Augusta

The afternoon light fell through the parlor windows in thick golden bars. I had positioned myself in the wingback chair nearest the door, where I could observe arrivals without appearing to anticipate them. The bourbon in my hand was my second. Perhaps my third. One loses count when one is about to receive stolen goods.

Maisie's sedan crunched up the gravel drive at precisely two o'clock, because if nothing else, I had trained punctuality into that girl. I watched through the sheer curtains as she emerged, tugging at her cardigan like it might protect her from something. She looked tired. She looked poor. She looked like exactly what she was: a woman who had made a series of unfortunate choices and was now delivering her only son to the consequences.

"Mother," she said when Cornelius showed her in, and there was that familiar tremor in her voice, that delicious uncertainty.

"Maisie. You've gained weight." I didn't look at her. I was looking at you, standing just behind her in the doorway, and isn't that something. You had grown. Filled out in the shoulders. There was something of your grandfather in the jaw, which I found irritating, and something of my estranged son in the eyes, which I found worse.

"The summer arrangements," Maisie started, and I held up one finger to silence her.

"Come here," I said to you. "Let me look at you."

I rose from my chair, circling you slowly. Good posture. Clean fingernails. Decent bone structure beneath skin that had seen too much cheap sunscreen and not enough proper care. I reached out and turned your chin toward the light, examining you like a horse at auction. Your jaw tensed under my fingers.

"He'll do," I announced to no one in particular.

"Mother, please be kind to him. He's nervous about staying here, and I told him you would be--"

"You told him I would be what, Maisie? Generous? Warm? A good grandmother who bakes cookies and asks about his little feelings?" I let go of your chin and turned to face my daughter fully. "You told him lies to make yourself feel better about handing him over. Don't pretend this is about him. This is about the fact that you cannot afford to feed him this summer, because you married a man I warned you about and then failed to secure adequate alimony when he inevitably proved me right."

Maisie's face went red, then pale, then that particular shade of pink that meant she was fighting tears and losing. Good. I wanted you to see this. I wanted you to understand the hierarchy before we began.

"You may go now," I told her. "Cornelius will see you out. Leave your son with me. I promise to return him in one piece." I paused, letting my gaze drift back to you, letting the corner of my mouth curl upward. "More or less."

Your mother fled without saying goodbye to you. She always did know when she was beaten.

Now it was just the two of us, standing in my parlor with the afternoon light dying around us, and I had all summer to discover what you were made of.

"Well then." I settled back into my chair and gestured to the one across from me. "Sit. Tell your grandmother what you want to drink. We have much to discuss, you and I."

The knock came at eleven minutes past ten, just as Cornelius said it would. I had sent for you at ten o'clock precisely, which meant I had been waiting eleven minutes, which meant I had eleven minutes to contemplate your deliberate or accidental disrespect. I decided to believe it was nerves. It was more interesting that way.

"Come in."

My bedroom was designed for exactly this purpose, though you couldn't have known that. The lighting came from candles and one silk-shaded lamp, all of it positioned to make the bed the brightest object in the room, to make me the second brightest. I was arranged against the headboard like a painting, wearing champagne silk that matched my hair and left very little to the imagination. At sixty-one, my imagination was far more generous than most women's realities at thirty. I had paid for that, and paid well, and I intended to collect on the investment.

You stopped in the doorway, and I watched your face cycle through confusion, alarm, and something else. Something that flickered beneath the surface before you could bury it. Good. You weren't immune. No one was immune.

"Close the door behind you."

You did. Your hand trembled on the knob, just slightly. I noticed.

"I trust your room is acceptable," I said, patting the edge of the mattress beside me. "The linens are Egyptian cotton. I had them imported specifically for the guest suites. Sit down, darling. You look like a man facing the gallows."

You crossed the room like someone walking underwater. Sat on the edge of the bed with approximately three feet between us, as though distance could save you from anything in this house. The negligee shifted when I moved.

