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didn’t let it deter me. I wanted a reaction. I wanted something other than the surface bullshit. I wanted, needed there to be more to Alicia Whitmore than met the eye. “I’m not going anywhere. I will be a thorn in your side until you tell me what happened to you.”
    She slid a couple of inches away, red sparking her fair cheeks. “Does the concept of personal space confound you, Leila?”
    “I’ll sit in your lap if it means I get the truth.”
    Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull. “You wouldn’t.”
    I didn’t flinch. “Try me.”
    “What do you want to hear?” She tossed her napkin on the table. “That I’m a terrible person? A terrible mother?”
    “Oh, that’s obvious,” I said matter-of-factly. But there was more to the story. I didn’t know if it was because we were so close that I could make out every twitch and tell-tale sign that she wasn’t as unaffected as she seemed or if I was genuinely breaking through the Whitmore wall. It didn’t matter. It was time for something real. “I’m interested in what happened to you that created the woman in front of me.”
    She tilted her head to the side, her salt and pepper hair catching the light. The gray sparkled like diamonds, but her eyes were a different kind of gray. Muted. Dull. Like ash, after the fire’s burnt out and there’s nothing left. “You want to hear my life story? What are you expecting? Some tale of woe? A cold, empty mansion? A mother who treated me like her perfect china doll and whenever I dared to step out of line, shattered me? A father who was always off on business, even if he was right in front of me? Would that satisfy you?”
    “The truth would satisfy me.”
    “Even a lie can be truth.” Alicia pulled her wine glass back to her lips. This time, she didn’t wet her tongue. She poured it down her throat. When she was done, she put the glass down and locked her eyes on me. “I don’t like you.”
    “Well, duh, but-”
    “I don’t like you because I see myself in you.” Her eyes washed over my face, amused at the shock that drained all color from it. “Hard to fathom, I know, but once upon a time, I was asking the servants for their names too.
    I knew I was lucky and despite my mother’s attempts, I was aware there were people with a lot less. I was sixteen when I found out that one of the maid’s was pregnant with no help from family or the baby’s father. I went to my parents, determined to do something.” Alicia’s voice tightened. “I was so foolish. I can still hear my mother’s laughter. The way she clutched her sides.” Her eyes turned to stone, but I could see the pain etched in the rock. Time may have weathered it, but the marks were still there. “‘Alicia, don’t you know we’re already taking care of countless illegitimate babies?’ She said that the maid had resources and when I tried to appeal to her, as a mother, she slapped me across the face and told me that no one forced her to spread her legs.”
    I never thought I’d feel anything resembling pity for Alicia, but my heart ached in my chest. It took too much to say the words, but I pried them free. “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be,” she scoffed dismissively. “My mother was trying to prepare me for the real world. And there’s a natural order to that world.”
    Jesus. That moment of sympathy was short lived. “I get it. Now you’re your mother. But what happened to the maid? What happened to you?”
    “The maid was let go.” Alicia answered crisply. “And as for me, nothing happened to me. You can fight who you are—tooth and nail, miserable, bloodied, and alone—or you can stop swimming against the current.”
    I looked down at my hands, balled so tight in my lap that I was surprised I didn’t draw blood. But I just saw my bleached white knuckles. White, blank, nothingness. It was like Alicia had some internal switch and decided to flip it to save herself. But she didn’t save herself at all. She was doomed. She