“I’m fine.”
“I hear you’re going to Hungary. Your grandmother told me.”
“Yeah.” I tried to sound happy, I really did. It was just so hard to put on the same show that had been going on for the past thirteen years between us. Sometimes I just wanted to scream at him. You abandoned me, I’d say. Why are you still pretending like you care? I did want to tell him, tell anyone about the awesome prize I had won. But he didn’t care, not really, and he wouldn’t understand how important it was for me to go there. To see where she was buried. You never went, I felt like saying. He had no excuses, either. A famous, globetrotting wife and all the money in the world to spend, but he had never been to Hungary to see her grave.
“That’s great! Liza is going to Italy this spring for a modeling show.”
My eyebrows knitted across my forehead. Always about them. Liza and Susie, each more perfect than the other. Both modeled: one swimsuit, one catwalk. Both inherited their mother’s high cheekbones and delicate facial structure. In contrast, I looked dumpy and squat—anyone would, I guess. But of course, that wasn’t the worst of it.
“Oh yeah?”
“That’s not far. Maybe you two could meet and catch up.”
Catch up? The thought of seeing Liza again curdled my stomach. The brief time spent living with that family had torn me apart inside, and I never, ever wanted a reminder of it.
“Yeah. Maybe.” I tried to keep the venom out of my voice.
“How is your grandmother?”
“She’s fine.”
“Good… good. Well, I just wanted to wish you good luck. What are you doing in Hungary, anyway?”
“It’s a math internship.” For one second, I hoped that my dad would actually care about something I did. The prize I had worked so hard for.
“Ha, you and math! You know me, I never could understand numbers.”
“Yeah.” You couldn’t understand me either. You never tried.
“Well, be careful,” he said. “What happened with your mother—”
“Dad—”
“I told her not to go—”
“Dad!” My heart pounded in my chest and my fingers curled tightly around the phone. He always got under my skin with his words, but this was too much.
“Brynn,” my dad said. “You know what happened—”
“I don’t know!” My eyes burned hot with the threat of tears. “I don’t know what happened! Nobody does!”
“Brynn, I’m sorry,” he said. His voice seemed to back down. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
I couldn’t speak, my throat was so tight with anger. An image of my mom flashed through my mind—a silent, black monster tearing her to pieces from the shadows. The silence in the phone held for so long that I thought the call had dropped.
“Okay, well, love you, Brynn.” He waited for my response, but I wasn’t going to give him one.
“I’ll call you again soon,” he said.
“Sure.”
The phone screen went blank, and I realized that my hand was shaking as I set the phone down. I didn’t know how he could pretend that everything was normal between us. He had tortured me with his words, and never apologized, never, not once—
I pushed the back door open and walked outside. The evening air chilled my skin, but I didn’t even notice in my heated anger. The cypress tree in the back of the yard had grown some more since I went away to college. My grandmother and I had planted it right after my mother died—to remind us of her always, Nagy said—and although it had started out the same height as eight-year-old me, now its sweet-smelling branches towered over my head. I reached out to touch the bark, my fingers still trembling. My stomach turned at the thought of leaving California, of leaving my Nagy behind and with her everything I knew and loved. But then I thought of what—and who—would be waiting for me in Hungary. Just seeing Eliot’s face in my mind calmed me down after the horrible conversation with my dad. I breathed more easily as I touched my hand to the heart of the tree.
“Hi mom,” I said. I let myself sink down to the patch of grass next to the cypress. A ladybug crawled over a thin blade of grass, and I lay my finger down in front of it, letting the small beetle-backed creature traipse over my skin before it uncurled its wings and hovered gently away. It always made me feel strange to begin talking to my mom, but once I started it was always okay. Like she could hear me.
“I’m really nervous about this trip, mom. I know I should just be proud of myself for winning the prize, but I’m scared too. And there’s this guy…”#p#分页标题#e#