“Then you didn’t see him.”
Her silence is answer enough.
“How exactly did a note in his handwriting end up here?”
A note that broke my goddamn heart.
A note that shattered my whole world.
A note that, now, makes absolutely no sense to me.
“What does it matter if he put it in my hand or left it in the mailbox?” she asks. “And why do you care either way, Josephine? I thought you’d finally moved on from this. Have a little self-respect and stop clutching at straws.He didn’t want you.It’s rather pathetic to keep pretending otherwise. Not to mention a waste of your time. And mine.”
Tears gloss my eyes in the time between two heartbeats. Her words, true or not, cut me to the quick. Some of my anger has been tempered by shame when I murmur, “I just don’t understand why you’d lie and say you saw him if you didn’t. It doesn’t make any sense—”
“What doesn’t make sense is you asking me continually about a boy who was never fit to wipe the mud from your boots, let alone stand by your side,” Blair hisses. “What doesn’t make sense is that any daughterof minewould get wrapped up with the son ofthehelpin the first place!”
I flinch. Archer’s words the other day slam into my stomach like a lead fist.
I never belonged to your world, Jo. Not really. And we both know it. I was just your little pet — a stray you collected from the pound, shoved into a fancy collar and allowed to mingle for a while with the purebreds.
I’ve never seen him that way… but it’s clear my mother does. I wonder what’s more offensive to her — the fact that I deigned to give my heart to someone she considers beneath our social standing, or the fact that, despite the illustrious legacy she and my father have worked so hard to build, Archer has never shown any desire to align himself with the Valentine family. I’m certain she cannot fathom why a poor boy raised with nothing would not covet all the trappings of her privilege.
But then, she never did see him clearly. Never took the time to get to know him in more than the most insubstantial of ways. If she had, she’d have realized long ago that Archer isn’t infatuated by wealth or stirred by celebrity status. His dreams are clearer cut, his longings more purely distilled.
Family.
Stability.
Baseball.
“If your interrogation is over,” Blair says sharply, pulling me back to the present, “I have meetings to attend.”
“I still have questions—”
“Honestly, Josephine! I’ve grown tired of your pointless questions.”
“They aren’t pointless to me. And I wouldn’t have so many of them if you’d been honest with me in the first place!”
“Enough! I will not entertain your baseless accusations—”
“They aren’t baseless if they’re true!”
“—about last summer. I am not discussing this anymore. I do not have to explain myself to my child. Certainly not when it comes to that… that… waste of space, Archer Reyes.” The receiver practically crackles with her wrath. “He is in the past. Leave him there, Josephine. I mean it.”
“Or what? What will you do, mother?”
But my angry inquiries never reach her.
The line has gone dead.
* * *
I spend the following hour seething and pacing. I cut a path back and forth across my bedroom so many times, I’m certain there’ll be a permanent groove left behind in the rug. The phone call with Blair rattled me more than I’d like to admit. I’m a mess of frustration and paranoia. Everything I thought I knew about last summer has been thrown off kilter. Like a conspiracy theorist, I tug at the loose threads of my life, searching for hidden schemes.
Great. Next, I’ll be questioning the moon landing and convinced the earth is flat.
I redial the VALENT offices, hoping to pry more answers from my mother through sheer force of will, but I’m told she is in a meeting. Unreachable, until further notice. Try back tomorrow. I’m fed a similar line when I ask to speak to my father.