The Beautiful Daughters

by Nicole Baart

  “Everyone will want to peek around anyway.” Sam rubbed his jaw as if the thought bothered him. “Should we cordon off the stairs?”

  Adri shrugged. “I already locked Victoria’s bedroom. There’s really not much else for anyone to get into. The guest bedrooms are exactly that: neutral, kind of boring. They don’t contain anything of value.”

  “What about David’s room?”

  Adri hadn’t spent much time in the rooms that made up David’s bachelor apartment in the garden-level basement, but she had been there. She had forced herself to go, even though it took her days to work up the courage.

  At first blush, it wasn’t as devastating as Adri expected it to be. The bedroom was exactly how she remembered it. Spare and masculine with expensive paintings on the walls that Liam had picked out long before David was old enough to make those sorts of decisions on his own. It was the gentleman’s version of a man cave, and it lacked both personality and a sense of David himself. The taps in the billiards room were long dry, and a quick peek in the bureau drawers of David’s bedroom assured Adri that Victoria had gotten rid of his clothes before she died.

  It was a courtesy that Adri hadn’t even realized she’d hoped for. What would it have felt like to hold the shirts of the man she should have married? Would she have pressed her face to the fabric, strained for the faintest scent of the man she had once loved? There were thick layers of emotions beneath the thought, and Adri didn’t have the heart to mine them. She silently thanked Victoria for doing the job for her, and tried to leave it at that.

  But before she could shut the door on the rooms her fiancé had once called his own, Adri found herself tilting. The world was off-axis, and though she had felt okay only seconds before, everything was suddenly very, very far from fine.

  Adri was on her knees before she knew what was happening, fingers in the carpet as if she needed something to hold on to. Something to keep her anchored.

  Here, she thought. And she could feel the carpet against her naked back, the blunt pain of David’s knee against her hip before he fell against her and stole the air from her chest. She remembered what she felt, the confusion of his body above her, and the truth that she tried to tell herself again and again: He loves me. But as often as she claimed his love, she had to counter herself. He loves me not.

  Adri had crawled out of the room, wounded. Pulled the door shut behind her as if sealing a crypt.

  “The basement is clean,” Adri said in response to her father’s question. Her mouth was dry, and she swallowed hard.

  Adri could tell that her father was fishing for more information, that he wanted to know if even the hint of David wrecked her just a little. But she couldn’t bring herself to go down that road even a short distance. The last week had rubbed the veneer of her resolve thin, and memories were popping up all around her. She had spent years in Africa demonizing this place and the past that dragged her down with the weight of an anchor, but she had to admit that there were moments of beauty, too. Kindnesses that still took her breath away after all this time. And though she remembered the carpet burns on her shoulder blades, the bruises on her arms, there were things about David that made her smile, bright and sudden; things he had said or done that were gifts she could still unwrap and admire all these years later.

  That’s what hurt the most: knowing that nothing ever was exactly black-and-white.

  “Really,” Adri said, forcing herself to give her dad’s arm a reassuring squeeze, “I’ve got it taken care of.”

  But Sam wouldn’t be deterred. “If you won’t have me, I’ll take my own car and check on the horses. It is my job, after all.” He paused. “Is it still my job?”

  Adri sighed. She had spoken to the State Historical Society of Iowa about Piperhall, and though they were interested in getting it listed on the registry of historical places, the woman she talked to didn’t seem excited about the prospect of taking on the care and maintenance of the estate. And when she discussed putting it up for sale with Clay, his palpable disappointment cut the conversation short. Adri couldn’t tell if he was daunted by the thought of selling such an albatross, or if he was secretly hoping she’d keep it. Either way, she was stuck. Will wasn’t interested in it. Neither were Jackson and Nora. Or Sam. Adri felt like she had been shackled with a 25,000-square-foot lemon. Nobody wanted it. Least of all Adri herself.

  As for the horses . . . “I don’t know, Dad. Would you like them?” she asked.

