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Chapter Twenty-Five

“I don’t think Marcus has liked anyone this much in ages.”

Except for his own reflection.

“That’s quite the compliment, Dad. Thank you.”

My father shuts his laptop.

We have been talking with Marcus on Zoom about The Magician’s Assistant , the debut novel for Books with Flare. As I watched Marcus talk, his face a mask of genuine excitement, I couldn’t help but watch my own as it happily went along with his lies. I felt like I was the magician’s assistant who needed to disappear. I kept smiling, trying to act normal, but no one looks normal when they try to act normal: I felt like I resembled a killer on one of those true crime shows who tries to act way too cool and proclaims her innocence while being grilled by the police in an interrogation room with blood all over her blouse.

My mother claps her hands.

It echoes in the cavernous Hamptons open living room.

“And I don’t think I have loved the opening of a novel so much in ages,” she says. “It’s both literary and commercial. It has that big book vibe. I feel like I did when I was reading Horse by Geraldine Brooks. I was absolutely thrilled and enthralled by the chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps she made in that work. Of course, we didn’t get that manuscript because we couldn’t play with the big dogs, but this is why we got into business with Marcus. His name, influence and monetary support will make all the difference this time. It will allow us to be players.”

“I just don’t know why he’s being so secretive with the rest of the novel,” my father says. “I can’t publish something I haven’t read.”

“Like Marcus said, we’re working with the author right now before it’s turned over to you,” I lie. “I’m helping with the edits. I guarantee the rest of the book is as great as the opening. Trust me.”

Jess gives me a side-eye that implies she’s both impressed and shocked at my ability to lie so well. I involuntarily scratch my nose, worried that—like Pinocchio’s—it is growing.

“I do,” my father says. “Implicitly.”

“You are just full of surprises,” my mother says. “I’m so impressed, Emma.”

I know she wants to say, I’m so stunned considering our blowout fight , but she takes the high road. So do I.

“Thanks, Mom. I also have another surprise I wanted to wait to share until we were all together.”

My mother sits up. “Go on.”

“I’d love to accept your offer to work at The Mighty Pages.”

“Oh, honey,” my dad says first. “I’m so thrilled.”

He stands, and I hug him.

“Oh, Emma,” my mother says. “We’re going to make a great team!”

She stares at me for the longest time shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t know what to say. It’s like you’ve taken a page out of our family book. Let me call Diane. She will be so thrilled. And then we can celebrate!”

“Why don’t we all go outside by the pool and do that,” Jess suggests, attempting to move the focus off me for a moment. “It’s a beautiful day, and I rented this house to be enjoyed.”

“But not purchased,” my mother says.

I give Jess a look of gratitude.

“I think you already spent enough money on Botox and filler this week, don’t you, Mom?” Jess jabs to keep the focus squarely on her.

“My appearance is solely due to yoga, rest and lots of lemon water, young lady,” my mother says, standing and finishing her glass. “Plumps the skin.”

“Uh-huh,” Jess says with a laugh.

We move to our respective wings to change and then head outside to the pool.

It’s linear and sleek, with a tanning shelf at one end. A teak deck encompasses the water, and a small pool house cum makeshift bar sits at the far end. The doors are open to reveal nostalgic Hamptons coastal decor: vintage beach banners and buoys hung on the wall, a rope chandelier, a small table filled with antique barware.

I open a large storage container hidden behind the pool house and retrieve a floatie. I pull out a pump and begin to inflate it, a magical unicorn slowly coming to life.

I toss it in the pool and jump in.

Jess struts toward the pool looking perfect and carrying a bottle of rosé.

I clamber atop the unicorn. Jess looks at me.

“You’ve changed,” she says. “No fear of the water now?”

“I overcame it this summer,” I reply. “I overcame a lot.” I smile at my sister. “Thanks to you.”

“Thank you,” she says. “We have just one more obstacle.”

“Nothing me and my magical unicorn can’t overcome,” I joke.

Mom and Dad walk down the floating stairs in the glass atrium.

“When should we tell them about what’s going on?” I continue. “I’m having trouble keeping my lies straight anymore.”

“You sure seem like a pro at it,” Jess says with a laugh. “We just need to sharpen that unicorn’s horn a bit more. We’re almost home.”

“Or we might need a home,” I add.

My mother appears in a black swimsuit with a gold trim cutout in the middle.

“You look amazing, Mom,” I say. “I think I hate you.”

She stops on the teak deck and lowers her sunglasses.

“Life is a fight to the finish,” she says, “not a casual stroll.”

My father is carrying his laptop, my mother a manuscript. Jess follows them into the shaded pool house, opens the wine and pours four glasses. I paddle over to the edge of the pool, and she hands me a glass.

