The Daughters Break the Rules

by Joanna Philbin

  She grabbed her iPhone. She had to text Lizzie and Hudson. With her fingers trembling, she typed,

  OMG! Come to my house ASAP!!!!

  But as she touched send, she knew it was pointless. They’d never get there in time. When the Jurg said ten minutes, he always meant eight.

  She yanked out a duffel bag from underneath her bed as her mind raced in circles. How did he know she’d done it? And where were they going? Their apartment in Paris? Was he so mortified that he had to leave the country? Was he going to ship her off to Hawaii to live with her mother? For a time she’d wanted to go live with her mom, but she’d gotten over that by now. Maui was a twelve-hour plane ride and four time zones away. She’d never see her friends again.

  “Carina?” her father yelled from downstairs. “Let’s go!”

  She threw whatever she could reach into the bag—a few pairs of her Stella McCartney underwear, her purple suede Pumas, her worn-in Cheap Monday skinny jeans, her MacBook. At the last moment, she grabbed the purple stress ball from her desk. She had a feeling she was going to need it.

  She ran down the three flights of stairs, and then speed walked down the beige-carpeted hallway toward the front door. The walls were lined with part of her dad’s art collection, and Carina said a silent good-bye to all of the paintings as she walked by: Good-bye, Jasper Johns. Good-bye, Jackson Pollock. Just next to the Andy Warhol soup can stood the staff. They were in their usual bon voyage huddle, ready to see them off, except this time they were looking at her like she wasn’t coming back. Maia, the petite, sad-eyed housekeeper, gave her a teary smile. Nikita, still in her chef’s apron, slipped her a bag of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Marco gave her a small, official-looking nod. Even Otto, the serious security guard, gave her a brave smile. “Good luck, kid,” he whispered as she walked past, as if she were headed into mortal combat.

  Just before she reached the front door, she craned her head to look at her dad’s Basquiat one last time. It was simply a black crown against a sea of white paint, but it had always spoken to her, even though she didn’t quite know what it meant. For all she knew, this would be the last time she’d ever see it. A tear blurred her vision, and then she blinked it away.

  “Carina, come on!” her father shouted.

  She walked out the front door and saw them waiting in the elevator: her father in his Burberry wool coat, staring coldly past her, and beside him, holding his garment bag and a small valise like it was his life’s only purpose, Creepy Manservant himself, Ed Bracken. It was hard to believe, but his comb-over looked even thinner and greasier than usual.

  “Hello, Carina,” Ed said, giving her one of his typical smirks as she walked into the elevator.

  And that’s when it hit her. Ed had told her father on her. Somehow, he’d found out that she’d copied the memo and leaked it online. All he’d said was hello, but she knew this with as much certainty as she knew anything. As the elevator dropped down to the lobby, she promised herself that no matter what happened to her, she’d make Ed Bracken pay for this.

  Out on the street, Max and the black Mercedes were already waiting for them. Ed handed Max her father’s things and then took Carina’s duffel bag off her shoulder. “There’ll be more room for it in here,” he said snidely, dropping it in the trunk. Carina got in the car on the other side from her dad and watched Ed practically salute him as they drove off. Ugh, she thought. Of course it had been him.

  Now Carina watched as the Mercedes hung a left on Ninth Avenue and barreled straight into the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel. Her heartbeat sped up into double time. She was definitely leaving New York.

  “For your information, I didn’t steal that money,” her dad suddenly said, making her jump in the backseat. “I put it in a foundation. Do you know what a foundation is?”

  She looked over at him. He’d put his BlackBerry away and was staring out the window at the blur of white tile inside the Lincoln Tunnel.

  “Sort of,” she murmured.

  “It’s for tax purposes,” he said slowly. “That extra million is still going to the charity, but through the foundation instead of me. If you’d just asked me, you would have known that. Instead, you went ahead and formed your own conclusions.” He turned toward her, and his eyes blazed at her in the dim light. “How could you think I would actually do such a thing?”

