No, it’s too fresh. I can’t stand thinking about the feel of him all over me.  I can’t even bear to examine what led me to stubbornly climb into his truck as soon as I heard he would be leaving.

Sooner or later I’ll have to come to terms with how Oscar and I crashed together, fucked like enemies and ultimately resolved nothing.  We just used each other as a way to forever kill what we once had.

Yet whoever Oscar’s become, there was once a sense of honor in him.  I won’t let myself believe that’s a quality that just disappears completely.  He was right.  I don’t despise him at all.  I don’t even know why I said otherwise.

“No,” I finally say.  “If he was out to humiliate me and make a few dollars in the process, he had his chance and he threw it away.”

“So Monty wasn’t just talking out of his ass?  Oscar really left?”

“He did.”

“Oh,” Bree frowns.  “Better that way I guess, although I’m going to predict Gary and company will be shitting bricks tomorrow.”

“Gary can suck it.”

Brigitte smiles.  “He doesn’t have to.  I hear Cate Camp does it for him.”  She raises her voice, yelling at the air.  “Did you catch that?  Did you?”  She winks at me.  “Not wearing my mic.”

I look at my sister.  She isn’t perfect.  But I love her and she loves me.  We both need as much of that in our lives right now as we can get.  “I shouldn’t have lashed out at you.  I’m sorry.”

She gives me a faint smile.  “I suppose I’ve done a few things to deserve it.”  She loses her smile.  “Look, I know all of this isn’t your idea of success.  I know you’re here because we asked you to be.  And I’m not sure I ever thanked you for that.  Or for the fact that you’ve always been more of a mother to all of us than Lita ever was.”

I swallow.  There’s a bitter taste in the back of my throat that won’t disappear.  “I’m not going to pretend like anyone’s twisting my arm.  It’s my choice to be here, Bree.”

“Fair enough.  But I’ll only forgive your worst assumptions about me if you quit using that wretched nickname.  It reminds me of childhood.”

A small, rueful grin creeps across my face.  “Not a chance.  Habits die hard, or in my case, never.  It’s my chief flaw.”

“Oh, Ren.  We’re all flawed.”  Brigitte rises from the table, heads toward the door and then spins suddenly, dropping a graceful curtsy. “Terribly, savagely flawed.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Five Years Ago: The End

 

Mina Savage is dead.

A week ago Ren stood right beside Oscar as they learned the news together.  Her father was the one to say the words. August had summoned her to the house along with Oscar and for a defiant moment Ren was sure it was because August planned on confronting them about being together.

She was ready.

With Oscar next to her she could be brave enough to face the censure of her parents, even if it meant she lost them.  She didn’t care a bit how it would look to the world, or that they were only seventeen or that her family would have hysterics.  No one would take Oscar away from her.

But when they reached the paneled study where her father spent most of his days he sat there alone, looking far older than he had just that morning when she’d caught a fleeting glimpse of him.   Then, in a halting, sorrowful voice he told them what he’d learned an hour earlier over the phone.

“Her heart was weak.  So many years¸ so many pills.  I don’t have the whole story but she’d apparently been stealing another patient’s meds and she took them all at once.  It was a full cardiac arrest.  Very quick.  There will be no funeral.  She’d arranged to be cremated immediately upon death. Oscar, you hear what I’m telling you?  Do you hear me?”

“Yes. I hear you, sir.”

Oscar hadn’t cried at all until much later.  And then he cried only to her.

Life stayed quiet for a few days.  The girls were unusually somber, Spencer kept on being Spencer, August closed himself in his study and even Monty stopped hassling Oscar, giving him space to mourn.

Ren spent every moment with Oscar, even climbing through his window to lie in his arms for a few hours while the rest of Atlantis slept.   She worried about the watchful glare of her mother.  Sometimes it seemed Lita was everywhere – haunting the front porch of the big house, lingering by the staircase of the brothel.  Always with the same impassive mask and never saying a word.  The fact that her mother had stopped speaking to her was no great loss to Ren, but she’d spent seventeen years learning to mistrust the woman.  The flat, dead-eyed look in her mother’s eyes chilled her more than she could admit.

Now, every day she wakes up to a growing fear of a threat she can’t name but is sure draws closer to her with each stolen moment.

Oscar just kisses her worries away and promises that soon they will leave Atlantis behind. He pointedly ignores the ominous Lita menace.  Whenever and wherever she appears, he just stares right through her.

This morning a sleek BMW coasted through the rusty gates of Atlantis and parked in front of the big house.  The grey-suited man who exited the vehicle was expected by her father.  August shook the man’s hand and led him into the house while Lita trailed after them.  Ren had watched it all from the shadows of the brothel where she was sprawled with Oscar, smoking some of Monty’s cigarettes.

“He’s a lawyer,” Brigitte is now saying with snotty authority when Ren enters the bedroom where her sisters are trying on clothes and admiring their bodies in the closet mirror.   Bree smiles at her reflection and twists sideways.  “He’s here because Mina made such a shit show out of her life and now there’s some housekeeping to be done.”

Of course a man like that would have to be a lawyer but it annoys Ren that Brigitte seems to have all the information already.

“How would you know?” Ren grumbles, flopping on her own unmade bed.

“If you climb over all the antique crap in the den and stand underneath the air vent you can hear every word that’s said in Daddy’s study.”

“And I suppose that’s what you did.”  Ren rolls over on her stomach and despite herself, hopes Bree will share whatever else she learned, especially if it involves Oscar’s mother.

“Naturally.   It’s not like August and Lita ever tell us anything.”

Ren sits up.  “So?”

“So what?”

“So what’s this garbage about Aunt Mina?”

Brigitte preens and rolls the side of her shirt down, exposing a shoulder.  She sucks her cheeks in and offers the mirror her most provocative pose.  “You’re always yelling at me for gossiping, Loren.  I should probably try to turn over a new leaf for your sake.  Starting now.  So I don’t think I should say a word about Aunt Mina and the disaster she made.”

Ren jumps to her feet and gets between her sister and the mirror.  “Bree!  You better tell me whatever you know right now.”

“You shouldn’t threaten people, Ren.  You sound preposterous.”

“What threat?  That was a threat?”

Brigitte pouts.  “Your tone was negative.  It startled me.”

Ava finishes smearing a thick layer of lipstick on herself and joins the conversation.  “Come on, spill it.  I want to know too.  Do we have another hot blooded cousin stashed somewhere?”

“Nope,” Bree smiles. “In fact we don’t even really have one.”

Ren shakes her head.  “Quit speaking in riddles.”

“I’m not.  Mina never went through with Oscar’s adoption.  She paid off a stack of important people for that kid and then didn’t even bother to finish the basic paperwork.  So Oscar Anonymous is no Savage.”

Ren mulls this over.  It sounds just like everything she’s ever heard about the chronically irresponsible Mina.  It might be a pain in the ass for Oscar, but not the end of the world.  “Is that all?”

“Hmmm,” Bree taps a fuchsia fingernail against her teeth.  “Almost.  Apparently the great globetrotting basket case didn’t leave a will either so Oscar doesn’t get anything, which actually doesn’t matter since she didn’t own shit except a pile of debt and eight trunks full of the tackiest designer labels her bad credit would buy her.”