She nodded and gave her best attempt at a smile. At the mudroom door, she straightened his crooked tie as he finger combed his mussed hair. “Now, you are going to call Max, right?”
Margot winced a little at herself for nagging him just then.
Humiliated and off balance, Myron nodded his agreement. He hated her in that moment. His jaw tightened to keep from yelling. “I’ll do it from the car.”
Once the garage door opened and closed and his car pulled away, her tiny frame sagged against the boxes. She wept silently into her hands so Hunter wouldn’t hear. After thirty seconds, she angrily cleared her throat and lifted her chin. No.
She forced herself up and slowly walked the ground floor of the house to calm her nerves. The foyer gleamed like a jewelry box. Every brass fixture and carved wood surface had been oiled and polished to a high sheen. The leaded glass over the front door sparkled like cut diamonds in the morning sun. For a fleeting moment, she tried to convince herself it was her foyer, her house.
A white cat sat curled on the stoop just outside her front door. She crouched down next to the window and tapped the glass. “Hey, you,” she whispered, remembering its startling white coat and unnerving blue eyes from the day they’d toured the house. The cat barely glanced at her.
A strange feeling crept up Margot’s back that made her turn and look. One of the doors in the hall above her stood open just a crack. A shadow moved behind it.
“Hunter?” she called up.
There was no answer. Upstairs in his bedroom, Hunter had cranked his headphones so he wouldn’t have to listen to his parents bicker about what a social failure he’d become.
Margot’s worry lines deepened as she glanced over to the glass doors to the den. What if he was watching us the whole time?
11
“So is your mom still a hot piece of ass?” Hunter’s friend smirked from his computer screen in Boston. “I watch her yoga feed sometimes, and dayum!”
“Shut the fuck up, Caleb! Is your mom still a fat cow?”
“Dude. Totally.” Caleb laughed. “Seriously. How’s life in the CLE?”
“You know. Just slayin’ these bitches.” Hunter let out a defeated sigh. He hadn’t seen a girl his age since they’d moved in.
“What’s the school like?”
“It hasn’t started yet.” The pamphlet for Forest City Prep sat next to his bed. Hunter grabbed it and flashed the images of young men in uniforms at his web camera. “But I’m pretty sure it sucks.”
“What’d you expect? Public school? Aren’t you supposed to go to Yale and shit?”
“Fuck Yale.” Hunter sulked. Myron’s glittering Yale School of Medicine diploma hung in the den. “They didn’t even bother to ask me what I wanted. Public schools here are fine, and the people aren’t all . . . I dunno. They’re normal. They’re not all robots obsessed with getting into an Ivy League school.”
“You mean there’s chicks.” Caleb grinned.
“That’s not the only reason, but yeah.” Hunter threw the private school pamphlet into his trashcan. “Fucking sausage party, man!”
Down the hall, Margot swung the door to her freshly painted yoga studio open and flipped on the light. She scanned the polished wood floor, the mats, the large balance balls, the free weights, and the docking station for her phone, where she played her favorite music. Her eyes stopped at her image in the enormous mirror hanging between the two bare windows. She studied her face for flaws. She turned sideways and checked the line of her buttocks, still high and firm in her tight black spandex.
Not that it mattered. Her face reddened again at Myron’s flailing excuses as he zipped up his trousers. She drew in a deep breath and forced the thought from her mind. This was her space. This was her time.
She closed the door behind her and adjusted the wireless cameras—one sitting on the windowsill, one on a shelf along a sidewall. The laptop on the floor had been left open. Odd. Frowning, she crouched next to it and tapped a button on the keyboard. The screen flickered to life.
Once the ghostly glow lit her face, her brow knit itself into a deeper question. Her email account was open. A long list of emails scrolled past her eyes. “Unforgivable!” “Event Cancellation,” “You’re FIRED!” “Outpatient Follow-up.” The open message read:
Since you’ve elected to discontinue treatment, we highly recommend you seek out a therapist with experience in posttraumatic stress disorder and clinical depression. We can provide a referral . . .
Alarmed and exposed, Margot closed the browser window and checked her desktop for other open programs. She tilted the machine to see that she never removed the slip of paper taped to the underside with her login password and the new wireless internet passkey.
She crumpled the paper in her hand and pressed it to her lips. Did I just leave it open? She really didn’t think so. “Son of a bitch,” she hissed to herself and fought off another round of tears. Hunter. Gathering herself, she stood up and marched down the hall.
Knock. Knock.
“Hunter?” she called through the wood.
“I gotta go, man.” Hunter quickly clicked a button on the keyboard, and Caleb vanished from the computer screen. His video game flickered back to life. “Yeah?”
“I’m coming in,” she announced and, a second later, pushed open the door.
Hunter spun around in his office chair and pulled the headphones off his head.
“Sorry to bother you, honey. But . . .” She drew in a breath to steady herself. Maybe he didn’t read all of it. “Were you messing around on my laptop?”
“Huh?” His face was a confused scowl.
“Were you snooping around on my laptop?” Say no, say no, say no, she silently prayed in the doorway.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He truly looked like he didn’t.
Margot closed her eyes in relief, then opened them again. “Reading other people’s email is wrong. It’s a total invasion of privacy. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” He looked at her with teenage exasperation. I’m not dumb, Mom.
She tried to keep her voice steady, motherly. “Just promise me you’ll stay out of my studio. Okay? My computer and my equipment are important for my work, and if you did see any of my emails, I need you to tell me right now.”
“I swear I didn’t.” Hunter looked down at his hands to keep from rolling his eyes. Margot didn’t really work. She taught three yoga classes a day using her laptop and wireless cameras to broadcast to users around the world.
She only has like ten followers. It’s not even like they pay. His online friend had laughed at this. Probably just perverts that want to see her bend over. Hunter hadn’t laughed back. Dude. Shut up.
Margot paused before closing the door. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
Am I not okay enough for you? Am I ever okay enough? he fumed to himself, but what he said was, “I guess.”
“I know this move has been hard on you. It’s been hard on all of us.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t say more, but his sullen expression spoke volumes.
She wanted desperately to pull him onto her lap like she’d done when he was younger, but she knew he’d hate that. “Once school starts, it’s going to be great. You’ll see.”