Stella lifted the model of Cake House onto the trestle table in the hall.
“Did you plan to destroy it, like you have everything else my grandmother’s sent me?”
Jenny took a step backward, as though she’d been slapped. There were tears in her eyes, brought on by the lemon oil. She opened her mouth to try to explain herself, but there were no excuses. Just as Stella had suspected. No reason at all, other than selfish pride.
“Don’t tell me you thought I didn’t know.” Red spots had appeared on Stella’s cheeks. Had she grown overnight? Had she always looked quite so adult? So extremely self-righteous? “How stupid do you think I am? I’ve known since my seventh birthday. I followed you down the hall and watched you throw my present into the incinerator chute.”
“Of course I don’t think you’re stupid,” Jenny said. “I was only …”
“Trying to protect me? Making certain I wouldn’t be contaminated. By what? A teddy bear? A dollhouse? Or did you think she might pack my presents in poison? Maybe if I touched one, arsenic would course through my bloodstream. Was that it? Or maybe I would just know that someone cared about me.”
“Stella, you don’t understand my mother. How manipulative she is, now that she wants something. That something is you. She can rectify her mistakes. But she was never there for me. She only thought about herself.”
Stella actually laughed, but the sound was bitter. She’d practiced sneering in front of the mirror, and now she put that practice to use. “You can’t be serious.” Stella grabbed her boots and was pulling them on. Her mouth was pinched; her skin white as ice. “She was the one who thought only of herself? And of course you’re perfect. This is exactly what she said would happen. She told me you’d try to turn me against her. She said you’d blame her for everything.”
“What do you mean, she told you?” Everything Jenny had ever wanted for her daughter seemed to be slipping away in this very instant, on this very day. Everything she had tried to do so right seemed to have somehow gone terribly wrong. “Have you been talking to your grandmother?”
“I’ve been talking to her for years. That’s right! We call each other when you’re not around. When you can’t butt in and ruin things for us the way you ruin everything.”
Stella wound a scarf around her neck. Her eyes were cold, flecked with yellow. The same eyes her father had. She had more of his attributes than she had ever imagined. She realized that in the instant when she saw that she’d hurt her mother. She didn’t have to be the good girl, minding her manners, doing as she was told. Stella could tell that the balance of power had shifted and it felt good. Somehow, while her mother wasn’t paying attention, Stella had gained control.
“Well, I love this present my grandmother sent, and I don’t care what you think. If it’s not here when I get home from school, I’m leaving. I mean it. I’ll move in with my father.”
“Oh, Stella, don’t be ridiculous.” Will was too self-centered to take care of anyone; he hadn’t even had Stella sleep over at his place. In order for her to stay at his apartment, he’d have to clean up, he’d have to go to the market, buy milk and bread, set his alarm clock, think about someone other than himself.
All the same, Jenny felt pinpricks of fear along the back of her neck. People lost each other all the time, didn’t they? People walked right out of each other’s lives.
Keep your mouth shut, Jenny warned herself. Wait this day out and be smart. Thirteen, she reminded herself. That’s all it is. It’s a number, but it’s an illness, and like any virus, it will pass.
“I mean it,” Stella said as she set out for school, already late, but taking her time, flushed with her new sense of power. “I’ll leave and I won’t come back.”
Jenny had said these same words to her mother, and not long after, she’d made good on the threat. She was wise enough now to let Stella go without further argument. After she heard the front door close, she forced herself to look at the little house that had been sent from Unity, even though the mere sight made her feverish. She’d forgotten how like a wedding cake it was, with its circular structure painted white. She’d forgotten how pretty it could seem from a distance, if you didn’t know any better, if you hadn’t been inside. There was her bedroom at the rear of the house, with the sheer curtains in the windows, the place where she’d spent so many lonely hours as she waited to grow up. There was the front door she’d slammed after that last fight with her mother, when she ran to meet Will and escape from Unity. And there, in the corner of the parlor, behind the sofas sewn from velvet scraps, beside bookcases that had been carefully stained to resemble golden oak, was a copy of the glass memento case. Ten tiny arrows, their tips painted scarlet, had been set in two neat rows.