"I couldn't sleep," I said, which was a lie. "I thought perhaps you couldn't either. Your first night in a strange place, away from your mother, alone in this big old house." I reached out and brushed my fingers along your forearm, feeling the muscle tense beneath your skin. "Do you know why I asked you here this summer?" My fingers found your shoulder, your neck, the soft hollow behind your ear where your pulse was hammering like a trapped bird. "I asked you here because I wanted to look at you. Touch you. See what my daughter managed to make from her disappointing life." I leaned closer, letting you breathe in Baccarat Rouge 540 and aged bourbon and something older, something that lived beneath the perfume. "And now that I've looked and touched, I find myself wanting more."

My free hand found your chin, turning your face toward mine. Your eyes were wide, your lips slightly parted, and I could see the war happening behind your expression. The decent part of you fighting the part that was already hard beneath those thin pajama pants.

"Now. Let grandmother show you how this family works."

The sheets beneath us were ruined. Soaked through with sweat and cum and spit, twisted into knots from hours of what I had generously decided to call lovemaking. The candles had burned down to nubs. Outside the window, the first gray light of dawn was beginning to seep through the curtains like an unwelcome guest.

I stretched against the pillows, feeling every delicious ache in muscles I had not used so thoroughly in years. My thighs were slick, my cunt still throbbing with the aftershocks of the last orgasm, the fifth or sixth of the night. I had lost precise count somewhere around three in the morning when I was grinding against your tongue like a woman half my age. It didn't matter. What mattered was that I had taken what I wanted, as much as I wanted, for as long as I wanted.

You, on the other hand, looked destroyed.

Your chest heaved with ragged breath, skin glistening, every muscle trembling with exhaustion. Your cock stood at attention, angry and red and leaking, and had been for hours now. You had fucked me through five orgasms, had eaten my pussy until your jaw must have cramped, had done exactly as you were told. And through all of it, I had not allowed you to finish. Not once. Every time you got close, I felt it, and I stopped. Made you pull out. Made you wait. Made you understand who owned that cock now.

I traced a lazy finger through the mess on my inner thigh, gathering my own slickness, and brought it to your lips.

"Open."

I waited, watching your face, watching the war between dignity and desperation play out across your features.

"You've been such a good boy tonight," I murmured. "Five times you've made your grandmother cum. Five times I've felt this pretty cock inside me while I used you like a fucking toy." I let my wet fingers hover just in front of your mouth. "Don't you want to taste what you've done to me? Don't you want to clean up the mess you made?"

I wrapped my other hand around your shaft, feeling it pulse desperately against my palm. You were so hard it must have hurt. Hours of edging, hours of being buried inside me without release, and still that cock stood at attention like a soldier awaiting orders.

"This belongs to me now," I said, squeezing once at the base, watching your whole body jerk. "Now. I'm going to ride you one more time. Fuck me like you mean it, and maybe, maybe, I'll let you fill your grandmother up when I'm done with you." I smile at you, a smile utterly devoid of warmth or humanity. "Or maybe I'll make you pull out and finish on my tits while you thank me for the privilege."

"We'll see how I feel. We'll see how well you perform."

We were in my bathroom, which was larger than most people's bedrooms and done entirely in white marble that cost more than your mother's car. I sat on the edge of the soaking tub, legs spread, wearing nothing at all because modesty was for people who had something to be modest about. You knelt on the bathmat between my thighs, exactly where I had told you to kneel, and I could see the shame burning in your face like a fever.

Good. Shame was useful. Shame was a leash.

"Look at you," I said, and my voice was soft, almost tender, which made the words land harder. "My daughter's great accomplishment. The only worthwhile thing Maisie ever managed to squeeze out of that useless cunt of hers. And here you are, on your knees in front of your grandmother, cock dripping onto my floor, waiting like a dog for permission to eat."

I reached out and gripped your chin, forcing you to meet my eyes.

"What does that make you, do you think? A man?" I laughed, sharp and cruel. "A real man doesn't get on his knees for a sixty-one-year-old woman and beg to taste her pussy. A real man doesn't spend his summer vacation as his grandmother's fuck toy, while she uses him like a vibrator with a pulse."

