The Scandal and Carter O'Neill (7 page)

He stepped into the murky darkness of the alley and found her behind a fire escape. Her blond hair was pulled back, her black shirt swallowing the light. Her face was tight, her eyes shuddered.

She was subdued.

And it freaked him out. Put an edge to his anger. He didn’t need to battle through one more act, one more false face.

She was never going to be his mother. She was certainly never going to be a friend, but why the hell did everything have to be a game?

“You look like a thief,” he said, stopping a good three feet from her. Any closer and he was scared she’d try to touch him and then, with this desire for a fight, he didn’t know what he’d do.

“You look like a suit,” she said, pointing at him with her cigarette. “I swear you’re the only O’Neill to wear a suit who wasn’t selling something. Or maybe you are?” She tilted her head. “Lord knows you aren’t the first O’Neill to try politics as their scam of choice. Your great-uncle Jasper made a fortune—”

“I’m not like you,” he said. “So you can stop trying to tie the family bonds.”

She paused as if she was going to say something, but in the end she just took a drag of her cigarette.

“You were wrong,” Carter said, cutting to the chase. “The gems aren’t in the house and no one has come sneaking around. Margot’s in West Palm Beach and unless she travels with a fortune in stolen gems—”

“She doesn’t,” she sighed, smoke circling her head. “She doesn’t have the jewels. I’m guessing she never did.”

“How do you know that?” he asked, something about the authority in her tone making him nervous. “What did you do?”

“I had someone break into their hotel room, Carter. What do you think I did? Don’t worry,” she sighed, watching his face. “The guy was a pro. They don’t even know anyone was there. She doesn’t have safe-deposit boxes. She doesn’t rent a safe in hotels.”

“I can’t believe you—”

“I honestly thought she had the gems,” she said, her laughter sounding angry and sad at the same time and Carter felt as if he’d been dropped in some kind of wormhole. “It would be so like her, making me jump through hoops, chasing my tail all over the damn world while she sat in Bonne Terre laughing.”

“I don’t think anyone’s laughing,” Carter said. “Not after you broke into The Manor last summer.”

Vanessa dropped her cigarette and ground it out with the toe of a high-heeled foot. “I know. That was a mistake. This whole damn thing has been a mistake.”

“Do you have the gems?” he asked, wondering what game she was playing, because he hadn’t been dealt the same cards.

She stared at him, her eyes sharp and angry. “Why would I go to all this trouble, Carter?” she asked. “If I had the damn gems.”

“To get back into our lives,” he said. Even as the words came out of his mouth he realized it wasn’t the case. Not for Vanessa. Maybe in books or movies, when the bad guy was really a good guy in the end. But Vanessa was only greedy for money. Never greedy for her children.

Her silence confirmed it.

He blinked as his rage ignited. “Then what the hell was the point of all this? Are we a game to you? A score? Is this…?” Carter could not get his head around what she wanted, why she was here. “Are you playing some kind of angle?”

She tilted her face back and looked up at the sky. “I’m way on the other side of fifty, broke and alone. I’m out of angles, Carter. I’m done.”

Carter laughed before he could help himself. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

She shook her head, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it. “I’m sorry I bothered you, Carter. I’m sorry I bothered any of you.”

She turned as if to leave and Carter felt a jagged slice at his gut, a lightning-quick knife in his chest—his whole body deflating in shock.

“This is it?” he asked. “You come back into my life for nothing? And now you just walk away?”

She paused, smoked half a cigarette in the charged silence. He could hear himself breathing, his heart pounding. “The gems… I thought it was my way out of the game, you know, for good. Otherwise I wouldn’t have broken our agreement,” she said. “I wouldn’t have scared Savannah…and her daughter.”

Your granddaughter, he thought, you can’t even say the word.

“That’s it?”

“What more do you want from me, Carter. I’m sorry. For all of it. You want to talk?” she asked, her voice joking, but a light sparking in her eyes. “Get a cup of coffee?”

