Page 165 of Boss of Me

“You’re right,” I say evenly. “Ember has always had more common sense than me. That’s why we get along so well. Opposites attract.”

Despite my self-deprecating response, Mom continues needling me, spoiling for a fight she’ll always win. “I should have known you wouldn’t be able to hold onto a billionaire. You always make everything so infuriatingly difficult.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand, digging my nails into my palms.

She spears me with her frosty green gaze. “It took you five years to graduate college. Since moving here in May, you’ve lost not one buttwojobs. If you’re wondering why I paid scant attention as you prattled on about your new job, it’s because I don’t expect you to be there much longer.”

I hear Ember’s breath hitch sharply. Or maybe that’s mine.

Mom sets her glass down hard. “I’m sorry, Marlowe, but your track record doesn’t lie, and the sad truth is that you fail more often than you succeed.”

The scathing indictment rips through my soul like a grenade, detonating my fury.

“What the hell is your problem with me?” I howl at her like a wounded animal. “Why do you hate me so much?”

She blinks rapidly in surprise. “What?—”

“Don’t play innocent, Mom!” Ember shouts. “You werewayout of line and you fucking know it!”

I’m up and out of my seat, trembling with pent-up rage born of rejection. “You hate me because I was close to Dad. Because we bonded over music and you felt left out. That’s why you gave away his records!”

She leaps to her feet, glaring furiously at me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Yes, I do!”

“You idolized him?—”

“And you resented me for it! You always have!”

“WITH GOOD REASON!”

Her shrill outburst cuts through the air, stealing my breath and knocking me back a step.

In the utter silence that follows, Ember and I stare at her in openmouthed disbelief.

She scrubs a trembling hand over her face and turns away from us, staring blindly across the lake. “You were so young when he died. Neither of you understood what was going on.”

“What’re you talking about?” I sink back down in my seat, my voice barely a breath. “What was going on?”

Hugging her midsection, Mom starts pacing up and down the deck. “Your father had been having headaches for weeks. Terrible, crippling migraines. I was so damn worried abouthim. I kept nagging him to go see his doctor, and he kept promising he would. But there was always another song to compose. Another recital to rehearse for. Another music class to teach. Another contest to judge. He kept putting off making an appointment, and sometimes he’d outright lie about having a headache when I could clearly see he was in pain.”

My throat tightens as I remember the time I found my father huddled over his piano, pale and shaking, head cradled in his hands. Seeing him like that terrified me. But he’d blamed the migraine on writer’s block, and I’d naively taken him at his word.

Mom stops pacing and faces me, her eyes flashing with emotion. “You had a piano recital one winter afternoon. It was circled on the calendar, but somehow it slipped your father’s mind. I had already phoned you from work to tell you that Aunt Nora would be taking you because we couldn’t make it. But once your dad remembered, he canceled his doctor’s appointment to attend your performance. I told him there would be plenty of others, but he insisted on going. He wanted to surprise you?—”

“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. My heart is pounding with dread and I can feel the ground crumbling beneath my feet as she keeps talking.

“I blew up at him. Told him you were a good pianist but you’d never be as gifted as him. I told him to stop filling your head with foolish dreams, and he got angry and hung up on me.” Mom sets her jaw. “On the way to your recital, he had a massive stroke and veered off the road, slamming into a light post?—”

“Nooo!” I cry out tearfully as Ember claps a hand over her mouth. “You told us it was a hit-and-run!”

“I know.” A single tear escapes the corner of Mom’s eye. She takes an angry swipe at it and sniffs hard. “The autopsy revealed that his headaches were caused by a treatable brain hemorrhage, which a CT scan would have detected if he’d only gotten help sooner.” Her nostrils flare, suppressing emotion. “After he died,I couldn’t look at his record collection without falling to pieces. So I packed it up, loaded up his van and headed to a local charity.” She pauses before whispering almost inaudibly, “I never made it.”

I stare at her in shock. “You mean . . . ?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the records. I couldn’t do that to you or your father. But I couldn’t keep them in the house either. They were an unbearable reminder that he was never coming home. His piano was, too. But I didn’t want to deprive you of practicing and honing your talents, though I died a little inside each time I watched you play, your dark hair falling forward, the way you closed your eyes like him.” The sorrow ravaging her features breaks my heart. “For my sanity, the records had to go. So I drove to a storage facility and locked them away.”

All the air rushes out of my lungs.