The teen nodded sagely. “Yeah, that would have been gross too,” she said using her favorite word ‘gross’ again.
“So what do you like to do?” Ellen asked her, trying to take an interest in the girl.
“Wanna see my room?” she asked politely.
Ellen could sense the teen had been prompted to ask that question. Something about it didn’t seem natural. She nodded though and followed the teen to the hallway beyond the kitchen. She saw that there were two bedrooms and a bathroom down the short hallway. The teen led her to the room on the left with bright red carpeting inside. It contained a twin bed and two dressers. The walls were plastered with ribbons and awards for achievements. Ellen read them, most were for academic achievement but a few showed the teen’s athleticism. “You’re a basketball player?” she asked surprised.
The teen nodded and then looked awkward again.
“Wow, Ryan couldn’t help but trip over his feet,” Ellen confided with a laugh. “He would have been so proud of you.”
“He would?” the teen asked, sounding intrigued for the first time.
Ellen nodded. “He was so brainy I think the powers that be couldn’t give him brains and coordination or it would have been grossly unfair,” she laughed a little, using the teen’s favorite word.
For the first time Ellen saw Iris smile and saw why she didn’t smile with her teeth for the first time. She had wall to wall braces covering them. “Yeah, when I met him he seemed smart. He was a bit awkward when we tried to play one on one. I beat him,” she finished proudly. “I always thought it was him just letting me win.”
“Probably not,” Ellen smiled as she looked at the typical teenage posters of current pop stars on the girl’s walls. She was kind of confused though, Iris was a little old to still have such things on her walls. “Do you play for the school?” she asked.
“Yeah, I got an athletic scholarship,” she boasted.
“Good for you!” Ellen encouraged.
“Well, Mom said I shouldn’t accept any scholarships since you will be paying for school.”
Ellen turned in annoyance but stopped herself from saying something rude. “That’s right; leave them for someone who really needs them.” She stopped from saying something equally nasty as she saw the teen’s face begin to fall. Before she could retreat into shyness again Ellen softened her words. “You have the brains and I’m sure you probably got offered a few of those scholarships too,” she gestured at some of the achievement awards and saw the teen nod. “And I’m not paying for anything. You father left you a trust fund to pay for these things. I’m just the administrator. You can go to any college you want, anywhere.” She remembered suddenly something Ryan wanted for his daughter. “He wanted you to travel the world and experience things. Maybe you could do a foreign exchange program or take college courses in foreign countries.”
“That sounds great. But my mom was trying to get me to go to UCSD; she doesn’t want me to go far. I don’t think she wants to be alone,” she confided. “She’s willing to let me go up to UCLA but I think that’s the farthest away she’ll let me go.”
“When are you eighteen?” she asked, unsure of the child’s birthdate because she hadn’t cared before. Having met her she felt a responsibility to Ryan’s wishes now.
“I’m already eighteen,” the teen responded.
Ellen did the math and realized Ryan must have slept with Blossom sooner than she had thought to impregnate her with this lovely child. Sure she looked a bit disgusting with all those pimples, but things like that could be fixed, if they wanted them to. “What do you want?” she asked her.
“What do I want?” the teen repeated back, almost wonderingly. She looked down again at her hands, realizing she’d been talking too much. To a practical stranger. Her mother had told her a lot about Ellen and Ryan. When Blossom spoke of the company they had started together, she implied that it was only Ryan’s creativity that brought success and that Ellen, was merely the ‘hired help.’ Iris knew from the magazine and newspaper articles she had read on this woman that Ellen was more than that, much more. Her vision had taken a small startup tech company and turned it into a multi-billion dollar company. Ryan’s creations had continued well on after his death and this woman had seen to that. “I guess I want to do what my parents want me to do,” she finished meekly but glanced up through her hair at the redhead who stood so confidently in her bedroom.
Ellen smiled. That was a nice, neat, and practical answer. This girl needed her horizons expanded. “But what do you want?” she asked again.
Iris bit her lip, hesitating about confiding in this woman. She had been her father’s best friend though, surely she could trust her. “I’d really like to travel but Mom won’t let me unless I take her along,” she started out with. Her eyes seemed to reflect more sadness as she added, “She doesn’t like to go very far from home though.”
“You’re eighteen though Iris. Next fall you should be in college unless you decide to take a year off between high school and college. But you should go to college for the well-rounding it will give you.”
“Well-rounding?” the teen questioned looking down at her lanky frame.
Ellen laughed and smiled when the teen looked up defensively. “Going to college makes you meet people and experience things you might not realize you need. Look at me, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and then I met your Father with his video games and comic books and we hit it off. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that we could merge our talents and make Gigitech. Animated Studios was just an indulgence until we proved it could be profitable. The combination of his creativity and my talents was lethal and it all started at college.”
“My Mom says without my father you wouldn’t have made all that money,” she confided, not realizing how the words would hurt.