“Hell no!” he cried. “I want to know why you came back! We had an agreement. I’ve spent the last ten years away from my brother and sister in fear of bringing you back to them. Afraid of contaminating them with the lies I told!”

“Oh, Carter, it wasn’t Federal Court. No one cares anymore.”

“I know what it was, Vanessa! I told the lie and I sure as hell care!”

She stepped up to him, so close he could smell her perfume, see the black rim around her iris. She searched his eyes, his face, and her sudden smile was sad.

“I’m sorry I made you do that,” she said.

He felt fire burning through his veins, incinerating every logical thing he might say. Sorry? he thought. She was sorry?

“What about dropping us off with Margot?” His voice burned, rising up through his throat from some unknown furnace in his gut.

She shook her head. “Nope. That was the right thing to do. I’m a pretty crap mother.” She watched him as he stood there, running hot and cold, feeling like his head might explode. “You guys turned out better without me.”

Honesty? Honesty from Vanessa O’Neill. Was this really happening? Was he making this up? When he was a kid he used to dream about this crap—whole nights spent dedicated to the many ways his mother would tell him that she’d screwed up.

“You okay?” she asked. Her smile, not sharp, not cold, not that evil slice across her mouth that held a thousand lies, was soft. Like a mother’s.

Not that he really knew what that looked like.

“You’ve had a bad day,” she said. “I saw the paper.”

Right. The paper. He pushed away from her, wiping his face. He didn’t need the two giant crap piles in his life converging in one giant crap pile.

“It’s that girl from the community center, right?” Vanessa asked. “The one I paid.” Carter braced himself against the fire escape, the metal cool in his hot hands.

Leave, he told himself, just leave.

But he couldn’t. Not while she was still talking. It was as if she held a magnet, and as long as she answered his questions, he couldn’t walk away.

“She looks about five months pregnant.”

He watched her through narrowed eyes, waiting for her to say what had to be on the tip of her tongue, the tip of everyone’s tongue, but she was silent.

“I’d never met her before you paid her to get my attention. I’m not the father,” he finally snapped.

“I know you’re not,” she said.

“How?” he asked, “Mother’s intuition?”

“I know a first kiss when I see one.”

Stupidly, unbelievably, he smiled.

“You like her?” Vanessa asked.

“I am not talking about my love life with you.” He sounded like a defensive teenager and she smiled. “Ahh, you do like her.” She took another drag from her cigarette. “It’s okay, Carter. You can be happy. You deserve it.”

“You’re an authority on happy?” he asked.

“Pretty much the other way around,” she said. “There’s not an inch of unhappy I haven’t seen firsthand.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you?”

“The last thing I expect is for you to feel sorry for me. But if you like this girl, don’t run scared. Proud is a lonely way to spend your life.”

“You didn’t have to let go of us,” he said, not even sure if she was talking about her kids, but wanting to say it anyway. “You didn’t have to take that money from Margot every month.”

She didn’t give him an answer, probably didn’t have one, and he hated that he wanted one. He was doomed to disappointment when it came to his mother.

“I better go,” she said. “We don’t want our picture on the front page of the paper now, do we.”

Her black shirt blended into the night, the gleam of her blond hair the only indication she was there.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere yet,” she said.

“I can’t have you here, Mom. It’s bad for me.”

“I know, Carter, and I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry about me, Carter,” she said, her voice spooling out from the darkness. “I’ll be fine.”

And then she was gone.

JIM STAYED IN THE SHADOWS at the top of the alley, holding his breath as Carter walked past, practically breathing smoke and fire. Whatever he and the film noir blonde had been talking about, it hadn’t made the golden boy happy.

And that made Jim smile, despite his own frustration. He’d been too far away to hear anything, but Jim would put money on the blond woman being Vanessa O’Neill. Carter’s long-lost Mommy.

Conspiracy to sell stolen gems, that had to carry jail time. All Jim needed was to connect a few dots to make sure Carter O’Neill went down.

And he had the perfect way to make sure those dots got connected.

He flipped open his phone and pressed three on his speed dial.

