“Does she get thirty percent of Elliot’s estate as well?” Oh my God, Claire. Rude much? I put my hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry, that was tacky of me.”
But Ana laughs. “Hardly. She’ll receive a nice payoff, and will live comfortably. But she and Elliot don’t have what you and Jack do, so we didn’t take the same...precautions. It’s a shame. I think Elliot truly thought he loved her, but it wasn’t born of any sort of passion, only lust. A mother can sense these things. I never expected Amelia to be a long-term part of the family. Not like you.”
She looks over at me, assessing. I am struck again by how silly I must look to her, my ripped jeans and wild hair. Thank God she’d never seen the art that covered my body. I can’t imagine she would have appreciated my choice of canvas.
“My son loves you very much.”
“I love him, too.”
“I know you do. That’s why we agreed to the terms of the prenup when Jackson approached us. That, and...you know he was married before. It didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped, but that marriage, too, was doomed. Morgan wasn’t right for Jackson. I worried from the moment he brought her home, hoped it wouldn’t get serious.”
“I don’t know much about her.”
Lies. Such dark little lies.
“Romulus doesn’t like many people. He despised Morgan. When Jack brought her home, the dogs made such a fuss, growling and circling her. She was scared of them. They were young then, just pups, not fully trained, but in my experience, animals are good judges of character.”
I go very still, enough that Romulus looks up at me with a tiny whine of concern. I’m now on full alert, because this is the most I’ve heard about Morgan from a Compton.
“She was such a beauty. She had that energy around her that many overtly sexual women have. She was bright, too, almost too bright for her own good. You know we invested in her company, don’t you? Her talent was clear from the beginning. Brice and I immediately knew the value of her work. Scientific innovation is commonplace now, with so many people looking for new, better ways to communicate, but most of the young thinkers we came across, though brilliant, were only looking for ways to cash out. They didn’t want to build a long-standing business. They wanted the quick and easy path, develop an app or idea good enough to be bought out by a bigger company, so they could move on to their next moment of genius.
“Morgan wasn’t different. She created something useful, something she could grow, and she knew her work’s value. We did as well. We took full advantage. Maybe she didn’t like that. We gave her more than market value for her company, did everything we could to make sure she was given credit, too. Instead of being grateful and excited, she resented us. She tried to pull Jackson away from us. Even before the wedding, she was very busy driving a wedge into our family. She wanted him all for herself, didn’t want to share him with us, with the world. She was obsessive, controlling, destructive. Jackson was so unhappy. I’ve never seen him like that before. Cowed. Beaten. He knew he’d made a mistake from the beginning. No, their marriage was never going to have a happy ending.”
She pushes a few stray strands of hair that are caught in the wind off her face, then bestows a small smile upon me.
“You’re different. You’re an artist. You’re making something that can nourish the soul. Your talent isn’t ephemeral. Computers are obsolete almost the moment they come out of the box. Phones, tablets, cameras, software. The science changes as quickly and often as the weather. Art is enduring. You aren’t taking from him, you’re adding. He appreciates that. As do his father and I.”
The compliment is a kind one, but it strikes me—Katie was right. They invested in Morgan like they invested in me. Ana saw talent, and wanted to nurture it, in both of us.
Her voice is soft. “Jackson told me what happened on Monday. I know everything. I need to ask. Did you shoot the intruder in Nashville, Claire?”
I don’t hesitate. “Malcolm shot the intruder.”
I feel her relax.
“Such a terrible thing to have happen on your wedding weekend. I admire your strength, Claire. You are a true match for my son. And for this family. One day, this will all be yours. Yours and Jackson’s. It will be your responsibility to protect this family, protect our legacy, just as it is mine, now. You must be willing to do whatever it takes. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Good. I hope you know you can have anything you want from this world now that you’re a Compton. Anything. Let’s get back to the house. I’m sure Jackson is missing you, and I want to talk to Henna. We’ll see what we can do to find you a dress that isn’t ruined.”
She whistles, and the dogs disappear.
And with that, our audience is over.
19
Wee Obsessions
It’s embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t start looking into Morgan’s death until after my blowup with Katie. I’d made such a big deal out of not caring that I felt like a hypocrite. And I know myself. Once I latch on to something, it’s hard to let go. “Like a dog with a bone,” my dad used to say, but he meant it kindly. My obsessions were amusing to him. A way for me to get smart. It meant late nights with a book in my lap, and then a computer, looking things up. It’s why my reports for school came back with extra points for my exhaustive research. When I found painting, realized I was attracted to the modernists, I became a walking encyclopedia on the movement. I was eight.
I think it’s why I’m a decent painter. For me, painting is simply storytelling. Throwing a mental obsession onto a canvas. To have an idea in your head, a vision, to layer it day after day after day until it becomes a visual narrative, something a stranger can look at and comprehend, that’s the key to a successful project. Though interpretations vary. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t that right?
My obsession problem is also how I ended up getting so many tattoos during my teen years.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Harper would ask, tongue stiff through her freshly tightened braces, and I’d nod and try to explain that it’s the kind of pain that feels good. It gives a serotonin rush, and you seek it out again and again. Some people become addicts, some use their bodies as canvases or pin cushions. Some bite their nails. Some starve themselves. Some cut. Some overeat. Some find succor in hours of exercise. Some gamble. Some drink. Some fuck. It’s a thing. Everyone has their thing, right?
Katie knew I’d fall down the rabbit hole if she gave me the right push. She left a window open on my computer with a beguiling shot of Morgan in profile at a cocktail party. Within days, searching the internet for pictures of Morgan became a thing for me. Even as I erased the mistakes of my youth, becoming the woman I thought Jackson wanted, which became its own torturous pleasure—trust me, it hurts a hell of a lot more to remove a tattoo than to get one in the first place—Morgan became my idée fixe. She was heroin, and the internet my favorite pusher.