one of my favorites.” Luke nods toward the table. “Do you at least play pool?”

I grab a pool cue and skillfully run a cube of chalk over the tip. “Very well, actually.”

He flashes me a sly smile and accepts my challenge by grabbing a second cue and chalking it up. “Well, game on, then.”

I rack the balls and Luke breaks, sending the six ball into the corner pocket.

“I guess I’m solids,” he says, lining up his next shot. He tries to sink the three ball into the side pocket but misses by a few inches.

I finish chalking up my cue and get down to businesses, sinking seven striped balls in a row before finally calling the eight ball in the corner and knocking it in with ease.

Luke stands off to the side with a baffled look on his face. Like a ghost just swiped his wallet. “So
that’s
what it feels like to be hustled,” he jokes.

I laugh and cock my head to the side. “Sorry!” I sing insincerely.

His mouth is still hanging open. “Where’d you learn how to play pool like that?”

“Horatio,” I say with a smile, leaning on my pool cue. I feel a quick burst of nostalgia as I remember when I was a kid and Horatio had to lift me up to the table so that I could make a shot.

“Who’s Horatio?” Luke asks.

“Our butler.”

“Of course.” He shakes his head and laughs, his tone slipping into an obnoxious over-the-top British accent. “The
butler
taught you to play pool. Isn’t that lovely?”

“Hey!” I shout at him from across the table, feeling my cheeks start to burn with rage again. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Jesus,” he swears. “Calm down. I was only joking. You’re so easily triggered.”

“Oh and there he goes again with the psychology-major crap. Thanks, but I have a shrink for that.”

“Okay, okay,” Luke says, throwing his hands up in the air. “Lighten up, okay? I’m sorry I said anything.” He takes a hesitant step in my direction but I quickly move away, tossing my pool cue down on the table.

“You shouldn’t make jokes about things you know nothing about.” I storm out the door, not even bothering to tell him how to get back to the party. Luke’s a big boy. He goes to college. I’m sure he can figure it out himself.

DISAPPEARING ACT

I have trouble falling asleep that night. The events of the day are replaying in surround sound in my brain. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to shake anything anyone said. My father’s heartwarming sermon about love and relationships, Mr. Too Much Scotch’s harsh allegations about my mother being some kind of disturbed drama queen, and even Luke’s relatively harmless attempts to get to know me better.

When I’ve tried all my usual tricks to clear my mind, I grab my iPad off my beside table and switch it on. Holly, who’s been asleep on the other pillow, picks up her head momentarily to check out what I’m doing and then after evidently deciding that it’s not something to be concerned about, goes back to sleep.

Since I have no idea where my father keeps the old photographs of my mom, the only place I can see her is on the Internet. I type in the familiar search term
Elizabeth Larrabee
and wait patiently as Google spits back several pages of results. I click on
Images
and scroll through all the photographs of my mother from various newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and promotional photo shoots.

My parents married young. My mom was nineteen and my father was twenty. He had only just started his first company and his headquarters were still located on the kitchen counter of my parents’ tiny apartment in Fresno.

RJ was born two years after they got married and my father made his first million a year after that. By the time I came into the world, a little less than nine years later, Larrabee Media was a billion-dollar corporation and my father was already the poster child for success.

Which is why most of the photographs that now stare back at me were taken in the last few years of my mother’s life, when the Larrabee family started to become a recognizable household name.

I glimpse past the several red-carpet photos and promotional family portraits until I find my favorite picture. It’s from a sixteen-year-old issue of
Better Homes and Gardens
. The magazine dedicated an entire six-page spread to the Larrabee family’s brand new Bel Air mansion and the custom backyard my mother had designed to resemble her favorite French gardens at the Château de Villandry.

The photo was taken shortly after my first birthday. My parents are teaching me how to walk, in the garden.

I don’t have any reliable memories from the time my mother was alive—and no one in this family likes to talk about her—but I have to think that things used to be different back then. That there once was a time when we actually
were
a family. Maybe not a normal one, but at least a real one. Not this over-the-top propaganda that Caroline feeds to the press.

I glance over at the gold-silk-covered chaise longue in the middle of my bedroom. The dress I wore to the engagement party is still slung haphazardly across the back from when I stripped it off in a mad rush to shed any and all reminders of the circus act that was going on downstairs.

Then I look back at the little girl in the photograph in the frilly pink dress, matching bow, and white patent leather shoes. Taking those first wobbly steps while her parents crawl behind her with open arms, ready to catch her if she falls.

I scrutinize every single detail of the picture-perfect composition and suddenly a cold chill creeps its way up my arm.

What if I’m wrong?

What if it
has
always been like this? And I was too young and naïve to realize it? What if I believed the lies and ate them up just as hungrily as the reporters that follow us around?

Is that tiny dress not just another costume? Essentially identical to the one I wore tonight? Could this flawless family moment captured on film be just another show? Another dazzling performance for the press?

After the photographer went home, did my mother and father stand up, dust the grass stains from their knees, and hand me off to some nanny so they could go their separate ways and live their separate lives?