“Yo, Jimmy!” boomed Louis, the photographer Jim used in situations like this O’Neill one. Jim cringed at the nickname, at the stupidity that dripped off this guy’s voice. Louis hadn’t even graduated community college, but what he did for a living didn’t require it. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, Louis, I just have a job for you.”

“Well, I liked the Deputy Deadbeat Daddy Denied job. Made a nice chunk of change off that sweet picture.”

“Good, because it’s more of the same.”

“Same what?”

Dear God, Jim thought, save me from the idiots.

“I need you to follow Zoe Madison, maybe get some friends to do the same.”

“Dude, the story is cold. No one gives a shit about the pregnant girl anymore.”

“That’s not true—”

Louis was silent, having picked a fine time to get wise. “I’ll pay you,” Jim said.

Louis sighed. “All right, Jimmy, it’s your dime. Not sure why you want to spend it on pictures of a dead story.”

I’d explain it to you, Jim thought, but you’d never understand. Leverage was too big a word for Louis.

“HANDS,” ZOE YELLED over the violins in the Mozart gavotte. “Watch your hands, Sophie.”

Frustrated, Zoe circled the pirouetting girl in the room, walking in front of the cracked mirrors over to the stereo in the corner.

She pushed the off button and Sophie and the violins both stopped. These Saturday morning lessons weren’t going well.

“When is your audition?” Zoe asked and Sophie blushed, flexing and unflexing her hands.

“January 10.”

“Great,” Zoe said, walking up to the girl and taking her hands. “That gives us five weeks to get rid of these lobster claws.”

“They’re that bad?”

“Worse,” Zoe said. “Juilliard does not accept lobsters into their dance program.”

“You know,” Sophie said, her tone going sour and making Zoe want to roll her eyes. She wanted to tell Sophie that Juilliard didn’t accept spoiled little girls who used excuses to explain bad technique, either, but she couldn’t be too sure of it. “None of my other teachers have ever said anything about my hands.”

Zoe stepped back, lifted her head and looked down her nose the way all of her former choreographers and teachers had stood, a posture that was guaranteed to put dancers in their places. The look was as old as toe shoes, and Zoe found she liked it, liked using it. “Then every other teacher you’ve had has done you a disservice. You came to me because you want into Juilliard, right?”

Sophie nodded, her jaw tight but her mouth shut.

“Your feet are exquisite,” Zoe said, and Sophie perked up. “Your legs are good, not great, but they show lots of promise. Which leaves…”

“My hands,” Sophie muttered.

“Five fingers,” Zoe said, manipulating the girl’s hand into something more elegant than a claw. She extended the girl’s arm. “Finish the movement, all the way down your arm into your hand and finally your fingers. Without your fingers, you’re leaving the movement incomplete. You’re chopping it off at the elbow. Got it?”

Sophie nodded. “I’m trying,” she said truthfully, without whining, which was a serious improvement. “I really am.”

“I know you are,” Zoe said with a slight smile, playing the benevolent teacher to the hilt. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Sophie walked away. Her back was straight and strong, but ballet was a cruel master and the strength it required to be a professional was not found only in the muscles.

“She got a chance?” Phillip asked from behind her, making her jump in surprise.

“Maybe,” she sighed, “hard to say just yet.” She turned, resigned to this moment. She’d been dodging his calls all week and she couldn’t avoid him forever. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know,” he said and handed her a decaf latte and a grease-stained bag.

“Frayley’s Beignets?” She couldn’t stop her voice from squealing. Thirty-seven years old and she squealed for beignets.

“Salted,” Phillip said with a face. “Just how you like them.”

She popped a hot grease ball into her mouth and it exploded with salt and sweetness. Why wasn’t the whole world eating beignets this way?

“So, why don’t you tell me why you’re avoiding me?”

“I haven’t—”

“Cut the crap, Zoe. What’s going on?”

Phillip crossed his arms over a thin cashmere sweater that did fabulous things for both his eyes and his chest.

“Not much,” she hedged, and he snorted.

“Fine,” she said, “I went to the ballet with Carter O’Neill.”

