by Amy Faye
“That’s understandable.”
“I didn’t even think.”
“I suppose you didn’t.”
The anger in Rose’s gut cooled. It didn’t go away, but she was feeling almost downright sympathetic, when she was being honest with herself. If he claimed that he didn’t know who she was, then she believed him. Hell, she’d been pretty sure that was the case. Somehow, it didn’t actually make her feel any better.
“You’re serious, then. They’re my girls?”
“I always thought they had your eyes.”
He scoffed on the other end of the line. “You did fine, other than that.”
“What, you think I should have lied?”
He let out a long, low breath, audible through the phone. “No, I don’t think you should have lied.”
“Then what should I have done?”
The long pause told Rose that he didn’t have a real answer for her. “I don’t know. Shifted the conversation somewhere else.”
“I tried.”
“I know you tried. But you should have succeeded.”
“You’re right. I should have tried succeeding.”
“I know. Not helpful.”
“Not the least bit helpful, no.”
“So I don’t have an answer for you. I just know that the distraction hurt your message.”
“Well, I’ll keep that in mind next time, then.”
“You do that.”
“What now?”
Violet fussed in her crib. Rose reached down and shifted the baby onto her hip before picking the phone back up.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do we do next? Maybe I’m crazy but I didn’t assume that we would be done as soon as we get off the phone.”
“You didn’t assume correctly. You’re not done.”
“What now?”
He let out a breath. “We’re going to have to put together something to try to build the company back up. Maybe make you some money in the process.”
“How are we going to do that?”
Bryce thought about it for a moment. Only a moment.
“We’re not going to do anything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? We just hope the problem goes away?”
“Hardly. It’s not going to go away.”
“Then what?”
“I’m going to go hire someone for you. They’ll get in touch with you, when the time comes.”
“So?”
“So you’re just going to have to trust me for now. It’ll be taken care of. Until then just relax, okay? Take the day. I’ll come home and talk to you about plans when the time comes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m not a good teacher, Rose. It’s not something I ever wanted to be. I’m just a businessman.”
“I never asked—”
“So I’m going to do what I can to help you, and I’m sorry that it’s going to mean doing some of it for you. I know you’re going to do just fine, okay?”
She didn’t believe him. But there wasn’t much choice. And she had to get off the phone anyways, because Violet was stinky and starting to get very insistent that someone investigate the source of her stink. Rose wasn’t dumb enough to ignore it long.
Seventeen
There was work to be done. Work that Rose Kilpatrick needed to be doing. And she knew it, which was the worst part. If she knew that she needed to work, she had to actually do it. She needed to sleep. Needed to eat. Needed a thousand things and none of them seemed like they were going to happen any time soon. She let out a long, low breath.
She needed to coordinate talks. She needed to get press time. She needed to show her face and talk about her family and her new place in the world. She needed to make herself available to the press and to the people at home.
When she was doing that, she could just drop in a few little pieces of information about how fake the leaks were. It was a careful piece of psychological warfare. As long as she could get in front of their faces, she could make it work. Temporarily, at least. And “temporarily” was all she needed.
You drop little things in the midst of a message that everyone’s paying attention to, and come off as genuine when you do it. Like mind control. That was how the CIA did it. How the media did it. She was just using their tools, too. No reason to fight with your hands tied behind your back. It made sense, and Rose wasn’t in any position to argue.
Violet started crying somewhere in the darkness outside of her eyelids. It sent her pulse racing within the space of a single heartbeat. Her eyes snapped open. She needed to rest. Part of her wished that she could tell the baby girl to just wait a little while longer before she needed attention, just this once.
Then she forced herself to stand up, and started moving as fast as she could compel her legs to move, towards the cribs.
Sometimes, it was a mystery what the girls wanted, when they went into a panic. Sometimes they just wanted attention, and the minute that Rose gave it to them, they’d quiet down.
This time wasn’t one of the mystery times. The smell was obvious immediately.
“You’re a stinky baby,” she cooed. Violet’s apparent opinion, which was that the whole house needed to know of her discomfort, didn’t change.
Rose laid her down and started to go through the motions of changing. It seemed like there were baby wipes hidden all over the house. But right by the crib, they were piled high. She could have built a small fortress out of them. Anyone in the world would have been able to knock the walls down, but they would have to know there was someone inside first.
The whole thing was going to have to work. And it meant that she was going to have to step outside of all the defenses that she’d built for herself over the years. To say it was “scary” was the understatement of the century.
Sarah started to fuss in her crib as Rose finished up transferring the dirty diaper into the diaper bin. Violet was trying to roll herself onto her belly, and if Rose left her to it, she was going to manage it sooner rather than later.