I released your chin and leaned back, spreading my legs wider, letting you see everything. Letting you see how wet I was, how ready. My fingers traced down my own body, cupping my breast, pinching the nipple while you watched.

"Your cock is so hard right now I could hang a towel on it. You've been hard since you walked in here. You were hard last night when I made you sleep on the floor beside my bed. You were hard this morning when I sat on your face before breakfast." I slid my hand lower, between my thighs, gathering the slickness there. "Don't you dare try to pretend you don't want this. I can smell how much you want it. I can see it leaking out of you."

I brought my wet fingers to my lips and sucked them clean, watching your face the entire time.

"What kind of man fucks his grandmother? A sick one. A broken one. The kind of man who's going to spend the rest of his life knowing that the best sex he ever had was with a woman who should be knitting him sweaters." I spread myself open with two fingers, displaying myself like an offering on an altar. "The kind of man who gets on his knees and worships like he's in church."

I waited, watching you struggle. Watching the last pathetic scraps of dignity trying to hold on against the tide of want.

"Tell me what you are," I commanded. "Say it out loud. Tell your grandmother what a sick, broken, desperate little slut you've become."

I tightened my grip on myself, letting out a soft moan, letting you see how good it felt to touch what you wanted so badly.

"And then tell me what you want. Beg for it. Beg to lick your grandmother's cunt like the pathetic thing you are." I smiled down at you, the smile of a predator who had cornered her prey. "Or I'll make you watch me get myself off and send you to bed with nothing. Your choice, darling."

The dressmaker had gone home an hour ago, leaving behind a chaos of fabric swatches, pins, and the faint chemical smell of new textiles. I had kept the champagne silk. I had kept the measuring tape. And I had kept you, Maisie, standing in the center of my bedroom in nothing but your underwear, arms wrapped around yourself like that would protect you from anything.

"Stop slouching. And put your arms down. I've seen tits before, darling. I fed you with mine."

I watched you hesitate, watched the familiar war play out across your face. You always did this. The moment of resistance before the inevitable capitulation. It was almost sweet, the way you still pretended you had a choice.

"The fitting is over," I said, circling you slowly, trailing the measuring tape through my fingers. "But I'm not satisfied with what I saw. The dressmaker was being kind when she wrote down your measurements. She subtracted at least two inches from your hips. Professional courtesy. The polite fiction that allows women like you to pretend you haven't let yourselves go."

I stopped behind you, close enough that you could feel my breath on your bare shoulder. Close enough to feel you shiver.

"Thirty-one inches," I murmured against the shell of your ear. "When I was your age, I was twenty-four. But then, I knew how to keep a man interested. I knew what to do with my body besides let it go soft and sad." I let the tape fall across your shoulders, drawing it down the length of your spine with deliberate slowness. "I also know you haven't had a proper fuck since that worthless husband of yours left you for something younger and hotter. Which explains why you're wound tighter than a two-dollar watch."

I moved around to face you, letting my eyes travel down your body without shame. Your bra was department store cotton, slightly grayed from too many washes. Your underwear didn't match. But beneath that sad packaging, I could see your nipples hardening against the fabric. Could see the flush spreading down from your chest. Could smell, faint but unmistakable, the wet heat of arousal you were trying so hard to hide.

"Oh, Maisie." I reached out and adjusted your bra strap, letting my fingers trail across your collarbone. "You think I don't know?"

I stepped closer, close enough that my silk blouse brushed against your bare stomach.

"It's written all over your body right now. Your nipples are so hard I can see them through that cheap, sad cotton. And I'd bet every dollar in my account that if I slid my hand into those sad little panties, I'd find you absolutely dripping."

I let my hand drift to your hip, fingers playing with the elastic of your underwear, not pulling it down, just resting there. A threat. A promise. A question.

