by Kat Bastion
In front of all of his friends as witnesses, pledging their wrath if he did me wrong, the freezing ice around my heart started to melt. I floated up, away from the depths of despair and confusion, toward the warmth and brightness of hope.
“I hear you,” I murmured. And shock of all shocks, I believed him. Trust had never come easy for me, not since the betrayal that had shattered my world, not since I’d rebuilt my heart into an impenetrable fortress. But standing in Hannah and Cade’s house, surrounded by family and friends with nothing but love for one another, I dared to take the risk—found the courage to trust again.
His gaze didn’t waver when I paused. He stood there resolute, willing to wait, ready to give me whatever I needed.
“I need to think about the day, but” —I gave a single nod— “okay.”
“Okay,” he whispered with a nod of his own. A gentle smile began to curve his lips.
Whoops and hollers sounded over our shoulders.
I felt exhausted and elated, like together we’d just crossed the finish line after running a grueling marathon.
He’d promised not to take from me. He’d vowed not to hurt me.
But I knew my nature, understood where I felt comfortable and where I didn’t. History had shaped me into who I’d become. And history had a bad reputation for repeating herself.
As I stared up into Ben’s hope-filled eyes, my greatest concern echoed in my head.
What happens if I hurt you?
Ben…
Let’s get this over with.
Obligation had dragged my ass there.
Apparently, my sense of duty ran deep.
But that historically bottomless well? Had just run dry.
I’d had enough.
Because of Shay? Maybe.
She definitely made all the bullshit more manageable.
“Time to shovel,” I grumbled. “For the last time.”
When I walked into the trendy French bistro in the depths of Manhattan, I didn’t have to check with the hostess stand, didn’t need to scan the dining room. Her favorite table sat outside on the far edge of the patio under an awning: the perfect place to see and be seen.
Not that I cared.
The sunny morning had already warmed the mid-September air. Shoppers hustled along the sidewalk in front of stores that’d just opened for the day. Down the one-way street, freshly washed luxury cars gleamed as they coasted by, passed occasionally by yellow cabs.
Aromas of brewed coffee and baked pastries filled the air as I worked my way between tables for two. But one scent overpowered my sense of smell when a polished woman in her mid-fifties rose from the table to give me a hug; my next breath was laced with her signature perfume, something expensive and complex—mimicking her.
She pulled back with a smile, then kissed my cheek. “Ben.” A slight frown tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You look tired.” What she usually said.
“You look beautiful, as always.” My standard reply.
The greeting had been our bit for years.
When the server came by with menus, she waved them off and placed our usual orders: a double espresso and croissant for me, a caffè latte and tart-of-the-day for her, which on that Saturday morning was caramel apple.
Once we were alone, she leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs. “Your father’s moving us to the country.” Her tone dripped with disgust. As if the country meant a musty hovel with mothballed furniture.
“Right to the point.” I’d grown accustomed to it.
“You barely see me anymore. And I’m lucky if I get an hour with you.”
What about you seeing me at the golf scramble...and not saying a goddamn word because you were there with said father? What I itched to remind her of.
Instead, I took my stance on a more important point. “You saw me for two weeks straight. Which, by the way, was a one-time deal.” She’d begged me, guilted me, made me worry for her safety and well-being to such a degree, I’d felt I had no choice. “Don’t expect it to happen again.”
Kids should never ever go back home to sleep under their parents’ roof. That’s what hotels are for. Sanity.
Didn’t matter anyway. No more rescuing. Well. Dry.
Her brows drew together, expression appearing hurt.
“Don’t even. I’m on to your guilt trips. And I’ve become immune to them.” Thanks to Shay. Somehow witnessing the determination of a girl who’d risen from the unforgiving streets into a woman fighting for her place in the world made me see clearly how fucked up mine was.
Her lower lip quivered. “What do you expect me to do?”
“About what?”
“About what your father’s done to us.”
“To you,” I corrected.
That quivering lip firmed. “I’m being forced out of my own home.”
“A sprawling penthouse on the Upper East Side.” What a rough life.
She nodded as tears sprang to her eyes, my comment obviously mistaken as commiseration instead of blatant judgment.
I stared hard at her, baffled at how we shared the same DNA. “To ‘the country’, your renovated ten-thousand-square-foot colonial with two wings and a full staff of servants?” Yup. I layered on the sarcasm, still stunned we were even remotely related. We didn’t just speak foreign languages. We came from different planets.
Bet I’m adopted.
“Yes!” she continued on with her misinterpretation.
The server lowered the caffè latte toward the table, but my mother grabbed the cup with two hands before its saucer ever touched the white tablecloth. She shot a glare my way, pursed her lips, then pinched the rest of her face as she took a sip, like some liquid caffeine would save her. “Haven’t you been listening to me?”
Rhetorical question. “Yes. I have. If you want my advice—”
“I do.”
“—which you never listen to anyway...” I took a sip of my espresso and paused for effect.
