Behind the Green Curtain (17 page)

“I’m going to go up to my office,”
she stated, backing away before the desire to ask such questions became
impossible to deny.

Amelia nodded her agreement, adding
to the silence, and Caton stepped through the doorway with no idea how she
would survive the days to come. It wasn’t long ago that pining for Amelia from
a distance was her only option, and the last thing she wanted was to be reduced
to that sorry state again. At the very least, she wished she could be happy for
Amelia, but, as far as Caton could see, there had been little happiness in the
reunion between mother and daughter.

Halfway up the stairs, the blaring
sound of bass-heavy club music cut into Caton’s thoughts. Rounding the banister
and turning into her office, she watched the frames on the wall rattle and knew
it would be one very long holiday.

Chapter 26

By the third day of Selene’s
homecoming, Amelia was already tired of the constant battle. All she had wanted
was Selene home, but now that she was there, Amelia couldn’t help but wonder if
it would have been better for their relationship if Selene had stayed on the
other side of the Atlantic.

Her daughter still had nothing but
contempt for her. It was clear with every action, with every word, with every
irritated look Selene turned her way when Amelia attempted to talk to her. It
was most clear, though, in the way Selene jumped up from the table as Jack
walked in the first night and hugged him as if he was her knight in shining
armor, after saying no more than ten words to Amelia throughout dinner.

Casting her eyes away, Amelia let
it go as she always had, allowing Selene to use Jack to get back at her without
comment. If Amelia had any belief at all in equitability, she might have deemed
it unfair, but she had long given up the idealistic notion that people were
judged as they deserved to be judged. Jack’s good fortune was tied to Amelia’s
misfortune. But, then, it had been that way for many years.

Truth, in their family, was a
complicated thing. She and her daughter, they weren’t enemies. They were on the
same side. That was the reality of the situation. When the other side held all
the power, though, it was sometimes hard to see where the lines were drawn. Laying
out the facts might have given Selene more sympathy for her, but there were
some things her daughter simply would never need to know.

Every day Amelia tried, and every
day she got the same lackluster responses. There were moments when she wanted
nothing more than to say ‘fuck it,’ call Caton to her, and spend her days as
she had before Selene’s arrival. As it was, each moment she’d had with Caton
was fleeting, each kiss stolen, and it occurred to Amelia how much she missed
their afternoons in bed. How much she missed Caton.

Ephemeral escape wasn’t going to
fix what was broken, though, if anything could, so Amelia chose to overlook
Selene’s attitude. Every snarky response, every angry glare, every time her
daughter ignored her, Amelia only tried harder, believing each time that they
could return to the place they were at only a few years before, but that seemed
like a foreign land now.

It was when she made the most
effort that Selene fought against her the hardest, so Amelia knew waking Selene
to announce she had planned a full day for them - shopping, which Selene loved,
lunch, a ride through the park, which Selene once loved - would end in a fight.
The same announcement that would have made her daughter giddy not that long ago
was taken like punishment of the highest order.

After sitting up with an abundance
of drama to complain about it from the pile of covers for five minutes, Selene
finally got out of bed, slamming the door of her bathroom on the way to shower,
and Amelia thought it had dawned on her daughter that it was a done deal and
she would simply have to endure her mother’s presence for an entire day.

She was in her office, writing a
note to Caton, when Selene reappeared. Why she felt the need to explain her
presence or lack thereof to Caton, Amelia wasn’t entirely sure, but it felt
wrong somehow to be gone without explanation.

“How close are you?” Selene was
asking someone, as she breezed by the doorway without even a glance, and Amelia
hurried out of her chair.

“Selene.” She stepped into the hall
behind her, and, though she was sure she had been heard, Selene didn’t look
back.

“Yeah, I’ll see you soon,” Selene
stated, pulling her phone from her ear and shoving it into her pocket.

“Who was that?” Amelia asked,
trailing her daughter down the stairs.

“Kaley.”

“Why did you tell her you would see
her?” Amelia tried to keep calm as Selene came to a stop at the mirror in the
foyer to push her hair from her eyes. It had been hanging that way since she
woke up, the same untamable lock Selene had from birth, and Amelia had fought
the urge to reach out to her daughter and push it back multiple times during
the morning’s debate.

“They’re going to the mall,” Selene
returned. “And since somebody woke me up, I’m going too.”