  Easily, she wanted to say. But she just swallowed and looked away from him.

  “Well, this is all going to go away very fast,” the Jurg said briskly, turning back to the window. “Tomorrow morning, I’m releasing a statement that every dime is going to charity, and it’s going to run in every newspaper I own and all the ones I don’t. By the end of tomorrow, nobody’ll even remember this. It’ll be swallowed up by ten more important stories. But that still leaves the problem of what to do with you.”

  Carina felt the golf ball in her throat come back. It stretched upward toward her eyes, where it swelled dangerously to the brink of tears. She squeezed her stress ball.

  “You’ve had a reckless streak since you were a little girl,” he went on, tapping his steepled fingers on the car door. “You got it from your mother. And I stupidly thought you’d grow out of it.” He shook his head and gave a rueful chuckle. “It’s only gotten worse.”

  They emerged from the tunnel into the wide-open darkness of New Jersey. As they took the curve of the New Jersey Expressway, Carina could see the skyline of the city west across the Hudson, already so far away it looked like a painting.

  “So where are you sending me?” she asked.

  “California,” he said crisply. “There’s a school a few hours north of LA, near Big Sur.”

  Carina was silent. California: it was almost as far as Hawaii. “Is it a military school or something?”

  “Not quite,” her father said. “But close.”

  “And why are you coming?”

  “To make sure that you actually enroll. I can’t trust you to do that on your own. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  The car turned off the expressway and onto a deserted two-lane highway, and then they finally turned onto a gravel drive, past a sign that read TETERBORO AIRPORT. A chain-link fence opened for them like magic, and they drove into the airport. There, on the tarmac, under the ghostly white lights, was her father’s Gulfstream jet, its tiny door flipped open and waiting to ferry her across the country.

  “But when will I come back?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even. “When will I come back to New York?”

  “June,” he said.

  “What about Christmas?” she asked more desperately. “Will I come home then?”

  “You’ll spend that with your mother,” he said. “In Hawaii.”

  The car finally coasted to a stop a few feet from the plane. Carina heard the trunk pop open. Her heart was racing. She needed to get to her phone. She needed to let Lizzie and Hudson know what was happening before she got on that plane.

  Someone opened the door on her right, letting in the near-freezing air. The roar of the plane’s engine was deafening. “Hello, Miss Jurgensen,” yelled the airport manager. “Welcome to Teterboro.”

  She leaped past him and ran around to the back of the car. An airport technician with bright orange headphones was lifting her bag out of the trunk.

  “I’ll take that!” she yelled, and grabbed it out of his hand. Spoiled brat, she could practically hear him think, but she didn’t care right now.

  Her father was already striding toward the plane, the airport manager trotting after him, carrying his things. She didn’t have much time. She crouched down to the ground, unzipped the bag, and felt around frantically for her iPhone. At last she felt its glassy, cold surface under her clothes. She swiped the screen with her finger and went to her e-mail.

  HELP! Jurg shipping me off to CALI!

  she wrote, tapping the screen as quickly as she could.

  “Carina!” Her father yelled from where he stood on the bottom stair. “Let’s go!”

  S
he threw her phone in her bag and zipped it back up. With the bag over her shoulder, she hurried to the plane, sweat beading her hairline, her heart beating so fast that she thought it might explode. From this moment on, all she had was herself. Her friends couldn’t save her. Her old life was gone. But no matter what, she refused to cry. She would never cry in front of her dad. Not ever.

  chapter 2

  “Welcome back to the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles, sir,” said the blond, tan hotel manager, clearing his throat as he slid the key card through the slot and pressed the elevator button to the top floor. “I trust you had a good trip?”

  “It was very nice, thank you,” the Jurg replied to his shoes.

  “Glad to hear it, sir,” the manager said, standing stiffly against the wall with his hands behind his back. “And I know you’ve stayed with us before, but may I remind you of our twenty-four-hour bottle service? I mean, butler service?” he quickly added.