She had the good sense not to say anything. Hard to debate the truth.
“Do not tell a soul outside of this conversation you are ‘having to move to the country.’”
“But...I don’t know anyone there.”
“Then make friends.”
“What if” —she leaned forward and lowered her face toward the table— “they take both properties?” she finished on a whisper.
“Now you’re complaining that you might have to move away from the country?”
I gulped down more espresso. I need to wake the fuck up to handle this level of crazy.
She leaned back and ignored my jibe. Then suddenly her apple tart became the most fascinating thing. She searched the glazed surface of the pastry like it might foretell her future. Eventually she took a small bite.
“I’m not going to feel bad for you. Not when I’ve been telling you to leave him for years. And it’s ridiculous to worry about which palatial home you might be relegated to or get kicked out of.”
“He might be indicted soon.”
“When soon?” Not that I cared much. Just wanted to be prepared for when shit hit the fan.
“His attorney said it’s looking like Friday.”
“Plenty of time.”
She scoffed. “That’s less than a week.”
“You’ve both known for several weeks. And it seems he’s known for decades.”
Her breaths shortened, eyes widening as she leaned over our table again. “What if I become homeless?” she cut out under her breath.
I snorted. “I find it hard to believe the FBI has the authority to kick you out onto the street.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
“Were you complicit? Did you implicate yourself?”
She blinked, then gave me a vacant stare.
“Did you know anything about what he was doing? Because if you did, and they find out about it, then I definitely know you won’t be homeless. Might be the smallest square footage you’ve ever occupied, though. And I’ve heard y
ou have to put up with a roommate.”
“Don’t joke. This isn’t funny.”
“You should listen to everything you’re saying from my side of the table. It’s funny as hell to me.” I took a bite out of my buttery croissant.
“What am I going to do without your father around?”
“I hope to hell you finally let him go. How ironic that it took his abuse of others—the federal government itself stepping in—to do what I’ve been trying to get you to do for years.”
She sighed and picked at her pastry. “I wish I knew what’s going to happen.”
“Don’t we all. This is what real life is like. No one knows how it’s going to all shake out.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to be okay” —she lowered her voice— “financially.”
“Do you still have your trust fund from Nana?” When my grandmother died, I got a trust fund, as did Mom. Mine was a cool mill, most of which bankrolled my first car, four years of college, a two-month trip to Europe, and seed money to start up Loading Zone. Mom’s had been substantially larger, a big fat zero shoving the decimal point over.
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Dad never asked you to invest any of that money?”
“No.”
Didn’t surprise me. I’d been in kindergarten when Nana had died. And from what I’d heard, Dad had refused to take a penny of it for their personal use. He’d already pulled himself up from the lower middle class by the time he’d met my mother. And he’d still parked a giant chip on his shoulder with plenty to prove.
“Then you’ll be fine.”
“What if I run out of money?” She took another minuscule bite of apple tart.
“Meet with your accountant. Make yourself a budget. Welcome to the real world.”
“I’ve never met our accountant. Your father always handled the money.”
And look where that had gotten them. “I’ll give you the number to mine.”
Her expression turned morose. “I’m going to be all alone.”
I slammed the rest of my double espresso. “Join a support group.”
“A support group?”
Still with the language barrier. My parents’ upper social echelon didn’t get therapy. God forbid they ever mention it aloud.
“Recovering Wives of Convicted Felons?” Yeah, I couldn’t help myself.
Her eyes widened. “That’s a group?” she whispered.
“I’m joking.” I lifted my cup high to signal our server for another double. The first one had barely kicked in.
Her expression shifted from shock to mild hope, as if it helped to think someone else might share her predicament.
“Look for one that supports grieving widows. It’d be a good place to start.”
“Your father’s not dead.”
“You should get over him like he is. I have.” Even though he haunts me while still alive. “This is your one chance to be free of him. Take it. After they haul him away on Friday, bury him and your horrible past with it.”
Her eyes began to glisten with tears. “I can’t do that, Benjamin. I can’t abandon your father. Not when he finally needs me more than he needs anything else.”
More than alcohol, you mean.
My replacement drink came, foamy crema on top, near-scalding liquid beneath. I drank it anyway as I glanced at my watch. Thirty minutes had passed. Almost over. Like a tetanus shot. How I convinced myself to go to Saturday breakfasts. The necessary evil jabbed with pain for a flash in time but benefited us in the long run.
“It’s impossible for me to feel sorry for someone who has the knowledge and skills to help themselves, then chooses not to.”
She glared at me, her lips firming into a tight line.
I sighed. We’d been there before. Nothing more to say.
My phone vibrated once. I pulled it out of my pocket to glance at the screen.
Shay.
I’d texted her right before I’d walked in:
Can I call you around 11:00 a.m.?
She’d just now texted back. No one-letter reply, either. Whole words. Sentences.
What makes you think I’m available at 11:00 a.m? Or even awake?
I put the phone down on the table, in the event it vibrated again.