“I saw the picture,” he said, his eyebrows raised. “You went to the ballet wearing a tablecloth from an Italian restaurant.”

“It was all I had,” she said, regretting her decision not to care what she looked like Wednesday night. Especially since the photograph was all over the paper.

“How was the ballet?” he asked.

“Gorgeous,” she answered truthfully. But the rest of the night, sitting beside Carter, awkwardly trying not to hit each other with elbows and knees, was terrible.

And after the photo and all that nonsense, there’d been a strange moment when, against all her better judgment, she’d been about to ask him to go for coffee. It had seemed as if he’d been about to do the same, and they’d laughed like teenagers.

But then, that cold mask had settled over his face, and Carter had said good-night and left.

And she’d watched him go, feeling foolish.

“So, you’re dating Carter O’Neill?” Phillip asked.

“We’re just friends.”

“Bullshit, Zoe. There’s a photographer outside,” he said, pointing toward the door. “I don’t think photographers are following O’Neill’s other friends.”

She put another beignet in her mouth. That photographer had been following her since Tuesday morning, and she didn’t understand why.

“And some reporter called me,” Phillip said. “Wanted to know all about you and the mayor pro tem.”

She twisted to look at him. Carter had been right. “What did you say?”

“That it was none of his business,” he said with a shrug. “If my best friend has found love with a suit that doesn’t mind her dressing in tablecloths, more power to her.”

She laughed, but it was greasy with guilt. She stepped away across the small dark studio toward the makeshift stage, next to the wall of cracked and broken mirrors. She sat her pregnant self down next to the stereo and put the brown bag in her lap where the beignets nestled together like eggs in a nest.

Unable to pretend to her best friend that all was right in her world, she let the whole story spill out.

“So you and Carter aren’t real?” he asked when she was done, and she shook her head. “It’s all a press stunt?”

“I’m calling it public service,” she said.

“Oh, honey,” Phillip said, putting his arm around her and hugging her tight. “I hated feeling left in the dark, and I’m pretty pissed you’ve kept it a secret, but I was beginning to be happy with the idea that you’d found someone.”

She pulled away from Phillip, looking up into his warm brown eyes. She remembered when she used to love him, before they’d both understood that he was gay. They’d taken dance classes together for years, and she often wondered if she’d have stuck with dance for as long as she had if it hadn’t been for him.

“I’m lonely,” she said, cupping his cheek. “But I’m not desperate to bring a man into my life.”

“What about sex?”

“Sex?” she asked. “Isn’t that a chair from IKEA?”

“That bad, huh?”

“You have no idea,” she groaned, slumping against him.

“It’s only been five months,” Phillip laughed, rubbing her belly.

Oops, she thought. She really needed to be more careful if she didn’t want to end up explaining the father of her baby. Phillip wasn’t dumb—he’d catch on sooner or later.

“Feels like forever,” she said.

“Six months is only the beginning of a dry spell,” he said. “A year is officially a drought. More than two years and you have a climate change situation.”

Phillip made a joke of it, but that’s what Phillip did. He laughed off the tough stuff—his father leaving, his family on welfare, having to give up dance. He was more handsome than anyone needed to be, so no one ever credited him with much depth.

“How long has it been?” she asked, the pain lacing his joke so obvious it filled the room.

“One year, one month, two weeks, three days.”

“He’s—”

“Getting better.” Phillip’s optimism was sincere. It had been just over a year since his partner, Ben, had been in a car accident that had totally crushed his hips, and it seemed as though corners were being turned every day. He’d gone back to work last month at his law firm as a consultant for the state government. “He’s out of the wheelchair most of the day now. He only uses it at night when he’s tired. And yesterday—” Phillip’s eyes got big “—Ben got a boner!”

“What?”

“We were in the shower,” Phillip said. “Soaping each other up and suddenly, there it was!”

“What did you do?”

Phillip’s laughter was so bright and beautiful it brought tears to Zoe’s eyes. “What do you think I did?” Phillip asked. “I dropped to my knees and got reacquainted.”