  Chill out, Carina wanted to say from where she was slumped in the corner, duffel bag over her shoulder. She’d seen this kind of thing so many times before. The nervous smiles, the strained formality, the unnecessary information. People always got so weird around her dad. Waiters forgot the specials, busboys dropped forks, and women automatically leaned forward to show off their cleavage. She called it the Cha-Ching Effect. Nothing had a more powerful—and embarrassing—effect on people than a billionaire.

  “Here we are,” the manager said too loudly when the elevator coasted to a stop.

  They stepped out onto the hushed floor and walked down a long, thickly carpeted hall. Finally, they reached the doors at the very end. A gold placard on the wall read PRESIDENTIAL SUITE.

  “You’ll see we took your advice about the flat screen, Mr. Jurgensen,” the manager said earnestly as he unlocked the doors with another swipe of the key card. “We’ve hung it on the wall without the glare from the window this time.”

  The manager held the doors open and they walked into a black marble foyer. Beyond it Carina could see a palatial, high-ceilinged living room. A baby grand piano stood near a pair of French doors. On the sleek glass coffee table was the usual stunning arrangement of white roses, and next to it stood a gift basket that she knew would be stuffed with Vosges chocolate bars and rare French cheeses.

  “Are you familiar with our Scotch selection, sir?” the manager asked. “We have a variety of ten-year-old malts…”

  Carina veered to the left and straight out of the room, eager to skip the spiel. She needed to be alone.

  She walked past the dining room and the kitchen and around the corner into a spacious, light beige bedroom with a canopied king bed. She dropped her bag on the floor, flopped onto the bed, and yawned into the silk bedspread. She was completely exhausted. For the entire six-hour flight, they’d stayed on opposite ends of the plane and hadn’t spoken a word. Ignoring someone on a Gulfstream wasn’t easy to do, after all. The Jurg sat up near the front reading the Economist while she lay on a couch in the back, keeping an eye on the screen that monitored their trip. With every state they crossed, she felt her throat tighten a little more. Even Marsha, their ever-chipper flight attendant, sensed her anxiety. “Everything okay?” she asked Carina brightly as she set down a Diet Coke and her favorite grilled artichoke.

  “Fine!” Carina had said, tearing off an artichoke leaf with a fake smile.

  Now it felt good to be alone. She hopped off the bed and padded toward the marble bathroom. But when she flipped on the light, she almost didn’t recognize herself in the mirror. She’d done and undone her ponytail so many times that her blond, chin-length hair looked dark and greasy, and pieces of it fell in chunks around her face. Her brown eyes were bloodshot, and underneath them were dark purplish circles. Her tan and normally freckled skin looked sallow. She looked like a prisoner of war, and this was only the beginning. For the next eight months she’d be held captive in some quasi military school on the coast. Of course her friends had been right. Releasing that memo had been a huge mistake.

  But maybe this was a weird blessing in disguise, she thought, as she splashed some cold water on her face. She’d been miserable living with her dad. Not in a conscious way, but in a low-grade, just-under-the-surface way. He didn’t care about her—he didn’t even know her. And she’d figured out long ago that the only reason he’d wanted her to live with him was just so her mother couldn’t have her. So maybe being shipped off was a good thing. If only she could get used to the idea of never seeing Lizzie and Hudson again.

  She left the bathroom and went back to her bag. It was time to hear her friends’ messages. She knelt on the floor and pulled out her iPhone. There were ten voice mails.

  “C? We’re standing in your lobby. The doorman said you left. We don’t know what’s going on. Call us!” Even though Lizzie almost sounded mad, Carina felt a pang of sadness at hearing her voice.

  “Carina? Oh my God… Carina? Where are you? We know what happened. We know you sent out that Smoking Gun thing. Oh C, why’d you do it? Did you really have to? Oh C, where are you?” Hudson always sounded like an exasperated, terrified mom, but Carina missed her so much she almost wanted to cry.

  Then she scrolled through their texts.

  WHERE R U?!!

  We <3 u, C!

  U ok?

  The last text was from Lizzie, sent at ten p.m. New York time.

