Mrs. Duval looked surprised but did what he asked. Jordan squinted and stared at Donald. I was glad to see it wasn’t only I who thought he was behaving strangely. When I first came here, he made a big show over my calligraphy, but his reactions to anything I did after that were always even-tempered, restrained. I thought he was as sensitive to Kiera’s being jealous as I was.
He did most of the talking during dinner, describing this new account that he emphasized he wanted me to evaluate. I promised I would stop at his office tomorrow after school. I was hoping he had forgotten the comment Jordan had made just before he entered the dining room, but as if it had lingered there in midair, he suddenly turned to her and asked what she had meant when she said he had been deluding himself.
“Now, let’s get back to what you said before I walked into the dining room, Jordan. Deluding myself about what?”
“Your daughter.”
“Kiera?” He shook his head, looked at me and then back at her. “Now what has she done?”
“Apparently, she had an extended weekend and could have come home but didn’t. I have no idea where she went, but I suspect neither of us will be pleased when and if we ever find out.”
“Maybe she never left the school,” he said. “Anyway, that’s hardly a reason to say I’m deluding myself, Jordan. You’re still thinking only the worst possible things about her.”
“Me? You’re the one who just pointed out how she had lost my expensive earrings.”
“That was a few years ago.”
“Oh. Fine. I guess I should make nothing of the fact that she’s avoiding us.”
“When I was in college, I wasn’t crazy about rushing home all the time, either.”
“All the time? She hasn’t been home once since she went this year. She wasn’t home very much the year before, and she spent most of the summer with rich friends traveling through Europe. The girl is drifting farther and farther away from both of us, you included, Donald. I know it’s easier to ignore it all, but I think it’s time you had a good talk with her.”
“She did say she would like to hear from you,” I said, seeing the opportunity.
“She did hear from me,” Donald replied, and finished another glass of wine. “I called her today.”
“You called her?”
“Exactly. Why? She said I didn’t?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I might have gotten it wrong.”
“I doubt it,” Jordan said. “She’s still exaggerating, distorting, and lying outright.”
“What? She isn’t failing any subject, and she hasn’t had any problems at school, or we would have heard. Why would you say such a damning thing?” Donald demanded, his mood changing instantly. Usually, when he was this upset, Jordan backed down, but I could she wasn’t going to this time. She was still smarting about not being included in picking out my gift.
“I don’t believe this boy she’s seeing is the son of some English aristocrat. I told her to bring him home if she liked, but she hasn’t. She says more about him to Sasha than she does to me or you, for that matter.”
“That’s a girlie thing,” Donald said, waving it off. “Hardly anything to get upset about.”
“I’ve heard that before, Donald. And we both lived to regret it.”
“All right, all right, I’ll call her again,” he said, relenting. “Maybe we’ll all take a ride to her school one weekend.”
Jordan was silent. She had said as much as she wanted to say. Her eyes fell on me, focused on my new necklace. For the first time since I had come here, I felt Jordan March was actually jealous of me, jealous of something I had besides my youth.
As soon as dinner ended, I went up to my room to ponder what all of this meant. Why did Kiera lie about her father not calling her? Or could it possibly be that he was lying to cover up for his neglect?
Family life was so complicated, and being rich or famous didn’t seem to provide any sort of relief from that. In fact, it might make it more complicated. If anyone should know how wonderful having a family could be, it was I. Most of my young life, I had been envious of other kids my age who had parents and brothers and sisters. As far as I could see, a family gave you a safety net. No matter what you did or what happened to you, they were there for you, supporting you, comforting you. Who took more pride in you and your accomplishments than your parents? Yes, sisters and brothers could be jealous of each other, but they couldn’t help being proud of each other as well. Your success did bring something wonderful to them, too.
And yet I also knew how devastating the rupture of a family could be. Losing friendships, losing your job, and failing in your career were difficult to take, but there was always the prospect of new friends, new jobs, and even new careers. No girlfriend could really replace a mother, and for a boy, no friend could replace his father. Deep in my heart, I knew that Jordan March had hoped the opposite might be true for me, that one day I’d wake up and see her as my mother. Perhaps she had even hoped she’d wake up and see me as Alena.
No one could blame her, I supposed. Who wouldn’t want to end the pain? But it was one thing to lose a mother or a daughter because of an illness or an accident and a far different thing to lose either one because of a family disagreement. People who loved each other deeply were obviously capable of hating each other just as deeply.
At the end of your life, at some dark moment when your whole life streamed through your mind like an all-day movie, all of the happiest moments highlighted, all of the smiles and laughter seen and heard once more, you surely couldn’t help but feel the cold regret that would join the pallbearers who brought you to your final rest.
Surely you would wonder if there wasn’t some way, some magical phrase you could have used, some words you had never thought of or had thought of but never spoken that could have mended and begun the healing of these wounds. Wasn’t there something more, one thing more you could have done to change the downward movement of your family? Could you have pushed regret away with a simple “I’m sorry” or perhaps just by saying “I love you”?