* * *
The next few hours were a whirlwind of shopping. Anna seemed to want to compact nine missed years into a single day. First stop was a hair salon for a three-hundred-dollar haircut and their nails done. Deeming Macy’s as too common, they went on to Les Petits Chapelais, Kisan, Half Pint Citizens, and Julian & Sara. They shopped for dresses along with a sprinkling of shirts and jeans as promised, each piece of clothing over a hundred dollars. Then their shoes were deemed too worn and new ones were bought.
Louise felt like she was being flayed, everything familiar and safe being torn away. Finally, as they were “slumming” in Neiman Marcus, Louise locked herself in the celllike fitting room and called their Aunt Kitty. Jillian was serving as a distraction, doing a full-blown version of the song “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie.
Aunt Kitty answered with a frantic, “Louise! Where are you? Is Jilly with you? Are you two okay? Where are you?”
“Shopping.” Louise eyed the fitting room’s mirrors. She barely recognized herself. She hated how little and scared and fashionable she looked. She turned around to face the blank door. Four black dresses hung from a hook, waiting to be tried on, just in case Anna “deemed them stable enough to attend the funerals.” By the way she phrased it, Louise wasn’t sure Anna would actually allow them to go to the funeral home, let alone the burial. “The school called Anna Desmarais, because she’s our grandmother. She got her name on our records as emergency contact. She’s taken us clothes shopping.”
Apparently Aunt Kitty knew some of this because she didn’t ask how Anna was their grandmother. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
My mommy and daddy are dead! Louise closed her eyes tight on the tears that wanted to come. “I’m scared. I don’t like her, even if she’s our grandmother. She’s not letting us go home. She says we have to wait for someone called an executor to go through everything first.”
“I’m your parents’ executor,” Aunt Kitty said. “I’m at the house now. I’m trying—I’m trying—God, I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t believe this is happening.”
Aunt Kitty seemed close to crying.
Louise huddled in a ball in the corner of the changing room, trying to be brave. At least it wasn’t some stranger going through all her parents’ things. “Can we come live with you?”
“Oh, oh, honey bear, you’re going to have to be patient. I’m trying to get hold of my lawyer. It’s a holiday. And—and I need to set up the funerals.”
Louise whimpered. It hadn’t seemed completely real until her Aunt Kitty mentioned funerals.
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
“Can she really just keep us?”
Aunt Kitty was silent for a minute and then said reluctantly, “Lou, I know this is hard for you. I’m going to do everything I can so you two can come and live with me, but that doesn’t mean that your grandmother is a horrible person or that you shouldn’t love her. She wants you because she loves her daughter so much, and she wants to love you too.”
“You don’t think you can get custody.”
“I might not be able to.” Their mother always loved Aunt Kitty for her honesty. It wasn’t, however, what Louise needed right now. She really wished her aunt would lie to her, paint everything as something less frightening.
“After Grandma Mayer died, our parents changed their will. They made you our guardian if something happened to them. It’s in their will!”
“I know, but Anna has DNA test results proving that you’re her granddaughters. The clinic doesn’t have any paperwork showing that Esme donated her embryos. It means your father used his position to steal you and Jillian. Her lawyers can make what your parents did seem as if they had snatched babies out of the hospital.”
“It’s not the same. It was just a few little frozen cells. We would have gotten thrown away if they hadn’t used our embryos. We were leftovers that only our parents wanted.”
“I know, but it’s up to the courts to decide who you’ll live with.”
“Why do we have to live with her until they decide? Her husband is scary. We don’t like him.”
“What did he do?” Aunt Kitty growled, her voice suddenly full of fear and anger.
It would be an easy card to play to say that Edmond had somehow molested them. Aunt Kitty would come down on him like a she-bear protecting cubs. But what would he do in response? These were people that casually discussed killing people.
“He’s albino.” Louise tried to make her fear sound stupid. “He’s scary-looking. His hair is white and he’s really pale, like a vampire, and his eyes are weird.”