“No, you’re not,” Amelia declared,
the tremor in her voice turning to anger as Selene rolled her eyes in the
mirror and walked off. Rushing into her path, Amelia halted her progress. “Call
her back and tell her you can’t go.”

“No.”

“We are going shopping,” Amelia
stated, knowing she was much too wound up about a day at some damn boutiques.
“We are going to the park.”

“A carriage ride in the park?”
Selene countered, looking at her with disdain that Amelia couldn’t help but
feel. “You are so fucking lame! That is so fucking stupid!”

“You didn’t used to think that,”
Amelia replied softly, though she knew it was a flimsy response. Selene used to
love sitting on her lap on those rides too. These days, Amelia wondered if her
daughter would wrap her arms around her to save her life if she were choking.

“I already told her I would go,”
Selene countered, walking past her as if the fact determined the outcome.

Amelia considered letting it. At
least with Selene gone she would have a few hours when she didn’t have to be on
edge. She could probably send Selene off every day of her visit. After that,
Selene could return to school, and things could go right back to the way they
had been. The same, but from a distance.

The thought of sending Selene away
again with the same walls between them spurred Amelia back into action, and she
trailed her daughter through the living room. “Well, call her back and tell her
you can’t.” She felt as if she had been doing nothing but repeating herself
since Selene’s arrival.

“But I can,” Selene tossed back.
“It’s not like you planned anything monumental. We can do your stupid day
later.”

“I want to do it today.”

“Well, then do it alone,” Selene
uttered, disappearing through the doorway.

Stopping for a breath, Amelia felt
the sting of her nails digging into her palms, and tried to loosen the tension,
already halfway to a headache, as she followed her daughter into the kitchen.

She expected Sole to be there,
pretending, as usual, not to hear a word being screamed in the next room. She
didn’t, however, expect Caton, and it was clear Caton didn’t expect to be a
spectator. Sitting at the bar, she kept her eyes on her mug as Amelia pulled up
short at her presence, before returning her eyes to Selene, who dropped her
purse on the end of the bar to start yanking open cabinet doors.

“What are you doing?’ Amelia asked
as calmly as possible.

“I’m looking for something to eat,”
Selene returned.

“I can make you something.” Sole
found her opportunity to intervene, and Selene stopped her invasion of the
kitchen, leaving the cabinets hanging open, knowing they would be closed for
her. It was a very Jack behavior that made Amelia even more livid than usual.

“I’ll take toast,” Selene said, not
bothering with ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ as she went to the fridge and pulled
open the door. “Wrap it up for me, okay?”

“No, Sole,” Amelia corrected. “She
isn’t going anywhere.”

“Yes, I am.” Selene sent a glare
her way.

“No, you’re not,” Amelia declared.
“You are going to eat, and then you are getting in the car and we are going
out. Together.”

“Jesus Christ!” Selene shouted.
“You already didn’t want me to go to Germany with my friends. Thank God Daddy
was going to let me.”

“That’s because I wanted you to
come home,” Amelia couldn’t stop her voice from breaking. She wished, just
once, she could make Selene understand.

“And now that Lisa’s parents said
she could only bring one person and I got dropped like a loser and stuck here,
you won’t even let me see my friends?”

“I want to spend time with you,”
Amelia pleaded.

“Well, I don’t want to spend time
with you! I hate you!” Selene returned, and Amelia lapsed into silence.

She was well aware. It was
impossible to be unaware of the fact, but somehow hearing Selene say it with
such conviction made it more real. Throat tightening, she refused to let the
tears that formed in her eyes, despite her lifetime of training, fall. Tossing
her head back and blinking them away, she turned her gaze to the snow lightly
covering the back yard.

When Selene’s phone rang, she
pulled it from her pocket, glancing at the screen and looking up as if she was
ready to further argue her position, but Amelia had heard more than enough.
“Go,” she said, looking across the room at her daughter, and Selene hesitated,
but not long enough that it didn’t hurt when she left and her retreating
footsteps echoed through the kitchen.

With nowhere to go, Amelia didn’t
bother to move. Looking up as a hand gently grasped her side, she wondered how
she hadn’t heard Caton’s approach.

“Are you all right?” Caton softly
questioned, stepping closer until her thigh brushed against Amelia’s, but
Amelia’s body felt numb and the touch brought no comfort.