So she scooped up Violet, and scooped up Rose, and sucked in a deep breath. They were going to drive her absolutely nuts if she wasn’t careful. And for better or worse, Rose could care less. They were hers, and she was going to do whatever it took to protect them.
She set them both on the floor, where they proceeded to start crawling towards each other to commune in their baby-language, about whatever babies talked about. As Sarah shifted to sitting on her butt, Rose reached into her pocket and checked her phone.
The babysitter was supposed to be here any minute, and then she had to make it to a taping downtown. She’d at least given herself an extra hour to navigate the parking nightmare that the city posed.
The doorbell rang. Rose sucked in a breath, picked up the girls, and walked down the stairs. How, precisely, she was supposed to be doing this was a mystery. Two hands, plus one to open the door, plus one to shake hands, plus she had to keep her eyes up and smile.
Life would be easier if she were an octopus. But she wasn’t one. She wasn’t going to be one for a long time. Probably forever.
So she reached as best she could, twisted her hips to keep her body under the baby’s butt, and opened the door. A nineteen-year-old girl smiled back at her, and Rose fought to open the door for her a little more.
She needed to be gone five minutes ago, and she needed to make sure that this girl was going to work out before she left. It was a long day, in a long string of long days that made up a long week, in the middle of a long month, at the beginning of what was going to be a long year.
But Rose Kilpatrick didn’t have much else choice but to keep doing her best. So she did.
Eighteen
There was a feeling in her gut that something was off. Everyone was too happy to see her. There was always curiosity. Always questions. People excited to be getting an interview that was almost certainly going to help their ratings stay astronomically high.
The whole
field of media, Rose was learning, was like trying to juggle an armload of chainsaws. You tried to keep them all as high in the air as possible, because having more than one in your hands at a time was impossible.
They kept their ratings higher than they could ever sustain on normal material. If they let their ratings flag, even for a second, if they didn’t have some kind of “edge” then they went out of business. Eventually, the ones that ran themselves so ragged that there seemed to be nothing left would be the only company that was left standing.
Then they could back off again, and it wouldn’t matter. Where else would someone get their entertainment?
As a result, they all ran themselves ragged. The woman in front of her, Rose knew, had been up at four in the morning, and was smiling because it was a skill. Not because it was something that she was doing naturally.
But everyone’s energy was high. Too high. Certainly too high for a crew of people who had been on set for almost six hours and kept themselves moving with coffee, and very likely amphetamines. Maybe these were the hungry newcomers. Maybe.
But the hungry newcomers never have just enthusiasm. They’ve got something else. And oldies, the people who stuck around, they’re more dangerous still. They’re rarely the old lion dying slow. They’re at the top for a reason. Because everyone needs to have an edge.
And it looks to Rose like they’ve got one, and it’s pointing right at her.
She swallowed hard. “So what? Sit here?”
“That’s fine,” the woman says. The smile on her face is starting to get eerie. It never falters, except for a moment when she purses them together to make sure that the lipstick is evenly applied. Like a robot or something.
The closest thing to an unkempt person on the set is the intern running around coordinating everything; he walks up seeming to look simultaneously at the two of them and his clipboard, and he seems like he’s already turned around by the time that he finishes saying “one minute.”
The woman across from Rose nods her head absently to the intern; he can’t have seen it. He wasn’t around long enough to see. But the message is clearly sent and received.
Sixty seconds pass slow. Each second is just another chance for Rose to think hard about what’s going to be coming at her. What are they going to think? What are they going to try to pin on her? She lets out a breath.
Another man walks up. The hair on his head seems to have moved down to his arms, leaving a shining cue-ball head and arms like a long-sleeved shirt.
He holds up five fingers. Down to four. Three. Two. A light flicks on that says they’re filming. Rose adjusts herself in her seat as the woman across from her starts up.
“We’re here with Michigan businesswoman Rose Kilpatrick. So you’ve been getting a lot of attention, Rose, wouldn’t you say?”
“More than I deserve, Megan,” she answers. It’s hard to know whether or not that’s a good response; the woman’s smile widens for an instant, but Rose suspects that she’d do it if Rose had insisted that it was all due to a complex series of spells she cast on herself in the basement using her own blood.
“So I guess, let’s start with your husband. You met a year ago? And you… you know. Two children!”
“Nothing about my girls was an accident, per se. I hate that word. But… they were an unexpected miracle. Let’s say that. And yeah, it was a surprise to everyone involved, trust me!”
“So you got in touch with him after that, and organized a wedding? Is that…?”
“That’s about the long and short of it. We spent a lot of time talking about how we were going to make the transition, particularly since he was, at the time, eyeing a purchase of our little business.”
“Michigan Chemical, you mean? What about those rumors? Any basis?”
“I’d hardly call them rumors, Megan. Someone went through the trouble to create falsified documents with a Michigan Chemical letterhead, and then sent it to a dozen different news outlets until someone took the bait.”
