herself. There was no point in discussing it further. “You will leave Italy today. You will not return to the lab, or contact anyone who works there. If you don’t agree, I’ll be forced to terminate your position at the museum.”
“You don’t run the Institute anymore, and neither does Father. Andrew and I do.”
“If you want that situation to continue, you’ll do what I say. Whether you believe it or not, I’m trying to save you embarrassment.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Mother. We wouldn’t want to spoil your record.” Banished, was all she could think. Cut off from the most exciting work of her life, and sent away as powerlessly as a child ordered to her room.
“I’ve given you your choice, Miranda. If you stay, you’ll do so alone. And you will no longer be welcome at any Standjo facility, including the New England Institute of Art History.”
Miranda could feel herself begin to shake, from both fear and rage. Even as she heard the inner screams of that fear and rage echo in her head, she spoke quietly. “I’ll never forgive you for this. Not ever. But I’ll go, because the Institute’s important to me. And because, when this is over, you’ll have to apologize, and I’ll tell you to go to hell. Those will be the last words I ever speak to you.”
She took the snifter out of her mother’s hand. “Salute,” she said, and tossed back the brandy defiantly. Setting the snifter down with a crack of glass against wood, she turned and walked out. She didn’t look back.
four
A ndrew Jones was thinking of marriage and failure as he sipped Jack Daniel’s Black, straight up, from a short glass. He was well aware that everyone who knew him thought it was long past time for him to turn the page on his divorce and move on.
But he didn’t feel like moving on. Not when it was so comforting to wallow.
Marriage had been an enormous step for him, and one he’d considered carefully even though he’d been wildly in love. Making that commitment, turning an emotion into a legal document, had given him many sleepless nights. No one on the Jones side of the family had ever made a successful run at marriage.
He and Miranda called it the Jones curse.
His grandmother had outlived her husband by more than a decade and had never—at least in her grandson’s hearing—had a good word to say about the man she’d lived with for thirty-odd years.
It was hard to blame her, as the late and unlamented Andrew Jones had been infamous for his affection for young blondes and Jack Daniel’s Black.
His namesake was well aware that the old man had been a bastard, clever and successful, but a bastard nonetheless.
Andrew’s father preferred digs to home fires, and had spent most of his son’s childhood away from home, brushing ancient dirt from ancient bones. When he was in residence, he’d agreed with everything his wife said, blinked owlishly at his children as if he’d forgotten how they came to be in his line of sight, and locked himself for hours at a time in his office.
It hadn’t been women and whiskey for Charles Jones. He’d committed his adultery and neglect with science.
Not that the great Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones had given a shit, Andrew thought as he brooded over what he’d intended to be one friendly drink at Annie’s Place. She’d left the child-rearing to servants, run the household like a Nazi general, and ignored her husband as sublimely as he had ignored her.
It always made Andrew shudder to imagine that at least twice, these cold-blooded, self-absorbed people had tangled in bed long enough to conceive a couple of children.
When he was a boy, Andrew had often fantasized that Charles and Elizabeth had purchased him and his sister from some poor couple who’d wept copiously when they traded their children for rent money.
When he was older, he’d enjoyed imagining that he and Miranda had been created in a lab, experiments conceived out of science rather than sex.
But the sad
“You don’t run the Institute anymore, and neither does Father. Andrew and I do.”
“If you want that situation to continue, you’ll do what I say. Whether you believe it or not, I’m trying to save you embarrassment.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Mother. We wouldn’t want to spoil your record.” Banished, was all she could think. Cut off from the most exciting work of her life, and sent away as powerlessly as a child ordered to her room.
“I’ve given you your choice, Miranda. If you stay, you’ll do so alone. And you will no longer be welcome at any Standjo facility, including the New England Institute of Art History.”
Miranda could feel herself begin to shake, from both fear and rage. Even as she heard the inner screams of that fear and rage echo in her head, she spoke quietly. “I’ll never forgive you for this. Not ever. But I’ll go, because the Institute’s important to me. And because, when this is over, you’ll have to apologize, and I’ll tell you to go to hell. Those will be the last words I ever speak to you.”
She took the snifter out of her mother’s hand. “Salute,” she said, and tossed back the brandy defiantly. Setting the snifter down with a crack of glass against wood, she turned and walked out. She didn’t look back.
four
A ndrew Jones was thinking of marriage and failure as he sipped Jack Daniel’s Black, straight up, from a short glass. He was well aware that everyone who knew him thought it was long past time for him to turn the page on his divorce and move on.
But he didn’t feel like moving on. Not when it was so comforting to wallow.
Marriage had been an enormous step for him, and one he’d considered carefully even though he’d been wildly in love. Making that commitment, turning an emotion into a legal document, had given him many sleepless nights. No one on the Jones side of the family had ever made a successful run at marriage.
He and Miranda called it the Jones curse.
His grandmother had outlived her husband by more than a decade and had never—at least in her grandson’s hearing—had a good word to say about the man she’d lived with for thirty-odd years.
It was hard to blame her, as the late and unlamented Andrew Jones had been infamous for his affection for young blondes and Jack Daniel’s Black.
His namesake was well aware that the old man had been a bastard, clever and successful, but a bastard nonetheless.
Andrew’s father preferred digs to home fires, and had spent most of his son’s childhood away from home, brushing ancient dirt from ancient bones. When he was in residence, he’d agreed with everything his wife said, blinked owlishly at his children as if he’d forgotten how they came to be in his line of sight, and locked himself for hours at a time in his office.
It hadn’t been women and whiskey for Charles Jones. He’d committed his adultery and neglect with science.
Not that the great Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones had given a shit, Andrew thought as he brooded over what he’d intended to be one friendly drink at Annie’s Place. She’d left the child-rearing to servants, run the household like a Nazi general, and ignored her husband as sublimely as he had ignored her.
It always made Andrew shudder to imagine that at least twice, these cold-blooded, self-absorbed people had tangled in bed long enough to conceive a couple of children.
When he was a boy, Andrew had often fantasized that Charles and Elizabeth had purchased him and his sister from some poor couple who’d wept copiously when they traded their children for rent money.
When he was older, he’d enjoyed imagining that he and Miranda had been created in a lab, experiments conceived out of science rather than sex.
But the sad
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