  Sam looked up. “What would I do with four horses?”

  “One of them then? Mateo?” Adri tried not to sound too hopeful. What did it matter to her if her father kept Mateo? If she waited as long to come back to Iowa as she had the last time, he would probably be gone before she ever had the chance to see him again.

  But Sam nodded. “I’ll take Mateo. And maybe Amira.”

  “I’ll sell the other two.”

  “You mean I’ll sell the other two. You’re going back to Africa, remember?”

  Adri tried not to let the comment cut. She didn’t like even the implication that she wouldn’t take care of her own business. “I’ll sell them online. The only thing you’ll have to do is show them if a buyer wants to come and look.”

  “Fine.” Sam stuck out his hand to seal the deal.

  It felt strange to shake her father’s hand, but there was something gratifying about coming to a conclusion concerning one small aspect of the disbursement of the estate. Something definitive in their handshake. She had made a decision. Now all she had to do was make a dozen more.

  For a moment, Sam seemed as if he was on the verge of saying something else. He held Adri’s hand just a second longer than necessary, but then he shook his head and gave her a lopsided little smile. Adri assumed he was just thinking about her upcoming departure.

  They went to the estate, and Sam checked on the horses while Adri hauled the frost-softened outdoor decor to the grove. On any other acreage, there would be a blackened spot far from the house that indicated the burn pile, but Victoria didn’t like the thought of incinerating things on her own property. So, long ago, David had taken to dragging refuse to the grove, and there was still a small hill of organic garbage that had endured the test of time.

  An old pallet that had been ripped in half, nails sticking out of the gray boards and a piece of burlap snagged on one like a makeshift flag. A rusty wire basket. A wood-slat box that had a sticker proclaiming Washington Cherries on the side. Adri added the pumpkins to the pile, and when she accidentally dropped one and discovered that they exploded with a satisfying burst, she started to throw them.

  At first she just lobbed them, but by the time she had made it to the last wicker basket, there was something vicious in the snap of her arm. It felt so good to throw something—if there had been a punching bag nearby, she probably would’ve landed a couple of blows, too—and she began to take an almost perverse pleasure in rocketing smaller gourds at the trunks of nearby trees. Adri didn’t even realize she was taking aim at people until she uttered Victoria’s name.

  And then it was a waterfall. Will and Jackson and her dad. For calling her home. For making her miss them when she wanted to forget. David. For everything. Harper, because she abandoned Adri when she needed her most.

  Adri was stubborn and she knew it, a little idealistic, and a firm believer that anything could be fixed with a bit of grit and some hard work. But the truth was, she hadn’t been able to fix a single thing that was wrong in her life since the moment that she had said yes to David’s precipitous proposal. Everything had spun out of control. And it was making her crazy.

  When the last pumpkin had erupted against the trunk of a burr oak and spilled orange pulp down the bark, Adri put her hands on her hips and fought a wave of despondency. “Oh, God,” she muttered. “What am I doing here?”

  “You still talk to him?” Sam said from somewhere behind her.

  Adri
spun. “How long have you been there?”

  “Long enough.” Sam took a few hesitant steps toward her, and when she didn’t yell at him, he kept coming. “Look, Adri, I’ve been trying to muster up enough courage to talk to you since the minute you stepped off that plane.”

  “We have talked,” Adri said, rubbing her forehead. Trying to forget that her father had just seen her lose it. Or get as close to losing it as she got. “We’ve talked lots.”

  “But not about the stuff that mattered.”

  “Dad—”

  “Nope,” Sam interrupted. “I’m going to say what I came to say, and if you don’t want to hear it, I’m sorry. But life’s too short, sweetheart, and when you hop on that plane in a couple of days, I’m afraid I’m never going to see you again.”

  Adri was shaking her head, but Sam wasn’t about to be deterred. There was a flinty determination in his eyes, and when he held up his hands as if to ward off any and every argument she could come up with, she bit her lip and let him speak.

