This is WAR (13 page)
Authors: Lisa Roecker
“How does five thousand dollars sound? That ought to cover tuition to whatever crap school you’re going to next year.”
Mari laughed wickedly. “Make it thirty. Just in case my scholarship falls through.”
Shit. Madge was going to kill her if she agreed to pay Mari that much money, but how could she not? Without it they had nothing on Trip and nothing on James beyond Rose’s
photos. Those weren’t going to be enough. Not to destroy the family. Not to win the War.
So Lina nodded her assent and watched Mari disappear back into the night. Everyone had an angle. Everyone had a price. At Hawthorne Lake, life was an auction. The prize always went to the highest bidder.
The next morning Lina awoke to an earsplitting stream of Polish words. Swearing, probably.
“You gone all night! What I tell your parents?” Jodweiga shrieked. She stormed across Lina’s room, her apron tight across her huge belly, throwing open the blinds, picking up discarded bras and bathing suits and hurtling them into the hamper. “They come home in ten minutes. Up! Up!”
Ten minutes? Her parents? This was not good news. Especially since she hadn’t fallen asleep until the first rays of sunlight had stabbed through her blinds. Her mind was fuzzy with sleep, still processing everything that had happened with Mari. $30,000. She had twenty-four hours to get Mari the cash before she went to the Captain. Madge was going to kill her. But there was no choice. The stuff on her phone was incriminating enough to get the Gregorys disinherited. It had to be. Plus, it’s not like they had anything else to do with the money.
Lina had to get out of the house before her parents arrived. It was already past 11
A.M.
The girls would be at the Club
plotting, waiting for the evidence she promised them. Her parents would just slow her down with their disappointed sighs and uncomfortable silence. They’d swooped in for Willa’s memorial and put on their usual show only to breeze back out just as fast as they’d come. Lina didn’t care. She didn’t need them pretending to care. It only reminded her of all the things she didn’t have.
“
Szybciej
!
Szybciej
! They are here!” Jodweiga ran out of her room to get the rest of the house in order. Car doors slammed. The garage door opened. Footsteps on the stairwell. Lina stood, paralyzed.
Moments later Lina’s mother breezed into her room looking like an ad for expensive sportswear.
So much for her escape.
“Lina! Darling! We’re home!” Her mother always spoke in exclamation marks. Lina sometimes wondered if that was because she was perpetually surprised by the bullshit that came out of her own mouth. “We’ve missed you so much! We really wanted to be home more this summer … for … you know …” Her mother lowered her voice when referring to all the things they didn’t talk about. “But you know Daddy! Business first!”
“So he got a new secretary?” Lina asked.
“How did you know?” Because even though they’d never admit it, “business first” really meant that her father was screwing his new mistress. Just like “boarding school” was really code for “we want nothing to do with this hot mess of a teenager” and Jodweiga’s real job description should have been rent-a-mom. No, there was nothing quite like the Winthrop family’s secret dialect heavily rooted in passive aggression with a slight accent of I-don’t-give-a-shit.
“Well! Time for breakfast! Jodweiga is getting everything
ready for eggs benny downstairs! Your favorite!” She paused in the doorway.
Lina hadn’t eaten eggs Benedict since she was nine years old. They’d been at the Club. Lina scooped up her first bite, the creamy egg dripping with butter and hollandaise sauce, when she’d heard laughing from the corner. One of the servers whispered to another how the fat kid had just ordered a breakfast that clocked in at more than two thousand calories. Lina lost her appetite for eggs Benedict after that. Now she stuck to the fruit plate.
“I’m not hungry. I’m supposed to meet Madge at the Club.”
“Don’t be silly! Besides, I’m not asking, I’m telling.” Her mother’s smile darkened. Lina knew there was no point in arguing. “Now, darling, go ahead and get dressed. Perhaps something with sleeves! As much as your father enjoys seeing your rather unusual form of self-expression,” her mother nodded at the rainbow of ink running like ivy up her arms, “I think we can all agree those
things
are best left unseen until after coffee.”
Her mother swept back down the stairs leaving only a cloud of her expensive perfume in her wake. In a few days, that’s all that would be left of her, Lina reminded herself. But she still mourned the loss of a deserted house and the freedom that came with it.
She pulled on her bikini and threw a bright yellow, long sleeved dress over her head. Even in the air conditioning, the light cotton material clung to her arms and she longed for one of her spaghetti strapped cover ups. But her mother was right. Reminding her father of her rebellion would only delay her departure to the Club. She ran down the stairs to find her parents already seated at the enormous dining room table.
Her father was buried behind
The Wall Street Journal
. Classic.
Nice to see you again, too, Dad. How long has it been?
She slid into her designated seat.
“Lina darling, don’t you look becoming! That color really suits you! Doesn’t she look lovely, Martin?”
“Good morning, Carolina.” Her dad cast a quick scrutinizing gaze from over the top of the page.
“Well! Let’s eat, shall we?” Lina’s mother whipped open her cloth napkin and started placing delicate bites of egg whites onto her tongue. Lina pushed her eggs Benedict around on the plate. There was no way in hell she was going to eat a single bite, but maybe if she pushed it around enough her parents wouldn’t notice.
Her father tucked away his newspaper and took a long sip of coffee.
“So, Carolina, your mother and I understand that this summer has been … difficult.” He cleared his throat. “But …”
You are a waste. You are a disappointment. We don’t give a shit
. Lina could think of an infinite number of words to fill her father’s pause. “Have you managed to find a productive use of your time?”
