Page 93

He just chuckles, takes a long slow appraisal of me, and says, “I’ll see you around, cutie.”
Three
Maddie
I watch the SUV until it disappears from view, and as soon as it’s gone I’m convinced that none of this happened, that I had some kind of crazy hallucination. There was a blurry unrealness about the whole thing from the moment I stormed out of the restaurant. Only now has my life snapped back into clear sharp-edged reality.
When I get inside I remember to call Erica, but I need to plug my phone in first. I’m halfway to my room when my parents stop me.
“We need to talk to you,” my dad says, grimly. They both look like ghosts standing like that in the hallway. My mom wears a long pale lavender dressing gown, and my father has on the same polo shirt from the country club and khaki pants he was wearing when I left.
“D-did someone die?” because I know it’s not the IRS again. There’s nothing more they can take at this point. Maybe they’re going to charge him and put him in jail. Even after all this? Ripping our whole lives away… Why lock him up? Then he starts costing the government money. I thought the money he didn’t pay was so important for the government to function or is it all just retribution for him daring not to pay them? Why spitefully toss my father in a cell on top of it? Wouldn’t they just break even then after years of housing him in prison? Did anyone in our government ever take an economics class?
“Let’s go into my office,” my dad says.
I follow them both into the office. My dad sits in his chair, I sit in the chair on the other side of his desk, and my mother sits in a high-backed burgundy leather chair off to the side. She clasps and unclasps her hands in her lap and twists her wedding ring around then fidgets with her hair, her eyes not quite meeting mine.
When I turn to my dad, his gaze is avoidant as well.
“What’s happening right now?” I ask, looking back and forth between them. They look more cagey than they have ever looked about anything in my entire life. It wasn’t even this bad when they told me we were losing everything. What could be worse than that?
“Is it grandma?” I ask. It’s the only other thing I can think of. “Is it her heart?”
“No, your grandmother is fine,” my dad says.
“For now,” my mom says.
What the hell does that mean?
“Margot, don’t,” he says.
“I’m just saying, when she finds out about this, it’s certainly not going to be good for her heart.”
I look around the office and notice photos on the floor, shattered glass, my brother’s baseball bat leaning against the edge of the desk. And then my gaze goes to a thick cream-colored envelope sitting in the middle of the desk on top of a few stray shards of glass.
“What’s this?”
I reach for it, but my father takes it before I can get my hand around it. It feels like it’s about me, and I don’t know where that crazy thought came from, but I know somehow my fate is in that envelope.
“You are to be married on June fourteenth,” he blurts out, sounding more formal and stiff than he’s ever sounded.
“What? I most certainly am not!”
I’m going to move in with Erica and get a job. I already talked to them about this. I am definitely not getting married.
“I wish this was a choice but… I owe someone a lot of money. These are dangerous people. They don’t deal with things like we deal with things.” His gaze goes to the smashed photos and shattered glass, and I don’t need him to draw me a diagram.
“Who is it? The Corleone family? Jesus, dad.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I realize my sarcastic comment hit a bit too close to the truth. “The mob? Are you serious? You’re going to marry me off to some old mob boss because you borrowed money!? Or what? They’ll kill you? Kill all of us?”
I imagine some old guy my dad’s age or worse wearing a blue track suit trying to unsuccessfully hide his beer gut, wearing a thick gold chain around his neck, and I think I might vomit right here.
He looks down at the desk.
“Oh well that’s just great, dad!”
I’m tempted to start breaking the rest of the shit in this office with the baseball bat.