“Do you need to take that?” She nodded at the phone. Too accustomed to her husband putting business—and everything to do with himself—first, she too easily gave up her right for attention.
Yes. “No. I’ve got a few more minutes.” The least I could do. But Shay’s text surged anticipation through me—amplified by four espresso shots.
“Will you be there on Friday?”
“No.” No way in hell. I stared at the dregs in my empty cup, imagining how that scene would go down. “I don’t think you should be either.”
Her mouth fell open. “Why not?” She glanced around the patio as if concerned about how the general public would judge her. Then her panicked expression shifted into mortification, like the scandal had already headlined on every news outlet.
“How would you like to remember him? I’m guessing not in handcuffs.”
Her expression relaxed, then turned thoughtful. “We could have a nice dinner party the night before.”
“No. Just the two of you.” Not sure how the Feds would take a swindler throwing his own going away party before they lock him away for twenty to life.
“You won’t come?”
“No.” Two weeks of two men nearly killing each other had been enough.
My phone buzzed on the table.
Shay again.
Do you realize how long it takes to type all these characters? No wonder I didn’t want a phone.
I fired a quick text back.
After I hit send, I almost put the phone down. Then I sent one more character: a winking face.
I scraped my chair back and put my napkin on the table. “I gotta go.” In the fifteen minutes I had remaining before the call, I needed a brisk walk to clear my head of all the negative.
Mom nodded, expecting the inevitable. But she made no move to get up. She’d probably stay a while longer, then shop with the last of the money she still had.
A final thought hit me, something I never would’ve considered sharing with her before. “I’m golfing Saturday.”
She blinked with surprise. “In the tournament?”
“Yes. We’ll have to skip next Saturday’s breakfast. But it’d be cool for you to be there, at the tournament.” Wouldn’t be so bad to have her there, on her own terms. Support her son because she wanted to, not because my father expected her to. A great way to begin the first day of the rest of her new life.
A warm smile curved her lips. “I would love that.”
A strange sigh of relief escaped me. That my mom might see the right path for herself and take it. Maybe I’d needed that hope for her more than I’d realized.
After a small kiss on her cheek, I left.
On my way down Fifth Avenue, as I passed people in thousand-dollar outfits, magnificent glass-fronted flagship stores, and historic granite buildings that’d housed generations of Mom’s ancestors, I felt more disconnected than ever before to the shallow wealth all around me.
This isn’t me. It never had been.
But the last week had taught me more about myself than any in the last twenty-five years. I’d discovered what I needed to do in order to find out who I wanted to be. Shay wasn’t the only one about to take a chance. I had to step outside of my carefully constructed life in order to truly live it.
I rounded the next corner, then veered toward a side entrance of Central Park, one I’d rarely used. And as I merged onto a wide path with the late-morning crowd, filled with joggers and nannies, businessmen and bums, my steps grew quicker, my breaths sucked in a little faster.
Because I was about to make a very important call.
I needed to convince someone else to take a leap of faith.
Shay…
Too many things are happening
at once.
Good things, I hoped.
But still, I couldn’t catch a solid breath. My heart raced like I’d sprinted an entire mile.
In twelve minutes, one new about-to-happen thing had been sprung on me: a call from Ben.
In seconds, the one I’d been waiting three hundred sixty-four days for would happen.
The house sitter’s blue Outback reversed down the long driveway, swung a wide arc into the street, then puttered away.
I eased out from behind the wide tree trunk I’d been hiding behind. “There you are,” I whispered, exhaling a held breath. From the shadows of the giant elm, I stayed motionless, watching, waiting. Hands clenched around the straps of my two bags—my small backpack slung from one shoulder, the double straps of my larger duffel tucked over the other—I began to loosen my grip.
Dead ahead, the modern Tuscan villa appeared gigantic across the wide asphalt street. To the casual observer, its heavy wood doors and shutters, stacked stone walls trimmed by stucco, and clay tile roof would seem out of place in a neighborhood dominated by Colonial Revivals and French Baroque’s. Then again, the sleek cars parked in circular drives and under porte cocheres screamed new money, from the likes of Maserati, Bugatti, and even a matching pair of Teslas.
“Looks like home to me.” At least for the next twenty-four hours, all I felt comfortable with. All I need.
Once all mechanical sounds in the neighborhood disappeared, car engines gone distant and garage openers silent, I stepped out into the warm morning sun in broad daylight and crossed the street. The new brazen move fired through me like a rite of passage. As if all of a sudden, on that one day, with that house, I no longer wanted to hide anymore.
“I blame you, Ben,” I grumbled under my breath. But no anger powered the words, only a little humor. And maybe gratitude. After all, I’d been pushing Ben to test his limits. About time I did the same.
The salted cement driveway remained the same: spotless, not one tire scuff on it. I floated trembling fingers over a cape honeysuckle hedge that had been recently trimmed, its squared top softened by new-growth fluff and brightened by orange tubular flowers.