“That must have been very upsetting.”
“Our legal team is looking into options as we speak.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“It’s only right,” Rose said.
“Too true,” Megan said. She paused for a beat. “Now, we’ve got something else we wanted to ask you about.”
“What’s that?”
“Your husband again. I know, you must be getting tired of these questions. We’ll try to keep it short.”
“It’s no problem at all,” Rose said. She’d answered a thousand questions about Bryce. Maybe they weren’t all true. But she answered as best she could, based on what he told her. Rose chose to believe him. What was the alternative?
“What would you say if I told you that you and your husband weren’t married?”
Rose laughed. “I’d say that is absurd.”
“If you were married before…”
“I hope I’d know about that, Megan,” she said. Rose’s teeth grit together. She could see the pieces falling into place.
“And what about your husband?”
“Is that what you’re suggesting? That my husband is already married?”
Megan’s smile widened. She looked like a snarling wolf. And then the wolf attacked, and there was nothing Rose could do but watch it happen.
Nineteen
Rose did her best to keep her mood up. She wasn’t exactly in a position where she could afford to lose it, after all. She had to keep herself under control, and if she had learned two things, the first was that control was essential. The other was not to believe everything you heard on television.
None of that meant that she was just going to ignore the suggestion, or the humiliation of being asked in a televised interview.
Bryce’s car pulled into the garage. The door closed behind it. Rose bounced Violet on her knee, and the baby cooed happily. On the floor, Sarah was clutching at her foot in her sleep. For an instant, there was a feeling of stillness. It was about to be broken up, and she wasn’t sure that she felt particularly bad about it.
He came through the door.
“I’m home,” he called. She could hear him slipping his shoes off. The leather soles clattered on the hardwood floor as they dropped. Rose squished Violet. The girl made a pleased gurgling noise.
“Welcome home,” Rose called out.
There must have been some hint in her voice of what was going to come, because he didn’t respond until he stepped into the room, and then he leaned against the door-frame with a tired expression.
“Something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Rose said. It was a lie. She knew what was wrong. She wasn’t sure whether or not there was something incorrect.
“You look upset.”
“I’m not upset,” Rose answered. It was a lie, of course. She wasn’t particularly certain if she had any right to be upset. But she was upset, that much she knew for certain.
“Okay, then. What’s the problem?”
“No problem.”
Bryce was tall; when he reached down and wrapped one of his big hands around Sarah’s midsection and picked her up easily, it was almost awkward-looking. The girl squirmed in his arms as she woke up. Sarah was a sweetheart, though, and she kept her fussing to a minimum when she woke.
“You’re going to have to tell me at some point.”
He was right, of course. Rose knew that much.
“I just heard something.”
“Heard what?”
“At the interview taping.”
“You had one today?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“And what did they say?” He didn’t sound like he was worried about it. He sounded like someone getting ready to engage in some hard-core gossip. And for all the trouble it was going to cause, he probably was getting ready for exactly that.
“It was about you.”
The look on his face reminded her why she was drawing this out the way that she was. He raised an eyebrow. It was
almost amused.
“Oh? That’s new. Anything interesting?”
“Very interesting,” Rose said. She turned Violet around and wrapped the girl up in her arms, looking down at her as she dropped the bomb. It felt as if it would help to soften the blow somehow. “They seemed to think that you were already married when we had the wedding, and that it’s null and void.”
Bryce let out a long, low breath. One that didn’t sound like a denial in spite of everything. It set her off.
“So it’s true then?”
“No, it’s not true,” he said. She thought for a moment that she detected a but there. It didn’t come.
“So what’s the claim, then?”
“It’s a lie. Simple as that.”
“They had paperwork, Bryce. Notarized and everything. Are you telling me that someone faked all that?”
“I’m not telling you that at all.”
“What, then?”
“There was a woman before you. There always is, I guess.”
“And?”
“And it wasn’t a good fit.”
“So, what? You just moved on to the next marriage?”
“I never married her.”
“Bullshit.”
He let out a sigh. “Look, you don’t want to believe me, then don’t. But I’m telling you the truth.”
“And let’s say I chose to believe you.”
“I never lied about what this was, Rose. You knew the score.”
“I thought things had changed.”
“I like you, Rose. I’d even say I love you. You’re useful, you’re attractive, you’re smart. I like the girls. I like having the three of you around.”
“But what?”
“But that’s different than when we met. You knew the score.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
He let out a long breath. “I’m tired of fighting about this. I’m tired.”
Rose let her head drop. She leaned over.
“Bryce?”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. It felt good.
“What?”
“I don’t want to do this any more.”
“The marriage?”
“The business.” She pressed her head into his shoulder. “The marriage, I’ll keep.”
