Page 6 of So Close

5

ALIYAH

I studymy reflection as I carefully wipe the bright pink “Rosana” shade off my lips and switch to a nude gloss. Stepping back, I eye the result and nod – much more fitting for the circumstances. I smile, imagining the look on Amy’s face when I hung up on her. If there is anything reliable about my daughter-in-law, it’s that she’s always wasted drunk by five o’clock. If I handled the call right, she’ll be blacked out by three instead.

The girl is beautiful but useless. She had one skill, and we’ve exhausted it. And her fixation on one of my sons is hurting another. For that alone, I want her out of our lives. It won’t be long now. What started as a glass of wine with dinner became two. Then the entire bottle. Why not add a splash of whiskey in the morning to kick off the day? Followed by a cocktail with lunch. All too easy, really. She wanted to tumble face-first into the bottom of a glass. I just gave her a little push to help her along.

“Are you ready?” Darius asks, stepping into view behind me. He’s put on his jacket, and a frown mars his brow. His cologne is subtle and soothing, a woodsy scent I custom-designed for him. It suits him. He is as firmly anchored as a sequoia, strong and steadfast. He really is a credit to me. Too many mothers raise sons with no respect for women.

I face him. “Did you lock up those blueprints?”

“Yes, of course. Where do you think I’ve been?”

His dark hair falls artfully across his brow. His lean face resembles mine, but the pale blue of his eyes comes from his father: such a strong trait, those eyes. Ramin and Rosana have them, too.

He scowls. “We’re almost done. We could get our comments back to the architect today.”

“And he won’t get to them until Monday.” I smooth his lapels.

If only Amy knew that her husband spends his Friday afternoons working with me on the design of our proposed Seattle research facility. Instead, she thinks the worst of her husband. A little suggestion is all it takes to trigger her paranoia.

Darius isn’t faithless like Paul, my first husband. I’d suspected Kane’s father was having an affair but couldn’t prove it. I chose to believe I was too essential for him ever to end our marriage, not just as the mother of his child but to the company I’d helped him build. Baharan Pharmaceuticals was everything to him, our shared life’s work, and he adored Kane – or so I’d thought, right up to the moment I learned he’d pulled every cent he could out of the company and run off to South America.

I straighten Darius’s tie. “I’m disappointed in you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re being so irritable about supporting your brother in a time of personal crisis.”

His brow arches. “I can’t, and I won’t because he’d never show me the same courtesy.”

“Darius.” My tone clears the barest hint of sulkiness from his face. “You don’t know that. And if you won’t do it for him, do it for me. This is distressing for me, too.”

The look he shoots me is caustic, but I don’t care if he thinks I’m a hypocrite. I did what I had to do to survive. Because of how I changed after Paul’s betrayal, I did better with my second marriage and outlasted the terms of the prenup, so I got what I was due. And it’s not like I didn’t support Kane to adulthood.

In any case, it’s futile pointing out that Darius has never had a crisis of any kind because Kane has insulated him since re-entering our lives. Darius owes so much to his older brother – his freedom from student debt, his livelihood and even his wife.

When Kane approached me about resuscitating Baharan Pharmaceuticals six years ago, I thought we might finally become a family. My second husband – who hadn’t been remotely interested in raising another man’s son – was finally out of the picture. Kane took my advice about seeing his brothers educated for key positions within the company. I’d thought perhaps my children would all be together at last, but only Rosana was happy about reuniting with her eldest brother. Darius and Ramin bristled against Kane from the first, resenting being viewed as obligations.

I doubt even dethroning Kane as head of the company would soothe the resentment gnawing at Darius. He can’t stop feeling that his responsibility for his younger siblings has been usurped. And really, it’s probably best that the brothers aren’t close. It could be problematic if they ever formed a united front.

“I just don’t understand why we have to rush over there,” he argues. “He’ll need time to get his new story straight, and his wife is being treated for whatever is wrong with her. We’re putting off something important for nothing.”

“Oh? Do you truly think it’s nothing that Kane’s been telling everyone he’s widowed when he’s evidently not?”

Though Lily apparently seemed near death on the street and might yet die. The driver who hit her didn’t brake and fled the scene, according to Witte, when he called while she was being loaded into the ambulance. I don’t tell Darius that something about Witte’s voice gave me chills like someone was walking over my grave.

“Are you surprised Kane lies?” my son scoffs. “Come on. And I’m not saying his wife isn’t a concern. I’m just saying she isn’t a concern atthis very moment. Kane’s been getting along just fine without us in his life for years. He can deal with his own bullshit. It’s not my problem.”

He says that because he doesn’t know much about the past. He was a high school senior and at school when the Greenwich police came by our home in Saddle River asking about my eldest son, whom I hadn’t seen or conversed with in years.

The detectives said their questions regarding Kane’s character and temperament were just “routine.” Maybe they were. When it quickly became apparent that I had very little knowledge of my son’s adult life – I hadn’t even known he had legally changed his surname – they asked me why we were out of touch, and I told them the truth: he didn’t get along with my husband, his stepfather. They’d glanced at each other, thanked me for my time, and left.

I still don’t know if their visit had anything to do with his wife. I didn’t even know he was married at the time of the interview. And I’ve never discussed it with anyone, not even Kane, who appeared on my doorstep just days later to discuss rebuilding Baharan.

Our relationship is tenuous at best, and I won’t risk a rift that might jeopardize my position at Baharan until I can take over the company.

“Of course it’s your problem,” I press. “It’s a problem for all of us. What brought her backnow?What has she been doing all these years?”

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