Ellen nodded, conceding that it was true. “No, the talents of both of us made that money. I’d probably have been happy working for someone else,” she realized the falsehood of that statement immediately. “Probably not though,” she added. “I like being in charge, in control. I like running the show. It’s a challenge to take the ideas that Ryan came up with, that his teams create, and marketing them to the world.”
“Is that how the two of you made billions?” she asked innocently.
Ellen smiled again at the teen’s question. “We came into Silicon Valley at the perfect time. Using our talents that we refined at college we started the company with your father’s ideas and I marketed them. The need for what we were making exploded. Staying on top of all that was quite a ride. Now I have so many people working for me to help me stay on top of it all that I don’t even know them. We have teams of people who do various functions within the companies to help. You father’s dream of creating movies from comic books has become a reality. The special effects that he helped to develop are incredible. The people came to us because of our expertise.”
“So you had as much to do as my father?”
Ellen nodded. She knew she was frequently undervalued but she knew her worth. She had reined in Ryan and his enthusiasm. Kept him from making some really bonehead mistakes. If she hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been nearly as successful as they were.
“How come I didn’t inherit my father’s money if you were equal partners? Why did he leave it all to you?” she felt brave enough to ask.
“Your father only found out about you a couple of years before he died. He knew he was dying by then. He made his will with the intention of letting you have a normal life. If people knew about you, if they knew he had a sole heir, you would have been a target.”
“A target?” she sounded alarmed.
Ellen nodded as she explained, “His brother and sister, who is one of the greediest women you ever want to meet. I hope you never meet her by the way. Thought they should inherit his money. He didn’t want them to profit from his death since they barely accepted him in this life. I didn’t know I was going to get the bulk of it. I’ll glad
ly share with you. You have a healthy trust fund. College is taken care of as well as that traveling you might want to do.”
“But we’ve always been so poor,” the teen lamented, almost whining. “He could have helped more,” she said bitterly.
“He did help. Your mother didn’t tell him until you were about fourteen that you even existed. He didn’t know,” she explained, wondering if she should be the one and why hadn’t Blossom told her in the first place.
“That’s why I met him then,” she exclaimed as a puzzle piece fit into the picture.
Ellen nodded. “Your mother was having a hard time making ends meet and she wanted Ryan to know about you,” she finished kindly. She secretly thought Blossom expected him to pay up as he was worth so much then.
“That’s why we moved into this place.”
Ellen was listening, wondering at the teens take on this whole situation.
“But she wouldn’t let me do anything,” she said sounding bitter again.
“Neither of your parents wanted that money to go to your head. It’s why I’m the administrator of your trust until such time as I think you can handle it. Come on, you know there are things you would have bought that a teen simply shouldn’t have,” she pointed out kindly.
As much as it galled her to admit it, the teen nodded. She would have loved to have driven a corvette to school, some of the kids did have nice cars, but none of them knew who her father was. Only her mother had been visible, active in all the parent activities she could in the school. “I’d have at least gotten rid of this,” she said, with genuine bitterness in her voice as she gestured at her face.”
“What, you look like your mother did at that age,” Ellen said diplomatically.
“Like a moon crater?”
Ellen nearly laughed, the pimples were a bit much and to use the teens favorite word ‘gross.’ “Time will take care of those,” she pointed out.
“I want them gone now,” she whined as she glanced in the mirror in disgust.
“Well, maybe we can discuss it with your mom. There are things that can be done.”
Iris shook her head. “No, my mom doesn’t want harsh chemicals on my face. She says I should just wait it out. It’s hard enough being a brain at school but to look like this?” she gestured at her face and then smiled to show off the hardware.
“When do you get the braces off?” Ellen asked curious.
“In a couple of weeks,” she answered eagerly. “But having straight teeth doesn’t change this,” she gestured at the pimples.
“Have you seen a doctor about that?” she wondered.
The teen nodded. “He said that in time I would outgrow them but I should stay away from greasy foods and sugar. That’s why I make homemade lemonade. It has very little sugar in it.”
That explained why it was horrible tasting, Ellen thought. No sugar? Who made lemonade without sugar? She nearly shuddered at the memory of the first and last taste.
Just then Blossom and Rae walked in; Blossom was obviously giving Rae a tour of the house. “And here is Iris’s room,” she finished whatever she was saying as they walked in.
Ellen smiled at Rae who returned it in equal measures. They didn’t realize they had an audience until the teen asked, “So you two are getting married?”
Ellen nodded as Rae replied, “Yes, we hope to get married in June.”
“Oh, you’ve set a date?” Ellen asked with a hint of humor in the question.
“Yes, we did,” Rae said in mock anger, but the laughter in her voice won out.
“Uh oh, trouble in paradise?” Blossom teased, obviously at ease with her guest.
“This one is so busy with her work that she has very little time to for herself!” Rae teased pointing at Ellen.
“I imagine she is quite busy running that company,” Blossom said kindly.
They were invited to dinner, which had more flavoring than the lemonade which they tried to serve yet again. Neither Rae nor Ellen touched the drink. It turned out to be a nice visit. They talked over general subjects, learned more about Iris, and before Ellen knew it, Rae had arranged for the girl to visit.