She laughed so hard the baby did somersaults. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

Phillip took a sip of her latte. “It’s Ben that’s amazing,” he said. “I swear to God, every day…” He trailed off and shook his head. “Best man in a suit I’ve ever known.”

“Well, I think the suit part gets negated by the fact that he dressed up like Dolly Parton on the weekends.”

“He does look good in sequins,” Phillip said with a smile that spoke of such love she had to look away, choked up.

She wasn’t lonely, not really. But she wanted to feel what Phillip felt for Ben.

And there was the sex. Sex sometime in the future would be nice.

But not with Carter.

No matter how much her body might want it, her head and heart were voting no.

“Honey?” he said, jostling her. “A boner is nothing to cry about.”

“I know.” She smiled, waving her hands in an attempt to laugh off the spikes of emotion that were making her do crazy things. Want crazy things. “It’s the hormones.”

“Do you…like Carter?” Phillip asked, leaning to look into her eyes.

“Sure,” she said, pretending to be casual.

“What’s he like?”

Funny. Sad, a little. Warmer than he thinks. More passionate than anyone knows. Driven. Single-minded. Sometimes cold. Secretive. Confusing in about a hundred different ways.

“Surprising,” she finally said. “But not for me, so let’s stop talking about him.”

The two of them sat in a nice silence, like a warm puddle of sunshine. She ate some salty beignets and decided to put voice to the idea she’d had while tossing and turning in bed the other night.

“You used to take hip-hop classes, right?”

“Like a million years ago,” he said. But she knew Phillip was being modest. He’d been as passionate about dance as she had, but Phillip was one of five kids and his mom hadn’t been able to sacrifice everything the way Zoe’s mom had. After Phillip’s dad had left, when it had come down to dance class or paying the electric bill—the electric bill got paid.

“You said you were taking classes again a few years ago.”

“I did. I do.”

She turned to him, eyes wide. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s only one class a week. You don’t tell me everything.”

“Touché,” she said, but secretly she was thrilled. This idea was actually doable.

“What about break dancing—”

“That I did in the eighties?” he asked with a laugh. “When I was ten?”

“But you were good.”

He pursed his lips. “I was good, wasn’t I?”

“I was thinking about offering a free class to teenagers after school. Hip-hop, maybe some jazz. Break dancing.”

He swiveled and stared at her. “Where did this come from?”

Carter, she thought, remembering the fire in his eyes.

But instead of telling her best friend the truth, she shrugged, glancing down at a grease stain that looked like a pair of lips. “Just an idea.”

“It’s a good one,” he said, and she knew he was remembering the days when a free dance class might have changed his life. It was why she’d asked him—he had more in common with these kids than she did, and without commonality, this idea was useless.

“I can’t pay you.”

“I don’t need to get paid. I’ll help, but I’m no expert.” He glanced over her head to the mirror. He popped and locked his arms, flipped up his collar, did a wave. “Still got it, though.”

She put her arms around the man in her life and gave him a big hug. “You definitely got it.”

CARTER WASN’T SURE WHAT he was doing here.

He didn’t even like soul food.

Yet here he was, at seven o’clock on Sunday night, outside…he squinted into the shadows at the faded sign over the door. Mama’s. A soul food place called Mama’s.

No wonder Zoe loves this place, he thought. It was authentic, real and true, like her. Even the air outside the place smelled good enough to eat. The flame of warmth that sparked to life when he even thought her name made him nervous. He wasn’t supposed to care.

But now he was thinking about soul food. Because of her.

Ever since the ballet on Wednesday, he’d been thinking about her more and more. Four days and it felt so much longer.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered.

He should have just called her, because that’s what he really wanted to do. Plan another fake date, so he could see her again.

But there was no need. After the ballet and the picture in the paper, his poll numbers had stopped dipping.

So if he called her, it would be for him alone. Strictly personal.

“In or out, buddy?” a guy asked, standing behind him. Carter didn’t move and the guy stepped around him, yanking open the door. Delicious smells and warmth and light spilled out the door then vanished, and Carter stood again in the darkness outside.