My phone vibrates with a call.
A quick glance tells me it’s that social worker from last night.
“I wanted to discuss this ongoing little tiff with your brother.” She places her clutch on the counter before stripping out of her jacket and hanging it on the back of a chair.
“Please, Mother. Don’t trouble yourself.”
She lifts a pencil thin brow. “Trouble myself? Darling, the two of you are my world. It pains me to see how much your father’s death has destroyed your relationship. You were so close before.”
I bite my tongue. My mother was rarely around, rarely involved more than she had to be when we were growing up and this does nothing but solidify that. I’m sure in that delusional, dollar-bill-filled head of hers, we were the best of friends.
Never have been.
Never will be.
Not in this lifetime.
“Don’t you think the silent treatment has gone on long enough?” She spins to face me, eyes as wild as the exotic feathers lining the hood of her jacket. “Five years, Bennett. Five years. All he wants is to be in your life again. And a position at the company.”
I choke on my laughter before capping the vodka on the mini bar.
I’m cutting her off at one drink because she isn’t welcome to stay long enough for two.
“You expect my brother, who can barely keep his art gallery afloat and is now delving into the world of self-help books despite the fact that he’s never taken a psychology class in his life … to help run the corp?”
My mother blinks, expression unreadable.
“You and I both know any salary I’d give him would be spent before the first deposit hits his bank account,” I add. “Not only that, but my receptionist is more qualified for a seat in the boardroom than he is.”
“I think this would be a great learning opportunity for him.” She takes a sip before squaring her shoulders with mine, a hint that she has no intentions of backing down. “You’ve done tremendous things with the company since you joined. You’d be a great inspiration for him.”
“Right. Errol aspires to be just like his little brother someday.”
“I know the two of you can be competitive sometimes …”
“Sometimes.”
“But with the loss of Larissa—” She blinks away false tears.
“—please, Mother. Enough with the act. It’s insulting. I’m well-aware of how you really felt about her.”
Her left hand lifts to her narrow hip and her brows transect. “You only know what you think you know.”
“I know enough.”
She rolls her eyes. “She wasn’t as perfect as you thought she was.”
“I never once implied that she was perfect.”
“Obviously you thought the world of her. You were always rescuing her, helping her.”
My jaw tenses. “Someone had to.”
“Well, I’m just saying … you cared an awful lot about her.”
I don’t correct her.
I didn’t care about her—I pitied her.
Big difference.
“Anyway,” she continues, “I helped her in my own ways over the years. I’ve cleaned up plenty of her messes. I just never felt the need to broadcast them to you to make you feel guilty.”
I squint. “What are you talking about? You aren’t making any sense.”
She sips her cocktail, which is now mostly finished. “I don’t feel the need to get into specifics with you.”
“You can’t say something like that and expect me to let it go.”
“Of course I can, darling.” She sniffs. “Anyway, I just came by to tell you Errol was extremely hurt at the way you shunned him at Larissa’s memorial today. He had every intention of making amends and then you just … brushed him off in front of all those people. Hurtful and humiliating. And on such a painful day.”
I smirk, replaying that scene from the memorial in my mind’s eye: walking up to offer my mother a show of support, pretending I hadn’t noticed Errol standing there, hands in the pockets of his skinny suit pants as he rocked back and forth on the heels of his freshly-shined Ferragamo Oxfords.
This isn’t about Errol or the rift. This boils down to the fact that a few of her high society friends noticed the real-time cold war between the Schoenbach brothers, and she’s worried people are going to talk.
My mother toys with the oversized buttons on her wool jacket before tucking her satin clutch beneath her arm and eyeing the door.
My phone buzzes again, this time with a text from a friend waiting to meet me for drinks.
“Wait,” I say, thinking back to the bizarre call from the social worker. “Did Larissa have a daughter?”
Mother comes to a hard stop, hand clasping at her chest, though she keeps her back to me—a peculiar reaction for a woman who’s always been unflinching to the core.
“Answer the question.” I pace toward her, positioning myself in front of the door so she’s forced to look me in the eye.
She glances at the marble foyer floor, mouth tittering.
“Mother.” My voice is stern. I can be just as unrelenting as her, if not more so.
Her petite shoulders lift and fall as she flattens her scarlet lips. “I told you, Bennett. I’ve cleaned up a few of her messes over the years, and not once did I breathe a word of them to any of you. What’s the point of dredging any of it up now?”
“So it’s true.” I straighten my spine. “She has a kid.”
My mother rolls her eyes, sips the last of her vodka cranberry, and places the empty glass on a crystal coaster near the bar. She knows I’m not going to let this go.
“I had everything arranged.” Her tongue clucks as if she’s annoyed all over again. “I’d arranged for her to live in a nice condo in Minneapolis for the remainder of the pregnancy, and I’d found a lovely family who were going to adopt the baby—a Stanford-educated surgeon and his beautiful wife. Larissa was to have the baby, sign it over, and return to Chicago to finish her degree and it’d be like nothing had happened …” She swallows. “But then she changed her mind. She wanted to keep the baby. Said she couldn’t go through with it. Something about knowing how it felt to be discarded or some nonsense like that. Anyway, she came back to Chicago and she had that baby with her, and I did what I had to do.”
“What did you do, Mother?”
Her gray eyes flick on to mine. “I disowned her. Cut her off. Told her I was done helping her in every sense of the word. That it was time she learned to stand on her own feet. Next thing I know, she’s getting mixed up with the wrong crowd all over again, and well, you know what came of all of that.”
“That’s cold.” And I say that as one of the coldest bastards ever to breathe this Windy City air.
“Don’t judge me,” she spits, face scrunched. “I did what I had to do to protect this family. To protect the Schoenbach name. To keep our bloodline synonymous with quality and exclusivity.”
“We’re not a goddamned brand, Mother. We’re human fucking beings.”
The sting of her slap warms my left cheek, but I resist the urge to soothe the pain with my palm. It’ll pass.
“Watch your tone with me, Bennett.” She retracts her hand, nursing it against her heaving chest. I imagine the slap hurt her more than it hurt me. “And don’t you dare make me the villain in this.”