The House Girl by Tara Conklin Page A

extraordinary, each wrinkle and eyelash precisely drawn. An old woman pursing her lips, annoyed, her hair a helmet of tightly wound curls. A teenager with a Mohawk and a row of earrings, a placid, satisfied smile curling his lips. Each was labeled with an obscure family reference scripted in elaborate scrolling letters: Sister’s Nephew’s Son, Fourth Cousin Once Removed, Grandmother’s Uncle . Lina had no idea if these people were actually Grace’s relations, and thus also her own, or Grace’s friends, neighbors on their block, or people Grace had passed once on the sidewalk. Lina grew up envying these strangers, for they had been the subjects of Grace’s attention in a way that Lina had not: Lina had never seen any pictures of herself made by Grace, a fact that still managed to cause a mystified little jolt of hurt whenever she considered it.
    Upstairs, the studio door opened and closed, followed by the sound of Oscar’s feet on the stairs and then moving down the hall to Lina’s door.
    “Come in,” Lina called before Oscar had a chance to knock on the half-cracked door.
    Oscar pushed the door fully open with a creak of old hinge and leaned against the frame, hands in pockets. He looked disheveled and tired. “Just wanted to say good night. Working hard?” and he pointed his chin toward the papers and books that covered the bed.
    “New case,” said Lina. “I’m trying to get up to speed.”
    “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you—whatever happened to Stavros?” Oscar said with careful indifference. “I haven’t heard you talk about him in a while.”
    “We broke up.” Lina turned back to the papers. Stavros, with his wire rims, the unprotected nape of his neck, how Lina had thrilled at the sight of him in the beginning. Neither of them had changed, not exactly, it was just circumstances—this is what they had told each other—and timing. That one long phone conversation (four hours? five?) and neither of them had cried or yelled, the decision was made mutually, amicably, responsibly. She knew she should have told Oscar about the breakup months ago. He had always liked Stavros, despite their vast differences in political beliefs and chosen professions.
    “I thought you guys were pretty serious,” Oscar said.
    “We were, I guess. I mean, four years is a long time. But it just didn’t make much sense. He’s in San Francisco. We’re both working so much.”
    “Love doesn’t always make sense, Carolina.”
    “Dad. Please. You sound like a greeting card.” Annoyed, she looked up at him and was surprised to see his face so drawn. His eyes roamed over the papers on Lina’s bed, the piles of books, the open notebook with all her scribbling. “I’m fine, you know,” she said quickly. “Maybe I’m just waiting. Waiting for something like you and Mom had.” Lina wanted her father to know that this wasn’t all she expected out of life, work and late nights and a burning laptop, but somehow these words landed wrong. Oscar’s face registered a hurt shock and then closed up, and Lina immediately regretted having mentioned her mother.
    Oscar shifted away from the doorframe, and his eyes went to the floor. “Well, I will take my greeting-card self downstairs to bed then. Good night, Carolina.” He did not blow her a kiss, as Lina was expecting. He shut the door behind him.
    “Good night,” she called after him, feeling as if she should apologize to him, though for what she wasn’t sure. The breakup with Stavros? The greeting-card remark? The choices she had made, was making every day, to build a life so different from his own?
    Turning to her bedside table, Lina picked up the photograph of Oscar and Grace, the original of the reprint that Lina kept in her office. In the photo, her parents sat at a restaurant, the curving mouths of two wineglasses just visible at the bottom of the frame. Oscar’s left arm circled Grace’s shoulders; Grace’s hands were hidden but Lina had always imagined that