“Well, that depends, Dad. Do you consider hanging out with my friends at the pool to be productive?”
Her father frowned, deep creases forming around his lips. “I thought we’d discussed you getting an internship. Learning something about the world.”
Lina felt like reminding her dad that they never discussed anything. Ever. So he must be hallucinating or perhaps thinking of some other daughter he had squirreled away with one of his secretaries. Instead she continued to push the congealing eggs Benedict.
“Well! I’m sure your friends need you right now after
everything with Willa.” Her mother’s bright smile belied the seriousness of her statement. “How is Madge doing?” She asked the question like a news anchor bantering with a guest.
“She’s fine, Mom.” Lina stood up and pushed her plate away. This torture had gone on long enough. “Speaking of Madge, I’m late. She’s waiting for me at the Club. I’ll see you guys later.”
“Sit down, Carolina. You haven’t even touched your food.” Her father’s eyes were sharp, the frown lines slicing his square jaw.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re not going anywhere until you eat.” He cleared his throat and finally put the paper down. “We’re trying to be patient, you know.”
Without breaking eye contact, Lina sat back down and shoveled eggs Benedict in her mouth. It was cold and the sauce had congealed into clumps of fat, but she barely noticed because she didn’t bother chewing, just swallowed the eggs. Soggy pieces of English muffin stuck in her throat. She choked it all down, her watery eyes never once leaving her father’s.
“There. Done.” Her mother’s face had gone slack, her father’s red with anger. For a second he looked like he was going to say something important. Something real.
But Jodweiga cleared her throat and gestured at Lina’s plate. “You finish?” By the time Lina had nodded and Jodweiga had left, her father’s eyes had wandered again to the newsprint. That was exactly how much he cared. The realization should have hurt, but Lina was past all that. She almost felt bad for her mother, staring at him, willing him to look at her. And Lina realized that was exactly what James Gregory
and Willa Ames-Rowan might have looked like in twenty years if everything had gone according to plan.
A wave of dizziness crashed over her. Lina’s worlds were blending and bleeding together, the lines becoming hazy. They were generations apart, but they were all the same. She might not be able to save her mom, but she could save herself and her daughter and her daughter’s daughter. And it had to start here. Now. All roads led to the War, and that’s exactly where Lina was headed in her tiny convertible.
Well, right after she stopped at the bank to grab $30,000 from their safety deposit box.
“You gave your mom the file, right?” Madge asked Rose for what had to be the millionth time.
They’d just completed the presentation that morning. Lina felt confident, all things considered. It was nearly perfect. All sickly, wild-eyed, desperate-looking kids intermixed with flashes of naked Gregorys and grainy pictures of discreet drug deals. It was so entirely wrong, so sad and twisted, that Lina knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was going to work. And now it was show time.
She watched the parade of ancient gala women, dresses too short, waltz through the Club’s main doors. Botox, boobs, and bitches: the Club trifecta. She wondered if the horror would even show on their smooth, surgically frozen faces when they viewed the corrupted slides. The Captain’s neck would turn an angry red when his shame and revulsion became too much to bear. Lina wondered if she’d be able to see the exact moment the boys were disinherited, if she’d bear witness to the historic event. She’d be watching for it.
Of course there was someone else she’d have to watch out for tonight: Mari. A bubble of uncertainty rose up in Lina’s throat. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that as long as everything went as planned she’d have no problem silencing Mari. Madge wouldn’t care about all that money as long as the Gregorys were destroyed. That was the goal. That was what Lina needed to be focusing on right now.
“Your mom really has no idea?” Madge asked.
“No,” Rose murmured, her patience wearing thin. “She was just thrilled I actually helped her, and that I know PowerPoint. It’s all cued up and ready to roll.”
Madge nodded and headed into the courtyard, Sloane on her heels.
Lina paused for a second with Rose.
Hawthorne Lake Country Club was bathed in white. Creamy linens were draped over tables and chairs; lights sparkled from every tree; hundreds of white hydrangeas, snapdragons, and roses were bunched in vases on every available surface. But the most spectacular addition to the theatrics was the clear surface suspended over the pool, the tables situated on top, as if floating over the glowing water. All of the guests were required to wear white. Maybe someone believed it could be like fresh snow in a city, covering up the dirt and sludge, transforming sin to purity. Still, even though Lina knew exactly what lurked beneath the surface, she had to admit that it was stunning. The Captain had truly outdone himself this year, and she almost hated to ruin it. Almost.
Soon, an orchestra of overlapping conversations mixed with clinking wine glasses, punctuated every so often by the pop of a champagne bottle. The Captain was in his element. His laugh rained down upon the crowd, rivaled only by Trip’s. Even though the Captain acted as though
Trip didn’t exist, the two were so similar. They glowed and preened in the spotlight, while James, the Captain’s favorite, lurked around the edges. She caught him exchanging harsh words with his brother. Trip’s eyes glazed over as James spoke, wandering in search of someone more important. She knew it was only a matter of time before someone slapped his back and he turned, leaving James to choke on whatever he wanted to communicate. It was the same exact thing her father did to her at breakfast, the same thing he did to her every time she said something that he didn’t agree with. Before she could stop herself, Lina felt sorry for James. And almost as instantaneously, she hated herself for it.