“Of course.” Amelia returned to her
game face, the one that always convinced everyone her house was perpetually
full of fresh flowers when it was overrun by weeds. “I’m fine.”

Glancing toward the doorway, Caton
frowned. “Does she always talk to you that way?”

“That’s none of your business,”
Amelia snapped, and Caton’s hand retracted instantly. She’d been wrong, she
realized at once. Caton’s touch had brought comfort.

When Caton tried to leave by the
same exit through which she just watched her daughter walk out, Amelia thrust
her arm in front of her to impede her departure. “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I
didn’t mean that.” Hand falling to a warm hip, she drew a dubious Caton back toward
her.

“I’m going to make sure they got
over that patch of ice in the driveway,” Sole said, heading toward the dining
room door.

“Thank you, Sole,” Amelia responded
as she left them, returning her attention to Caton, who didn’t particularly
look as if she wanted to be alone with her.

“You’re right,” Caton rasped. “It
is none of my business.”

Fingers spreading up Caton’s back
to persuade her closer, despite some resistance, Amelia sighed as Caton’s body
gave in to her own. “It is if you want it to be,” she whispered.

With a shake of her head, Caton
looked away, and Amelia thought she had said too much. It was true, and, yet,
she wasn’t even sure what she meant by it.

“Is it?” Caton asked. “Is anything
about you my business?”

“I have told you things about me,”
Amelia argued, the accusation striking her as incredibly unfair. Over the past
days, she had told Caton more than 99.9 percent of the people in her life would
ever know about her.

“Have you, Amelia?” The soft
question broke through Amelia’s certainty. “What do I know about you? What do
you know about me?”

Pausing to consider - really
consider - the question, Amelia knew what Caton meant, as much as she wanted to
pretend she didn’t. Caton did know more than 99.9 percent of the people in
Amelia’s life, but that didn’t take much. And though it felt as if she knew
Caton, when she tried to recall the things she knew, she realized they were in
short supply.

“What do you want to know?” she
uttered, hands clutching tighter to Caton, afraid of what she would ask, but
more afraid that Caton would decide her not worth knowing.

“What about Selene?” Caton returned
at once.

“I did tell you about Selene,”
Amelia stated. Selene was the one thing she knew she would never fail to
mention.

“That she was in boarding school and
you wished she was home, and about her love of photography and swimming and
telenovelas. Not...” Caton threw her hand toward the doorway, making her point.

“She’s a teenager.” Amelia attempted
to play it off on instinct.

“Really?” Caton questioned, anger,
or pain, tightening her face. “That’s what you want to say right now?”

“What do you want me to say?”
Amelia countered.

“Nothing,” Caton shook her head,
her eyes on Amelia dejected, as if she knew there was no point to the
conversation “I will only get half the truth anyway, right?” she asked. “The
story you’ve edited for the masses.”

There was truth in that too. Caton
had gotten more from her, whether she believed it or not, but the stories were
edited. They had to be.

Feeling the tension in Caton’s body
where there could have been something so much better, Amelia silently cursed
her timing. If Caton had come only a few minutes later, she wouldn’t have to
know any of this, and they could be spending their time alone together as they
should be.

“It’s complicated, Caton,” she
uttered.

“Do you think this is not
complicated for me?!” Caton’s sudden outburst surprised Amelia. It sounded like
anger, but when Caton took a deep breath before looking up, tears threatened
behind her eyes, and Amelia knew the anger was tempered by something more
profound.

Hand winding into Caton’s hair,
Amelia gently fisted it, and Caton allowed her. Tilting Caton’s head back until
she could capture her lips, Amelia reveled in the feel of Caton’s arms sliding
around her waist, of Caton’s body pressing closer. She hadn’t been deprived of
Caton long enough to be desperate, but, as she relinquished everything, both
bad and good, to the sensation of Caton’s lips, to the feel of their bodies
pressing against each other, Amelia felt undeniably needy.

“No, Selene, wait...” Sole’s voice
came from the doorway an instant too late, and, reluctantly breaking away from
the sweet haven of Caton’s lips, Amelia opened her eyes to discover her
daughter staring at her with a thunderstruck expression.

“Mom,” Selene uttered, eyes
flicking briefly to Caton before returning to stare at Amelia. “What in the
hell are you doing?”