Page 65 of Mirror Image

“Not even if Dr. Braithwaite or I was there to support you?”

She doesn’t look at me as she shakes her head, instead facing forward, staring through the expansive panes of glass toward a huge clock tower off in the distance.

“And why is that?” I press gently.

Mary shrugs her narrow shoulders, refocusing on the drink in her hands, twirling the green straw so that the ice spins around the perimeter of the tall cup. “There’s nothing they have to say that I want to hear.”

“And what about you?”

She turns her attention back in my direction. “What about me?”

I wish I could see her eyes behind the dark lenses.

“Is there anything that maybe you’d like to say to them?”

Her chapped, cracked lips twist into a smirk. “Oh, I’ve already said everything I had to say to them.”

There it is again, that hint of saltiness that wasn’t there when we met yesterday.

“May I ask what they did that you decided to just cut them out of your life?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“No. I asked, but your mom changed the subject.”

This makes her chuckle, brows raising above the pink frames. “I’ll bet she did!” When I don’t offer a response to the comment, she sighs, and the smile fades. “It wasn’t what they did to me. It was what they did to Sam. According to them, everything is her fault.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that.”

“Right? In their minds, were it not for Sam, we’d still be the picture-perfect family. Because, you know, it’s all about the picture.”

“I don’t know what that means. Can you explain it to me?”

She huffs and throws up the arm that isn’t holding her shake. “Just that appearances mean a lot to my family. Sam wasn’t good for optics.”

“How so?”

“She was a little too rough around the edges—too coarse, too direct. She didn’t sugarcoat anything, and she didn’t treat my parents with the deference they thought they deserved. Which was interesting. They didn’t want her for a daughter, but they sure as hell expected her to treat them like parents. The whole thing was ridiculous.”

I latch onto something in that statement. “Why, was Sam hoping they’d treat her like a daughter?”

“If you’re asking if she was trying to get money out of them, no. She never asked them for a thing.”

Her voice is stony.

“And you? Did she ever ask you for money?”

“No,” the young woman snaps a little too sharply. She pauses and takes a deep breath, her tone more even when she continues. “Look, it’s like I told you before—Sam had a shit life, and when she came to stay with us, she finally had a chance at a family. But there were my parents being all ‘She’s not our daughter. You are.’”

I have to suppress a smile at her spot-on imitation of Terry. “So, then, not the reaction you were hoping for.”

“What I was hoping was that they’d react like the kind, generous people they supposedly were.” Resentment drips from each word like acid.

“You don’t believe that anymore? That they’re kind and generous? I mean, you just told me Sam came to live with you. That was pretty generous of them.”

“They only did that because they felt guilty—after the accident.”

“Right. She fell out of the moving car. They said she got hurt pretty badly.”