Page 7 of Us in Ruins

“Have you talked to Mom?” she asked, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Could he tell the way her voice hitched? The problem about being the human embodiment of a mood swing was that Margot couldn’t hide her emotions to save her life. Lying to him was out of the question. She’d orchestrated this so that she wouldn’t have to lie. At least, not to anyone’s face.

“Sort of,” her dad bristled. “I left her a voicemail and then got a text saying she had no idea you were coming for the summer, and if she had, she wouldn’t have booked a two-month hiking trip down the Appalachian Trail.”

“That’s so weird because—”

“Tell me the truth, Gogo,” he said. “Why did I get forwarded to a hotel concierge named Giuseppe when I called your school office?”

“Because I’m in Italy.”

Even 4,300 miles away, she knew the way his eyebrows would worry together, creased down the middle in a wrinkle that never fully went away. “Little Italy?”

Margot picked at her bottom lip, flaking off bits of pigment. “No, uh, the big one.”

Someone on the other end honked—probably at her dad for stopping, stunned, in the middle of the street, if she had to guess. It was like the cogs started spinning in his head again. “Dr. Hunt’s excavation. You went to Pompeii even when I told you not to. I knew sending you to that boarding school was a huge mistake.”

“Dad, I—”

“I can’t believe you would do this, let alone how you managed to pull it off.”

It was, Margot wagered, a rhetorical question. Her dad didn’t really want to know that she’d forged his signature on the permission slip so that she could turn it in on time. Or that she’d signed up for a part-time job at the campus coffee shop, spending her evenings brewing vanilla lattes for tired-eyed seniors and saving every cent so that she could afford her plane ticket without asking him to help pay.

He was the whole reason she was here in the first place. If the Vase of Venus Aurelia could make everyone love Margot, that had to include Rupert Rhodes.

“I earned this spot, Dad.” Much to the chagrin of the blonde-haired brownnoser conveniently eavesdropping on this conversation from the other side of the room. Margot dropped her voice, just for good measure. “It’s not just a phase this time.”

“It’s always something with you. But this is too far, Gogo. I’m booking you a plane ticket home.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I can. I can’t be anything but serious right now. I wish you would try it. You’re just like your mom sometimes.” Another agitated breath blew into the speaker, crackling on Margot’s end of the line. “The second you’re back on American soil, you’re grounded for the next century.”

Margot sank onto the windowsill. The phone’s sticky beige cord wrapped around her as she leaned her chin into her hand. The last dregs of evening sun splashed everything in Aperol orange. Aperol she still wasn’t legally allowed to drink until the end of summer (the drinking age in Italy was eighteen!), but she wouldn’t be here by then if her dad had his way. There was a whoosh of air on his side, and Margot could practically feel the bite of the air-conditioning in his downtown office. She was running out of time to convince him.

Clutching the receiver so hard her fingers felt like they might snap off, Margot pleaded, “I’m working on this really important research project that will be completely life-changing. If you just let me stay. Two weeks, even. One week. Dad, I promise—I’ll never leave my dishes in the sink ever again.”

“What’s that? Hold on.” There was a rustle, the sound of him covering the phone with his hand, and a hushed back and forth. “Margot, I’ve got to run. Client emergency. I’m buying you a ticket. You’re coming home. Not next week. Now. End of conversation.”

It always was. Because nothing Margot did was ever enough for him.

For the last six years, it had only been the two of them. Her mom vanished after enough shouting matches to leave them all feeling battered and bruised, and her dad became the single father of an only daughter. He was the one person she could hold on to, but he’d retreated into his work, out of reach when she needed him most.

Before the divorce, he’d always known how to calm her down with two hands on her shoulders, their foreheads pressed together like maybe he could transfer some of his cool-tempered tendencies to her through osmosis. She couldn’t help but laugh when his eyes blurred together up close.

But lately, it was like they were constantly speaking different languages. He was always running around town, busying his days with buyer calls and his nights with paperwork. These days, the only time he made for her was to tell her she was messing something up or overreacting.

Margot knew her dad better than anyone else—how he took his coffee, how he swore there was a left and right sock, how he refused to watch movies with sad endings—but it was like he didn’t know her at all. Or, worse, he did, and still didn’t love her.

The Vase of Venus Aurelia could fix that. Would fix that. It had to.

Suki and Astrid watched expectantly as Margot set the phone back on its receiver.

“So?” Suki prompted.

There was really only one thing to do. Margot forced a smile that definitely didn’t reach her eyes. A pathetic excuse for a lie. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”

3

Margot couldn’t sleep, and it had nothing to do with Astrid snoring like a Weedwacker.

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