“I don’t think anything could sum you up better,” my father calls. “A unicorn on a unicorn.” He laughs.

I think back to when my father told me as a girl that writers were unicorns in this world.

I take a sip of rosé.

Jess takes a seat in the warm pool water on the tanning shelf.

And then I do something I’ve done my whole life: I watch my parents read.

When a passage strikes either of my parents, they will read it aloud to the other. One will nod and remark on the meaning of the passage or brilliance of the author, and a few moments later, this literary tango will be repeated.

I watch my mother’s eyes grow misty. The most unemotional woman in the world is showing emotion the only way she knows how: reading a book.

My father chuckles. The man who is always in control of his emotions lets loose a staccato of boyish giggles.

My father catches me watching. He glances up, lowers his sunglasses and gives me a wink.

My heart flutters like the hummingbird currently fascinated by the bright, rainbow colors of my unicorn. My dad returns to reading alongside my mom.

I think of a conversation I had with my mom when I was a girl and reading Flowers in the Attic .

“Is your mother mean like the grandmother in this book?” I asked. “Is that why I’ve never met her?”

“Yes, Emma,” she said. “They didn’t lock me away in an attic, but they did steal my childhood, and they tried to steal my future.”

“How?” I had asked.

“We were poor, but that had nothing to do with it,” she sighed. “They were just miserable people. My father hated my mother, my mother hated my father, and I was the lightning rod for all their anger. What’s the old adage? Happiness isn’t a state of mind, it’s a habit? Well, misery was their habit. I worked my entire childhood—babysitting, delivering newspapers, working at McDonald’s—to make enough money to go to college, start a new life and get away from them. My father told me one day he wanted to start an account for me at the local bank to protect that money. He cosigned with me, and I put all of my money into that account, year after year. When I was accepted to college and went to the bank to retrieve my college fund and make my first tuition payment, the money was gone. All of it. The teller told me my father had come down and withdrawn it all earlier that week and that he had rights to access it as a joint owner. My father went out, got drunk and gambled it all away in one night. The robber was in my own home. He might as well have locked me in an attic.”

“What did you do?” I asked, shocked.

“I left and never looked back,” she said. “GiGi took me in. She didn’t charge me a dime at first. I worked my way through college. And then, one summer, I met your father. He was so handsome, but it was more than that. He was smart, and he was kind. I never knew kindness. I’d never met someone so genuine. He listened to me. He saw me. When I graduated, he asked me to marry him. I was jealous of your grandmother’s relationship with your father. I couldn’t understand how a parent could be so…good. She isn’t perfect, but GiGi is a force of nature, as you know. She is a fierce protector of people she loves, especially you. Oh, Emma, the pain we carry around from our childhoods. You believe you can sling it off like an old coat when you grow up, but it’s not like that. It’s not just that you carry it around, it’s that pain becomes a part of you, embedded in your DNA. You can’t get rid of it. You try to burn down your past, but a fire scar remains on your soul.”

“You’re a good mother,” I had said.

She had laughed, hard.

“No, I’m not,” she said. “We’ll see how I did in a few years. Hopefully, I won’t screw you up too much. I just don’t want to hurt you like I got hurt, so that’s why I’m distant sometimes. Being a mother has never come naturally to me, but I want you to know how much I love you and always will, and I promise that I will keep trying to do better. I’m not in your father’s league, I’m not in GiGi’s league, and I never will be. I try to be with all my clothes and makeup and attitude, but they’re light-years ahead of me in unconditional love because I was never shown that. We all have some Flowers in the Attic –sized mysteries in our pasts, Emma. What we cannot do is lock our hearts away to protect ourselves, and yet that’s what we end up doing. Promise me you won’t do that. Break the mold.”

“I promise. I love you, Mommy.”

“And I love you, my dear, sweet girl more than you will ever know and more than I will likely ever be able to show.”

Now I continue to watch my parents read.

We are a family, like so many, distanced by the ghosts on our shoulders.

We want to hug, we want to reach out, and yet we are paralyzed by our pasts.

Books may not allow us to reinvent the people we’ve become, but they can remind us of the people we can be.

The people we want to be.

Jess jumps into the pool and my unicorn bobs toward the edge.

I set my wineglass on the deck, jump off my float and walk toward the pool house.

I lean down and hug my mother.

“What in the world, Emma,” she says, flustered. “You’re getting my book all wet!”

But after a moment, she sets down her wine, lays the manuscript in her lap, clasps a hand on mine and leans her head against my body.

I hold on tightly and do not let go. I want to give my mother the hug that she never received as a child, the one she rarely gives as a mother, to let her know I can protect her now and that she hasn’t screwed me up too much.