How well do I even know the woman in this photograph? The infamous Elizabeth Larrabee. Everyone tells me she was wonderful. Everyone gushes about how beautiful she was. How loving and supportive and maternal. The perfect wife. The perfect mother.

But how do I know that’s not another script? Carefully constructed by a crafty publicist. Designed to make my father look good and the Larrabee family continue to shine in the spotlight.

How do I know that drunk fool at the party isn’t the only one with the guts to tell the truth?

The only one not being
paid
to lie.

I set the iPad aside and reach for my cell phone, unplugging it from its charger. I find the toll-free, in-case-of-emergency-only number in my contact list and press call.

It rings once before a friendly receptionist answers. “Thank you for calling Peace Corps. How may I help you?”

“Hi,” I say, my voice fragile and thin. “I need to get in touch with Cooper Larrabee. I believe he’s in the Sudan.”

“Is this an emergency?” she asks.

I hesitate for a moment. “Yes. It’s a family emergency. I’m his sister.”

I hear her typing furiously into a keyboard before she returns to the line. “I’ve sent a message to the local office there. They will get in touch with him and have him call you as quickly as possible.”

I feel somewhat bad about lying but I really need to talk to someone right now and I can’t think of anyone else to call. My three other brothers are practically strangers to me. RJ is too wrapped up in my father’s company to bother himself with anything I have to say. The twins have always kind of stuck together in their own little clique, as I’ve heard twins often do. Cooper is the only one I’ve ever been able to talk to. Being a mere two years older than me, he’s the only one who gets me. Who’s
ever
gotten me. After our mother died, he was the one I crawled into bed with when the nightmares haunted me. He was the one who told me reassuring stories about angels and fluffy white clouds as I fell asleep.

My cell phone trills beside me a few minutes later, causing me to jump. The caller ID says
Unknown
, and I scramble to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Lex,” my brother says, panicked, “what’s wrong?”

The sound of his voice—even muffled by static and affected by a slight delay—instantly soothes me.

“Hi, Coop,” I say softly.

“They said it was an emergency.”

“I know,” I begin regretfully. “Sorry. I might have exaggerated a bit. I just really needed to hear your voice.”

He exhales in relief and I half expect him to berate me for pulling this kind of stunt but he doesn’t. Instead I can hear the playful smile in his tone as he asks, “What’s wrong, baby sis?”

“Things are just … hard.”

“I heard about your new job. Or shall I say,
jobs
.” He chuckles. But I don’t get offended by his amusement. Anyone else, yes. But not Cooper. He always means well and I always know it.

“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “But actually I called to ask you about mom.”

“Mom?” comes his confused reply. And I suppose I should have anticipated that. It’s not a conversation we broach often. It’s always been one of those unspoken rules between us. Between all of us.

“How well do you remember her?” I ask.

“Not that well,” he replies. “I remember she was wonderful. Loving and supportive and maternal.”

Frustrated, I press my fingertips against my temple. “Do you really remember that or do you just remember people
telling
you that?”

He falters for a moment and even from eight thousand miles away, I can almost hear the gears in his mind turning, trying, exactly as I have been doing, to sort the real memories from the implanted ones.

“I’m not sure,” he finally admits.

“Well, do you remember anything other than that? Anything … I don’t know … maybe unusual or strange or even …
disturbing
about her?”

“Lex,” he warns. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I reply quickly, although I’m almost positive he won’t buy it. “I’ve just been thinking about her.”

“Maybe you should call RJ. He would remember that kind of stuff. He was fourteen when she died.”

“You know I can’t talk to RJ about anything.”

He sighs. “Well, I do remember her being gone a lot. Especially at the end. You know, before she died.”

“Gone?” I repeat skeptically.

“Yeah,” he confirms. “Like on vacations.”

“What kind of vacations?”

There’s an extended silence as Cooper reflects. “Cruises, I think.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he says, gaining momentum, as though he’s opened some kind of doorway and now he’s anxious to run through it and see what’s on the other side. “I remember now. She would go on these cruises for like a week or two. Sometimes longer. Horatio said it was so she could relax from the stress of raising five kids.” Then he lets out a jovial laugh. “I guess I can’t really blame her.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” I marvel quietly.

“Well you were five,” Cooper states. “I’m not surprised.”

“How often did she go?”

“I don’t know,” he replies nonchalantly. “But I remember she had just gotten back from a really long one when she had the accident.”

I struggle to see through the fog in my mind as I think back to the day we got the news. I’ve worked so hard to block that day from my memory. Cooper and I were playing in the backyard with Horatio. Bruce appeared at the top of the stairs. He called us inside. RJ and the twins were already there. Bruce sat us down on the couch—or was it at the dining room table?—and told us that our mother had died in a car crash on the way home from the airport. I never thought to question why she was at the airport to begin with. I suppose the cruise story makes sense.

But what if that’s all it was? A story. Some kind of cleverly concocted tale designed to cover up the truth. And if that’s the case, what exactly was it covering?

“Lex.” Cooper’s voice snaps me back into the moment.