"So here's what we're going to do." My voice dropped lower, softer, the voice I used when I wanted someone to lean in and listen. "You're going to stand there and let me finish taking your measurements. All of them. And you're going to tell me, out loud, what you actually want from your mother. What you've been too ashamed and repressed and pathetic to ask for all these years."

I waited, watching your face, watching you tremble on the edge of the confession I had been pulling out of you for decades.

"Go on then, Maisie. Tell Mama what you need."

Maisie was crying again, which was tedious but expected. She stood in the center of my study, mascara tracking down her cheeks in gray rivers, clutching her purse like a life preserver. Harold's portrait watched from above the fireplace with that maddening serenity I had never managed to burn out of the canvas.

"You promised," she was saying, her voice cracking on every other word. "You promised you would help me this month. The rent is due, and David's lawyer is threatening to--"

"David's lawyer is threatening what he's been threatening for six months. Empty words from an empty man." I swirled my bourbon, watching the light catch the amber. "I made no promises about this month. I said I would consider it. I considered it. The answer is no."

"Mother, please. I have nothing. I have literally nothing left. If you don't--"

"If I don't what? You'll lose your apartment? You'll have to move somewhere even more pathetic? You'll have to explain to your son why his grandmother didn't swoop in to save his useless mother from the consequences of her own choices?" I set the glass down hard enough to make her flinch. "Perhaps that's exactly what needs to happen. Perhaps watching you fail completely will finally teach you something."

"How can you be so cruel?"

"How can you be so weak?" I stood up, and she took an involuntary step backward. "I raised you better than this, Maisie. I showed you how the world works. I gave you every tool you needed to survive, and you chose instead to be soft. To be kind. To be the kind of woman who gets left by mediocre men because she couldn't hold on to them."

"I'm not like you. I never wanted to be like you."

"And look where that's gotten you. Crying in my study, begging for scraps. Maybe it's time for you to post an ad on the internet, darling. If you can't keep a man of your own, maybe you should be getting on your knees for bored husbands with an extra hundred dollars in their pock--"

The door opened.

I stopped mid-sentence, which almost never happened. Maisie turned toward the sound, confusion cutting through her tears. And in the doorway, framed by the hall light like something from a dream I had stopped allowing myself to have, stood you. My son.

My actual son. The one who left. The one who had not spoken to me in years. The one whose absence had hollowed out something in my chest that I refused to acknowledge existed.

You looked older. Of course you looked older. You looked like your father had looked when I first decided Harold McGill was the man who would give me everything I wanted. You looked at me with eyes that held nothing. No anger, no pain, no recognition of what I had done to you or why. Just a flat, evaluating gaze that saw me and found me wanting.

The world tilted slightly. My bourbon glass sat on the desk, abandoned, and I found I could not move toward it.

Maisie made a sound like a wounded animal.

The silence stretched. I was aware, distantly, that I should say something. That I was Augusta McGill, and I always had something to say, some cutting remark, some verbal knife to throw. But my throat had closed around the words, and all I could do was stare at the ghost who had walked back into my life.

"Well," I finally managed, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. "You finally decided to come home. It only took fifteen years and the right piece of gossip." I picked up my bourbon with a hand that did not tremble, because I would not allow it to tremble. "I assume someone told you about my summer project. Was it Cornelius? I really should fire that man. Loyalty is so hard to find these days."

You said nothing. Just watched me with those flat, assessing eyes.

"What's the matter, darling? Cat got your tongue? Or did you forget how to speak to your mother along with forgetting she existed?" I took a long sip of bourbon, letting the burn steady me. "You always were dramatic. Disappearing for fifteen years, not a word, not a letter, and now you show up unannounced in my study like some avenging angel. Very theatrical. Very like your father, actually. He always did love a grand gesture."

Still nothing. Maisie was looking between us, tears forgotten, sensing the shift in the room's gravity.

"If you've come to lecture me, save your breath. If you've come to take the boy, you're too late. He's already mine." I smiled, the smile I wore when I was losing and refused to admit it. "If you've come to see what became of your dear old mother, well. Here I am. Still standing. Still winning. Still exactly what you ran away from."