Page 64 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
My few memories of my mother are wordless, sensory things: the thin bones of her hands around my rib cage to lift me up, the soft rasp of her laugh, the smell of rain on her coat. Everything else I know about her comes from someone else—my dad, or Vera, or Willow. The stories Miller and I would make up when we burned the birthday money. Firelight flickering over Miller’s face, the cut of his smile as he said,Maybe she’s microchipped now. Maybe she’s becoming a computer herself, and that’s why she can’t come visit.
But the woman in front of me is flesh and bone. I stop walking, suspended halfway through the open double doors with Miller beside me.
My first thought is that I need to call my dad. My second is that maybe it’s better if he doesn’t have to see her. My third is that her face looks like a time-warp mirror of my own.
“Rose,” she says. The name she gave me that no one uses. “It’s good to see you.”
It’sgood? Evelyn’s sitting right next to her, her face inscrutable.My voice comes out like an accusation. “What are you doing here?”
The conference room is full, every chair occupied except the two waiting for Miller and me. My heart has pounded all the way up my throat, like it’s trying to choke me so we don’t have to be here right now. Miller shifts almost imperceptibly so that our arms are touching.
“Please.” My mother gestures to the chairs across from her. “Have a seat.”
“She asked you a question,” Miller says. When I look at him, his jaw is set. This feels like an ambush, and he’s angry.
“And I’ll answer it,” she tells him. “But please sit down with the rest of us.”
Miller looks at me, and when I take a step forward he follows. We sit, but I lean back to put as much distance as possible between my mother and me. I haven’t seen her in sixteen years, but somehow, still, there’s this tether. Like every time she shifts in her seat I feel it, too. And the way she’s looking at me—like she knows me better than anyone here—makes me want to walk straight back out the door.
“I’d like to thank everyone for gathering today,” she says, glancing around the table. Her hands are folded in front of her, her nails pale pink and perfectly manicured. “I know we’re closing in on the holiday, but in light of this exposé it’s imperative we align on next steps.”
“Back up,” I say, and her eyes land on mine. Gray-green and piercing. “How are you part ofwe?”
My mother hesitates for just a beat, like she’s a machine witha delay in her feedback. “I own XLR8,” she tells me, and I feel as though I’ve fallen from very high up. “I purchased it under an LLC in the spring, and MASH was our first acquisition after the Colorado expansion.”
My eyes rove across the table, searching until I find him. Felix, right next to Jazz, wearing a cable-knit sweater and black eyeliner. When our gazes lock, he looks like he might be sick.
“You didn’t tell me.”
He swallows. “I didn’t know about her, Ro.”
Jazz, when I turn to her, shakes her head and whispers, “Me neither.”
“But you did.” I look at Evelyn, whose face is as composed as ever. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
“It was a necessary part of the arrangement,” Evelyn says. “We feared if you knew, you wouldn’t sign on. And if it weren’t for this snag with theNew York Times, we wouldn’t have had to tell you.”
I’m thinking so many things at the exact same time that I can’t decide which one to speak first. That it was my mother, all this time, building my success. That she found a way to reach me after so many years of nothing at all. And that she’s claimed me—taken half my best idea, when I’ve only ever wanted to belong to myself.
But what I end up saying is, “This isn’t asnag. You knew about it, and you didn’t do anything, and it’s wrong.”
“Wrong?” my mother says sharply.
“Wrong,” I repeat, looking right at her. I hope she knows I mean all of it: not just what MASH has done but what she’s done, too—making herself part of my life when I don’t want her here, forcing me to share with her when I have never, ever wanted to. “Itwould be unethical to keep going.”
“What are you suggesting?” Evelyn says. The air in the room feels thin, no oxygen to it, like everyone’s holding their breath.
“I’m not suggesting anything.” I look straight at her. “I’m telling you. I put up with all the media training, the new survey questions, that doctoryou claim to be consulting in Los Angeles, but not this. MASH is mine, and we need to shut it down.”
There’s a heartbeat pause, and then my mother says, “Everybody out.”
Her eyes lock on mine, steady in the commotion of everyone rising around us. When Miller makes to stand, I reach for his wrist to stop him.
“No,” I say, still looking at my mother. “He stays.”
Her gaze flicks to him, shrewd as a bird’s. Miller and I have done all of this—every awful and amazing part—together. I wonder how much of him she remembers: that two-year-old with a head of dark hair, her best friend’s baby. As Miller lowers into the seat, she looks back at me and nods.
“Rose,” she says when the doors shut behind me. “You should be proud of what you’ve made here. I’m certainly proud of you.”