“How in the world did you get Blossom to agree for Iris to visit us?” she asked as they drove away towards their hotel for the night.
Rae shrugged but grinned. “She likes me,” she said mischievously.
Ellen snickered through her nose and then glancing over at her fiancée she asked, “Likes you as in likes you or likes you as in likes you?”
Rae rolled her eyes, waiting until they were under a light so that Ellen could see them in the darkness of the car. “C’mon,” she scoffed. “That woman hasn’t walked on the wild side for about 19 years,” she said meaningfully.
They shared a laugh as they discussed meeting Ryan’s daughter and their own impressions and observations during the visit.
“For someone getting a fair amount of money from Ryan’s estate, why do they live in a house that looks like that?” Rae asked.
“I was wondering that. This area is a good address. You saw the neighbor’s houses…” she mused and then, “I bet Blossom bought the cheapest house on the block.”
“But why, surely she can afford better?”
Ellen shrugged but she had to wonder, the payments to Blossom directly stopped upon Iris’s eighteenth birthday. Having been the one to administer the trust, she should have remembered that Iris was eighteen and in charge of her future, but she dealt with all the trusts and had people to help her with that. She wondered if Iris had insisted that she visit.
The next day they returned to visit some more but when they left Iris went with them. There had been a tense moment when Blossom suggested that she go along too but Iris had told her mother in no uncertain terms that she was going alone to see what her father had built. That awkward moment was smoothed over by Rae who insisted that they had to go meet their plane. Ellen didn’t point out to anyone that their plane was a private jet and could leave any time they felt like it.
As they drove away Blossom waved madly and Iris waved back but turned her back on her mom and her home with no qualms and a big sigh of relief. “Whew, escaped,” she mumbled.
“What was that?” Ellen asked with a grin, she had heard but wanted the teen to repeat it.
“I thought we’d never get outta there,” the teen grumbled a little louder, she knew Ellen had heard her the first time and her eyes twinkled into the rear view mirror that Ellen was looking back with. Ryan’s eyes.
It was the first time that the teen had flown, anywhere. The fact that it was a private jet just was icing on the cake. “This is so cool,” the girl repeated over and over as she experienced luxuries for the first time.
Rae had been telling her about their experience with the disaster in Oakley last year. “And Ellen there told the old sheriff where he could get off,” she was saying as she told part of the story.
Ellen opened one eye from where she was pretending to rest in her chair, partially reclined. It was interesting to hear someone else’s version of events. To hear Rae tell it, she was one bad-ass customer and it amused her. She was bad-ass, but she had been firm with people but not willing to be taken advantage of.
“And Ellen provided low or no-interest loans to several people in town whose insurance didn’t cover what it should have. The teams of lawyers she employed will have a field day,” she heard again as she began to drift in and out of dozing.
“So why don’t you take the job?” Iris asked Rae. Ellen really wanted to hear the answer to that, but she pretended to still be sleeping.
There was a long pause and Ellen wondered if Rae was making a gesture, perhaps a shrug, and then, “I don’t want to be dependent on my future wife.”
“But all those people you could help, I’m sure there are still people in Oakley and elsewhere who need it,” the teen pointed out.
“Yes, but I don’t want to feel that I am the charity case, that my wife made me a job so she can keep an eye on me,” she
answered low. Ellen nearly had to move to hear her.
“I’m sure it’s not like that, sure, she puts up the dough to get it rolling and you have to account for where you spend it. But think of it as an opportunity to help those people. All those stories, it’s obvious it made you feel good,” she answered earnestly. She mentioned a couple of things that Ellen must have dozed off during because she couldn’t remembering hearing Rae tell them. “Gawd, I’d love to help,” the teen sounded almost worshipful.
“So if I took this job you’d want to help eh?” Rae said in a much better voice.
“Yeah,” she said eagerly.
“What about you traveling about the world?” Rae teased.
“That can wait if I can help do something like this. It’s more meaningful. Maybe you could do this world-wide someday.”
There was a long silence before the teen asked, “How much was Ellen willing to put aside for the project?”
Again a silence where Rae must have shrugged her shoulder, Ellen wanted to peek but was afraid that the glint of her eye would be seen as she listened unashamedly. “I don’t think we got that far in discussing things.”
Ellen listened to the two of the chat over things for the duration of the trip. One thing did concern her though.
“Do you think you could introduce me to a plastic surgeon?”
“Why?” Rae asked concerned.
“To get rid of these,” the teen answered. Ellen could only surmise that she was gesturing to her face.
Her assumption was correct when she heard Rae’s answer, “Everyone has acne.”
“Not like this. It’s bad enough I’m a jock and sweat, which causes me to break out. I don’t eat anything with grease or sugar and that doesn’t keep me from breaking out. Then to be a brain you don’t realize the teasing I get from it all!” she passionately explained.
“Well, perhaps we could go see someone about your skin,” Rae told her kindly, feeling the hurt and angst that teenagers felt.
“Can we do it without my mom knowing?”
“Honey, I don’t think that…”
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