Page 41 of Push & Pull
“I’ve heard of you!” said the woman in the amber dress.
Petra offered a heavy blink to the woman who had caught her off guard. “You have?”
“My father works with Richard Worthington quite often. He’s from the Chicago area! Are you related?”
All attention turned back to Petra. Simone practically dared her to answer the question.
“Of course I know him! Uncle Richard! Oh, he’s not myactualuncle, mind you, but he’s my father’s cousin. To be blunt, I don’t know what that makes Richard to me.”
“First cousin once removed,” Simone supplied.
How the hell do you know that?“Sounds about right. We don’t keep up with that in my family, but he is Uncle Richard to me. I haven’t seen him in so long, though. How is he doing?”
“I… I don’t know,” said the amber-dress woman. “I’ve only met him once or twice.”
“Worthington,” Shéla repeated. “Does that make you Petra Worthington?”
“Me? Oh, no, no. Finley Worthington is my father, but mymotheris…” Petra almost said her mother’s real name. Perhaps she shouldn’t share the name of a woman who was easy to find in a prison roster. “Ingrid Whitaker. Yup. That’s my mother. Also of Forest Glen.” Whitaker had been her foster family’s name. Was Ingrid her foster mother? No, because that was too easy to look up, too. “Although my mother doesn’t hold residence in Chicago much these days. She and my stepfather spend most of their year in Greece. They own a lovely villa on one of the islands.”
“Is that how you met Simone?” Every word out of Shéla’s mouth challenged anything coming out of Petra’s.She’s good at spotting a liar, but I’m an excellent liar.Petra could play this game all day. She would feed impressive information that was impossible to verify. If she met Richard Worthington right now and he said,“I’ve never seen this girl in my life,”Petra would counter with,“Uncle Richard! How could you? Is this because you haven’t seen me since I was seven? Mother always told me that I had a memorable face! Perhaps it’s your eyes that need checking.”
“As it so happens,” Petra began, ready for this nugget, “we met in…”
“Rehab.”
Petra was startled by Simone’s blasé comment. “That’s…”
“We met in rehab, during my last stint.” Simone shrugged. “Now you know why I haven’t mentioned her yet. We’re both recovering addicts. You never know how it’s going to go with someone you met in rehab.”
“What were you in for?” The snotty woman on the other side of Shéla drank her water with a smack of her lips. “Methamphetamine?”
Okay, so she’s the Big Bitch here.Petra would have laughed at that deadpan delivery if it weren’t directed at her, though.
“Pot.”
Interest instantly deflated at the table. “Pot?” Shéla asked. “You were in rehab for… marijuana…?”
The woman in the amber dress shook her head. “Isn’t that legal in half the Union now?”
“It’s still addictive,” Petra said, clamping a hand on Simone’s knee beneath the table. The more she squeezed that knee, the more she conveyed the message to let her do the storytelling. “Yeah, I had a big pot problem a couple years back. Was smoking like… a pound a day.”
“A pound?” Simone asked, utterly incredulous. “I don’t think you mean that much.”
You’re the one who knows her drugs, honey.“According to my mother, even one ounce a day was a problem for the image of our family. So I told her I’d go to rehab if she promised to take me back to Greece with her. Well! What do you know? I go to rehab, I get out, and my mother is already in Greece with a stepdad I barely know.”
“At least you met me there.”
“So you two have been dating since you got out of rehab, Simone?” Shéla asked.
“Sure feels like it.”
“Fascinating. Because weren’t you dating Daria Marseille a few weeks ago?”
“We only recently became exclusive,” Petra said.
“That’s right. When you’re in rehab, theyreallydiscourage you from dating your fellow residents… but because she was there for some pot, I thought it wouldn’t be too bad. Not like we’re carrying around Narcan anymore.”
“This is getting dark,” muttered the woman in the amber dress.
