Total pages in book: 227
Estimated words: 220940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1105(@200wpm)___ 884(@250wpm)___ 736(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 220940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1105(@200wpm)___ 884(@250wpm)___ 736(@300wpm)
His friend looks at me.
“She’s ten, Frazer,” Father reminds him. “Speak freely.”
He nods, sitting forward, rubbing at his nose. “We have reached mutually agreeable terms.”
“Excellent.”
I gaze around the room as Father chats with his friends about things that don’t sound very interesting at all. I see something white on the table. A straw. A gold little card. “Why is it called a drawing room if I can’t draw in here, Father?” I blurt my question and everyone in the room falls silent. Looking at me. Father eventually laughs, glancing at my mother. “You must control her curiosity, Ruby. No one wants a wife with too much to say.” He stands me up, and Mother is soon collecting me.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she says quickly, leading me away, and the moment I’m out of the room, she dips and gets her mouth to my ear. “Pearl, my darling, children must be seen and not heard.” I look up at her. “And women should be graceful and quiet.” She straightens my collar again. “Off to your room.”
I do as I’m told, closing the door behind me and settling on the carpet next to my doll’s house. I play with it for an hour, rearranging the furniture, making sure there’s a table by the chair in the . . . what will I call this room? “The drawing room,” I say to myself. After tidying the library, I get up and put a few more pieces in my jigsaw puzzle, looking over the building picture of the English countryside.
When I hear a car door close, I go to the window and look down onto the driveway. Father’s seeing his guests off, shaking hands while all the ladies wait, quiet, smiling their goodbyes. I watch all of the fancy cars drive away, then hear mother’s steps coming down the hallway. I grab a book and sit on the chair in the corner as she enters. She smiles, happy I’m reading, and goes to the window, pulling the curtains closed. “Supper and bed.”
“Okay, Mother.” I close my book and set it neatly on the bedside table ready to read myself to sleep as she fixes the closed curtains just so, brushing down the velvet material.
She pauses when the sound of a car coming down the gravel driveway drifts through the window. Her face. I never know how to decipher her expressions. She opens the curtains again. “Oh, no.”
“Ruby!” Father bursts through the door, his cigar hanging from his mouth. “Get her in the cupboard. Now.”
* * *
Ding!
I blink myself back to the present as the doors slide open, and on a swallow, I step out. Okay, Mother. Never heard. Hardly ever seen.
I walk around the corner and come to a sharp stop when I spot a woman walking toward me. She has long, black hair. A short, tight little black dress. Her chest is exposed. Her heels sky high. She’s counting money, a smile on her face. A guest of Mr. Black’s? This early in the day? My heart hurts.
I follow her strut as she passes, all the way to the elevator, and watch her step inside. She smiles at me as the doors close. I somehow convince my legs to walk, taking me to the door. I knock. Breathe in some strength. Mentally tell myself to be strong. Be heard. Be seen.
The door swings open. Brad takes one look at me and steps back, his face impassive. He has a Scotch in his hand, only a pair of boxers covering him. I make sure I keep his eyes.
He knows I will have passed his latest fuck leaving the building. But I didn’t need to see it happening to know it was happening. Imagining it was tough. Seeing the evidence leave?
“Why are you here, Pearl?” he asks, leaning on the door with a hand. He’s not drunk, no slur to his words at all. I’m surprised.
“I was worried about you,” I tell him. Somehow, Brad being stone-cold sober while he fucks me out of his head is so much worse than him being blind drunk. I’m so easy to replace. To look past. Nothing has changed. His words of forever meant absolutely nothing after all. “Do you have company?”
He frowns, looking back into the suite. “No.”
“Then can I come in?”
He’s quickly looking at me again. Maybe confused. Maybe curious. I don’t know. He’s thinking really hard about whether he should let me in. He eventually releases the door and steps back, and I walk into the room. The first thing I see is the pile of white powder on the table in front of the couches. Not drunk but high on cocaine? Naturally, I look for residue around his nose, listening for the tell-tale sniff. Nothing. And, actually, the pile looks too perfect to have had any dragged away. There’s no line. No card on the table. No rolled-up note.