He points to the computer screen again. “You spent the night at his place, Kennedy. Try telling me that again.”
My eyes bug out. “Oh my god, you’re assuming because I slept there that I slept with him? I haven’t had sex with him.”
He cringes. “You honestly expect me to believe that?”
“Actually, I do, Dad. I do expect you to believe it,” I say, taking some small solace in the truth of this statement.
“I have a hard time believing you, Kennedy, considering how you manipulated all the facts before.”
“I had reasons!”
“So? I’m sure your mother had her reasons for spinning tall tales too.”
A plume of anger streaks through me. “Don’t compare me to her.”
“How is this different? Tell me.”
“Because I lied about Jay and Noah for good reasons. For the right reasons.”
“There are no right reasons to lie,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me in the first place you liked Noah?”
“Oh, gee. I don’t know. Maybe because he’s Mom’s agent and friend and because he’s older than I am.”
“And as you can see, those would be all the reasons why you shouldn’t be involved with him. Not to mention that it’s creepy and weird that he wants to go out with a younger girl.”
“I think it’s unfair and judgmental that you don’t believe I’m capable of making a mature decision about who to date,” I say, crossing my arms.
“Is it really mature to tell lies? To deceive your parents? To go out with him for half a year and then start it again and lie and blame someone else?”
“It’s not as if you and Mom have made it so easy to tell the truth,” I say, my chest tightening, like I’ve been backed into a corner.
He huffs out a heavy sigh. “Kennedy, please. It’s wrong.”
“I’m not cheating on anyone.” My voice rises with desperation as I fight to convince him. “Don’t make me pay for Mom’s mistakes.”
“But you lied to me too,” he says in a fierce low voice. Then a whisper. “Just like her.”
I move my chair closer to him, and now it’s my turn to reach for his hand. “I’m not her. I haven’t done the things she’s done. You can be mad at me all you want for not telling you sooner. And you can say I never would have told you if you hadn’t found out. But guess what? Now you know. And now I’m telling you everything. It started last June and I pursued him and he resisted for the longest time, but I was the one who kept visiting his office and asking him out, and eventually he went out with me. And I get that you think that is wrong or gross or inappropriate or whatever, but ask yourself if it’s truly so unreasonable that a smart, funny, thoughtful, sensitive guy who’s eight years older could fall in love with your daughter? I’m your daughter. I’m me. You’re supposed to think I’m amazing. You’re supposed to think I’m incredible. Is it so unreasonable that someone else could think those things too?”
My father looks hard at me, but I can tell the edges of his anger are muting. He softens as he says, “I’m also supposed to think no man is ever good enough for my daughter.”
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, Kennedy.”
“He is good enough for me.”
“No one is. Not him. Not anyone.”
I sense an opening. “Aren’t you glad it wasn’t Jay Fierstein after all?”
The corners of his lips curl up. “I can’t believe he has the gall to sue me after this,” my dad says, shaking his head, as he stares at a framed print on the wall, an image of a silver goblet fallen on its side, of a lemon half peeled. I think back to the time Jay and my dad traveled to Amsterdam, to help a big museum in New York put together an exhibit of Dutch still lifes, like those by Heda. How do you do turn around and stab your business partner in the back by canoodling with his ex-wife?
“I can’t believe your mother … ,” he starts, but doesn’t finish. He won’t bash her in front of me. He reaches a hand out to mine. “Let’s go pay her a visit.”
My eyes bug out. “What do you mean?”
“I think it’s time she knows that I know what’s going on.”
I shake my head. “No. I can’t do that.”
He nods firmly. “You can and we are going to.”
I shake my head more.
“You have nothing to be afraid of,” he says, like a coach encouraging me to get back on the field after a fall.
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the scene I have been trying to engineer for years. I dance around the truth, I toy with it, I taunt my mom with the bits and pieces I know, daring her to admit all, goading her to tell the truth. But now it’s going to happen, and I am terrified. Fear lodges inside me as we hail a cab and head uptown.
I knock on her door.
Chapter Thirty
Kennedy
My mom answers, and she doesn’t let my father’s presence deter her from plastering a welcoming smile across her face, and holding out her arm grandly to invite us in.
Her entourage is here—the usual LGO suspects, and even Bailey and Sean, so I guess my mom convinced Bailey that nothing ever happened. Noah sits on the couch, and for the first time ever I don’t want to see him. His face is blank, but I suspect it’s deliberate, like he’s trying to hide his surprise. I know because I’m doing the same.