  “I know that Victoria wrote you a letter.”

  “You do?” Adri was so shocked, she was surprised that she could speak at all. She crossed her arms against her chest so her dad wouldn’t see her hands tremble. “What . . . ?” she couldn’t get the question out. Tried again. “What do you . . . ?”

  “What do I know? Not much. I don’t know exactly what she wrote, but I do know that she was consumed in her final days. Gripped by the belief that she had failed you somehow. Failed David.”

  Adri didn’t have words for this. She had no idea how to respond.

  Sam passed his hand over his eyes and Adri could see him try to gather his thoughts. “Look, I’m not doing this right. I suppose what I should be saying is, I know. First of all, I know what happened to Victoria. Everyone did, I guess, but no one knew how to stop it.”

  “Dad, I—”

  Sam took a shuddering breath. “I know I should have asked this question long ago. That I failed you by not asking. Did David ever mistreat you?”

  There were so many things that Adri could have said. Secrets and lies and bad manners besides. But the truth about David hitting her was just the beginning. If she admitted what really happened between them, how they had begun to unravel in the end, she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to stop. She didn’t recognize herself by the time she knew who David was—who they were together. And Adri wasn’t about to admit any of that to her dad. One of the only people in the world who still loved her. Even if he didn’t really know her.

  Adri didn’t pause. “No,” she said, holding her father’s wounded gaze.

  Sam believed her. Adri could tell.

  It was one of the only times in her life that she had lied to his face. But somehow it fit.

  Harper had taught her well.

  Not everybody was happy about their engagement. Least of all Harper.

  “You’re jealous,” Adri accused one afternoon. They were fighting, and though it rankled to admit that their friendship wasn’t perfect, fighting was something that they did really well. Harper had taught Adri the fine art of the knock-down, drag-out, and they were known to engage in glorious shouting matches that invariably ended with one or both of them storming out of the campus apartment that they shared at ATU. Often, when they had cooled down enough to handle being near each other without throwing things, Harper would take Adri by the chin like a fond aunt. “How could I ever be mad at you! Just look at you. You’re the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”

  It was beyond patronizing, but then Harper would redeem herself by making scrambled eggs with cream cheese or offering to give Adri a back rub while they watched old episodes of Seinfeld on DVD. It was impossible for Adri to stay mad.

  But the engagement had tipped the careful balance of their complicated world. It seemed to Adri that the ring she wore was an unspoken point of contention between them, and the harder she tried to act as if everything was normal, the more Harper set out to prove that it was not.

  “I am not jealous!” Harper shrieked in the face of Adri’s accusation. “I am the farthest thing from jealous. I feel sorry for you. I think you’re making a huge mistake.”

  There were a dozen things that Adri could have said, but she chose “Marrying the man I love is a mistake?”

  Harper didn’t even have to answer. The look on her face was enough of a reply.

  “You can be a real bitch, Harper. You know that?” Adri regretted the words the second they were out of her mouth, but it was too late to take them back.

  Harper blinked at her for a moment, completely stunned. And then she burst out laughing and enveloped Adri in a hug that squeezed the air right out of her.

  “I am a bitch sometimes,” she said, almost gleefully. “And you need a little bit of that in you, Adri-Girl. Really, you do. The world is a scary place, my sweet friend. You gotta fight back.”

  Adri didn’t agree with her. Either that the world was a scary place or that you had to fight back. And she didn’t understand how they had gone from arguing to hugging, but she was too interested in peace at any price to argue.

  “She’s a little loco,” Adri told David, a couple of days later. They were at the estate because Victoria had invited them over, just the two of them. It was one of the few times that they left ATU unaccompanied by the rest of The Five, and although David was acting moody and strange, Adri savored the hours alone. Supper with Victoria had gone okay, and now the two of them were sitting on the edge of the hot tub, dangling their feet into the all but boiling water as a light snow fell around them. The air was unusually warm for January.

