Chapter Two #2
My mood lifts when we reach the hotel, where I get a suite bigger than my entire apartment.
The bathroom has a bidet, a toilet, a sunken tub, and a massive shower.
There are four TVs—for the tub, the bed, the living room, and…
the front hall. Under what circumstances is someone watching TV in the front hall?
After Cecilia leaves, I imagine Mom being here. I picture her rolling her eyes at the luxury but enjoying it, too. Enjoying it because it was a reminder of her old life.
She’d seemed so at home in our unending string of rented houses.
She’d walk through each and say, “This is good, Will. I can make it work,” and Dad would take her hand and say, “We can.” Then they’d throw themselves into turning those run-down places into homes: Dad painting and fixing, Mom scouring thrift shops for curtains and artwork, and filling the house with the smell of baking.
I always figured this was how they grew up.
Making do with what they had. I knew Dad did, with a single mom and zero support from his absent father.
I presumed Mom’s life had been the same and that when Dad brought home some little luxury for her—fancy chocolates or soaps—she loved them because they were something she’d never had.
Except now I know she’d grown up in a world where people probably never ate corner-store chocolate or used drugstore soap.
Had she been faking contentment for Dad’s sake? I honestly don’t think so. I look back, and I don’t remember ever glimpsing anything else.
Maybe, if you’ve had it all, you don’t mind leading a simpler life.
Your idea of what’s important changes. And what was important to Mom had been Dad and me.
Oh, she had her own interests—reading, shopping, volunteer work—but she’d always joked that she belonged in an earlier time, one where a woman could aspire to a career as a mom and wife and no one would bat an eye.
The new story seems to be that Mom was a young woman from a wealthy family, who left Westdale and was disowned for a teenage pregnancy, but she never regretted it because she was in love with my dad. She embraced her new life and didn’t look back.
That’s the happy answer. The easy answer.
But is it the truth?
When things got bad after Dad died, Mom still never went to her parents for help.
For billionaires, a few thousand dollars to get back on her feet would have been like tossing pennies into a fountain.
I can see her refusing to give them the chance to say “I told you so.” But for my sake, she’d grovel. For me, she’d swallow her pride.
So why hadn’t she done that? And does the fact she hadn’t mean I really shouldn’t be here?
For now, I think I need to trust her best friend and remember that I don’t need to deal with my grandparents. When the dust settles, though, and no one’s watching, I’ll start digging, because I have a lot of questions to answer.
Investigating will wait until I have a laptop, which Cecilia has assured me will arrive tomorrow.
For now, I use the temporary phone Cecilia gave me to send emails to anyone who’ll miss me at school.
Then I do something I haven’t done since Dad died, and we gave up our rented houses for tiny apartments: I take a bath.
I fill that tub to the brink and pour in lavender bath salts.
I stash the other two bottles—sage and lemon—in my backpack. When we took road trips, we’d sometimes stay in “nice” hotels. Mom always took whatever toiletries we didn’t use, reasoning that we’d paid for them.
I spend way too long in that steaming, lavender-scented bath. Then I hop into the shower to wash my hair, because if they’re giving me both options, I’m using them. Afterward, I pull on the thick cotton bathrobe and shuffle into my huge bedroom with its huge bed.
I’ve seen movies where fancy hotels like this put a chocolate on the pillow. I get an entire box from a local chocolatier. I pop one piece, and it’s amazing.
I wash down a second chocolate with bottled water. I have five choices. Five. Of water. The one I pick is from the south of France. Drawn, I’m sure, from a mystical well, the whereabouts of which are known only to one monk, who guards the secret with his life.
I pull back the sheets and, again, I have to pause, this time to run my fingers over them. I’ve read about things like Egyptian cotton and gazillion-thread count, and I have no idea whether that’s what this is, but I have never even felt sheets like this. Crisp and soft at the same time.
I shed the bathrobe, slide into those sheets, and smile like I haven’t smiled in months. And that’s before I feel an envelope on the other pillow. I pick it up to see “For expenses” written on the front. Inside are…
Hundred-dollar bills. A sheaf of hundreds, along with a few twenties for variety.
For expenses? Like what? The sudden need to buy a designer handbag? I shake my head and tuck the money under my pillow.
I should say something like “I could get used to this.” But I’m not sure that’s a good idea.
At least not until I’ve answered my questions.
Because if there’s a reason Mom never went home again, then I’m only going to be living the life of an heiress until my eighteenth birthday, when I’m legally free.
Until then, I’ll enjoy what I can, while I can.