  Hold on. Think yer gonna b fine. Stay tuned…

  Carina looked at this one in disbelief. Lizzie wasn’t usually this optimistic. And how, exactly, was she going to be fine?

  It was the middle of the night in New York right now, so she couldn’t call them back. She thought of her mom in Hawaii. It was only ten o’clock there.

  She dialed her mom’s number and listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times. Finally her voice mail came on.

  “Hi, you’ve reached Mimi… Leave me some love.” BEEP.

  Carina slid her finger across the screen and hung up. She could leave a message, but she had no idea when, and if, her mom would return it. Mimi was a little flaky when it came to messages. When her parents had first gotten divorced, she and her mom had been in constant touch, scheduling phone calls between New York and Maui and IMing with each other at night. But over the past couple of years, their contact had dwindled to a weekly phone call and an occasional text. Carina suspected her dad had something to do with that. He hadn’t even wanted Carina to be in touch with her mom at all when they’d first split up.

  Carina yawned again, feeling her eyelids start to droop. She’d write her friends in the morning and try her mom again later in the day. Right now, she just needed to sleep.

  Without even bothering to get undressed, she pulled back the covers and climbed into bed. She pulled the thick, soft sheets over her, breathing in their powdery hotel scent, and felt a small measure of comfort. She’d done something terrible, but there was one thing she was proud of.

  At least he didn’t see me cry, she thought, just before she drifted off to sleep.

  *

  “Carina?”

  She opened her eyes halfway. Even though she’d forgotten to close the curtains before falling asleep, the room was still dark.

  “The car’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Time to get up.”

  At first she could barely make out the slim, tall figure of her dad in the doorway. But as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw that he was already dressed in a suit and had the newspaper in his hand.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he repeated. “Let’s go.”

  After he left, Carina propped herself up on her elbows. Her head felt enormous and heavy, like a bowling ball filled with concrete. The clock on the bedside table said six a.m. Leave it to her dad to keep the torture coming.

  She dragged herself to the bathroom, where she showered and brushed her teeth with the complimentary toothbrush and paste. She pulled out a Splendid tee and a pair of skinny jeans. Finally she dressed, went to her bag, and picked up her iPhone. There were already two more t
exts from her friends, sent before she’d woken up.

  WHERE R U??

  R U ALIVE????

  Carina glanced at her watch. It was almost nine thirty in New York. Lizzie would be in honors English and Hudson would be in Spanish. It was time to let them know what was going on.

  Except how could she begin to tell them what she needed to in a text? She had to call them. But who first? Lizzie or Hudson?

  “Carina?” her father called out to her from the dining room. “Breakfast!”

  She tossed her iPhone back in her bag and headed into the dining room. The longer she held off on telling her friends about this, the longer she could pretend that it wasn’t happening.

  The Jurg sat at the head of the long mahogany table, reading the Wall Street Journal. “Eat,” he said, nodding at the lavish spread of eggs, bacon, fruit, croissants, and orange juice he’d ordered. Clearly, he didn’t know that she only ate oatmeal for breakfast. “We only have a few minutes until the car’s here. And it’s a long drive.” He fluttered his paper and went back to it, as if she weren’t even there.

  She looked out the French doors to the balcony. The sky was just beginning to turn an indigo blue, and the palm tree–lined streets of Beverly Hills below looked deserted. It was going to be a long day, and it hadn’t even started yet. Suddenly the idea of being trapped with her dad in a town car for hours as they drove up the coast was unbearable.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” she said, speaking to him for the first time. “I can go by myself, it’s not a big deal.”

  “The plane’s picking me up in Monterey,” he said, turning the page.

  “Dad.” Carina walked up to one of the hard-backed chairs and held on to it to steady herself. She’d been trying to think of the best way to say this since last night. She had to be careful. She was so tired that anything was liable to tumble out of her mouth. “I’m sorry. I really am. I just want you to know that.”

  He kept his eyes on the paper. “It’s a little late for that,” he said.