  “Who, Harper?”

  “Of course, Harper.”

  David gave her a sideways look. “That’s cold, Adrienne. She’s your best friend.”

  “Since when do you call me Adrienne?”

  “Since when do you call your best friend crazy?” David pushed himself up from the edge of the hot tub and grabbed a towel off one of the snow-dusted lawn chairs. He wrenched open the French door and slammed it behind him.

  Adri was dumbfounded. “Are we fighting?” she shouted over her shoulder. Yanking her own feet out of the scalding water she spun on the concrete edge of the hot tub and took off after him.

  Adri hated fighting, or she thought she did, but something about the exchange exacerbated the fears that she already nursed when it came to her relationship with David. She might be wearing his ring—or rather, her mother’s ring—but she had doubted the veracity of their relationship from the very beginning. Following David, she took the steps to the basement two at a time and whipped around the door of his bedroom, still trickling chlorinated water from the hot tub.

  “Use a towel,” David said, tossing the beach towel that he had already used at her. “You’re dripping all over the hardwood.”

  “Excuse me,” Adri huffed. “What do you expect? You just sided with Harper.”

  “I did not side with Harper.” David was pulling on a pair of jeans, though only minutes ago Adri had imagined that there would be no need to get dressed again that night.

  “You did! You know how I feel about . . .” she faltered. “You and Harper.”

  “Me and Harper?” David barely glanced at her, but Adri was eager to engage, to spar with him like she had sparred with Harper. And then make up in the heady glow of the aftermath.

  “Yes, you and Harper.” Adri hadn’t meant to go in this direction, she didn’t really even believe the things that she was saying. But all at once she understood that she had gotten it all wrong when she fought with Harper. Harper wasn’t the jealous one, Adri was. She was jealous because she couldn’t bring herself to believe that maybe David really did love her. That maybe he really would—and had—chosen her over her exquisite best friend.

  Once the thought entered her head, it spread, as fast and vicious as a wildfire. David didn’t really lov
e her, he couldn’t. But Adri was a safer choice in a wife than Harper, a choice that his mother might actually allow, even if she didn’t entirely approve. Maybe David had chosen Adri because it was a way to keep Harper close. A way to have the best of both worlds: the temperate, decent wife and the tempestuous, desirable lover.

  Adri told him as much. She didn’t mean to shout, to be so shrill and angry and unreasonable, but it was a living, breathing fear inside of her. A desperation she couldn’t control. She was ruthless and ripe with accusations that had no bearing and no proof. She was out of control.

  He slapped her.

  It came out of nowhere. His hand. The bite of his fingers on her fury-blushed cheek. It was open-palmed, not the brutal, backhand blow that, somehow, Adri had always imagined a man would use to hit a woman. Yet the pain exploded in her cheekbone, along her jaw, and for a split second, she was too hurt, and too surprised, to respond at all. But then, before she realized what she was doing, before she could consider the implications of her impossible, impulsive action, Adri cocked her arm and hit him right back.

  She put every ounce of the fury she felt into her swing, and when her palm made contact with his face, it whipped his chin to his shoulder. He didn’t even try to look up at her.

  The room echoed with silence.

  “Oh, David.” Adri groaned. Her hands were on her mouth, trying to shove the words down, to swallow the awful thing she had just done, and take his sin with it. But she couldn’t do it. It was too much, too big, and she couldn’t undo what had happened between them. As much as she wanted to smooth it all over, make it go away and pretend that it had never happened at all, she couldn’t. It was done. And her fiancé couldn’t even bring himself to look at her.

  The snow was falling harder when she fled to the stables. Her hair was still wet, but common sense had prodded her to throw on dry clothes and grab a coat. Adri was grateful for those small mercies as the cold air stung her ears, but it never crossed her mind to turn back. She couldn’t face David and all the things that had broken between them.