Chapter 7 Willow #2
It’s still so weird, to look across the coffee table and realize I’m looking into the eyes of my grandmother. Someone I didn’t even know existed until hours ago. Already, she’s done more for me than most people in my life ever have.
“Oh!” Olivia says suddenly, startling me. “Where is my head? You must be starving. Let me get you something to eat.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to—”
Before I can register a protest, she presses a button on a glass panel embedded in the coffee table. A few minutes later, the guy I saw in the kitchen earlier appears in the doorway.
“You called, ma’am?” he asks, dipping his head respectfully.
“Yes, my granddaughter will need something to eat,” she says. “And I could do with something as well.”
“Of course,” he replies. “What can I get you?”
He looks at me, and I immediately tense up, not sure what to say.
“Um… I’ll be fine with just coffee,” I say. “And maybe some toast?”
Shit, I’m not used to any of this. Is it like ordering at a restaurant? What if I ask for something that they don’t have? Of course, Olivia’s kitchen is probably as well outfitted and stocked as the rest of the house, but still.
Olivia chuckles, taking over. “Bring us a variety of those pastries that got delivered this morning,” she tells the man. “Some fresh fruit. Toast and eggs.” She glances at me. “Any aversion to meat?”
“Uh, no.”
“And some bacon, please,” she finishes. “We’ll take it in the dining room.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the staff member says, nodding again before striding away.
I’m still staring after him in shock when Olivia gets up from her seat and gestures for me to follow her to the dining room.
We walk down long, dark wood paneled halls, and I look around, taking in more fresh flowers and art. For someone with so much money and such a big house, none of the decor is over the top or pretentious. I like it.
When we reach the dining room, Olivia ushers me inside.
The table isn’t one of those long ones with too many chairs.
Instead, it’s round and made of dark wood.
There’s no table cloth, and the wood gleams and smells faintly of the same citrusy furniture polish that I smelled in the rest of the house.
There’s a beautiful centerpiece in the middle of the table, bright blossoms floating in a large glass bowl of water.
I sit down across from where my grandmother has taken her seat, feeling so out of place here.
“Peonies,” Olivia says.
“Excuse me?” I look up, confused.
She smiles and nods to the centerpiece I was admiring. “Peonies. One of my favorite flowers. I have them cut fresh every other day for this bowl. I don’t entertain many visitors, but I love the look of them.”
“They’re beautiful,” I tell her. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“I imagine fresh flowers are hard to come by in the heart of the city,” she says.
I snort and then make a face. Shit, that was probably very rude of me.
“Yeah,” I say. “There aren’t a lot of gardens in my neighborhood. I thought about trying to grow some flowers on my window sill once, but I didn’t really have the time to take care of them.”
Olivia nods. “I have the benefit of having a very dedicated gardener. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do it either.”
“Is it just you here?” I ask her, curious. “I mean, do you live alone?”
“Yes. Except for the house staff. As I mentioned last night, my husband died a few years ago.”
“Right,” I murmur. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”
Olivia nods. Her gaze drops to the table, a sad expression crossing her face.
“Thank you. It’s been… very hard without him.
He was my partner in all things.” She looks up at me, her hazel eyes softening.
“I do so wish that he could have lived to see you. To know that you were alive and well all this time. He loved you so much.”
My heart clenches, and that feeling of longing, of wanting a family so desperately, rises up in my chest.
“I wish I could have known him,” I whisper.
We’re interrupted by two women coming into the room with trays of food.
They move around the table with practiced ease, putting a cup of steaming coffee down in front of me, along with little ceramic jars of milk and cream.
There’s an honest to god crystal sugar bowl dropped off in the center of the table, and plates full of food.
There are more pastries than I know how to name, along with a platter of fresh sliced fruit.
They also drop off a steaming plate of eggs, scrambled and fluffy, and two kinds of toast—one dripping with butter and the other giving off the spicy sweet smell of cinnamon.
One of the women sets down a plate of bacon and then looks at Olivia.
“Do you need anything else, Mrs. Stanton?” she asks.
“No, this looks lovely, Amelia. Thank you.”
Both women nod and then disappear from the room as quickly as they entered.
For a second, all I can do is stare at the food, wide-eyed and suddenly starving. It all looks so good, I don’t even know where to start.
“Help yourself,” Olivia says, reaching for the fruit. “You must be famished.”
“I think it just hit me right now how hungry I am,” I admit. Following her lead, I grab the empty plate in front of me and load it up with a little of everything.
Olivia eats neatly, a cloth napkin in her lap that she uses to wipe her mouth after every couple of bites. Her plate is neat and orderly, each kind of food with its own little separate section, nothing touching or jumbled together.
I look at my own plate. Aside from the fruit, everything is pretty much in one big pile. I put eggs on the toast and take a bite, savoring the delicious taste.
We eat in silence for several long minutes, and once I’ve cleared about a third of the plate, I look up again to see Olivia watching me.
“Is it alright if I ask you about what happened last night?” she asks carefully. “The police told me the basics, but not much more than that. Just that you had been attacked and escaped from a fire.”
I swallow a bite of Danish and then chase it with a swig of coffee.
“That’s pretty much it,” I tell her, my stomach twisting around all the food I just ate. “I was out for a walk… to clear my head, and the guy just grabbed me.”
“And you didn’t know who he was?”
I shake my head. I don’t feel great about lying to this woman, who’s been nothing but nice to me since she met me hours ago. But the last thing I want is for her to get dragged into the fucked up mess with the Voronin brothers.
“No, I didn’t recognize him,” I tell her. “I guess he just… wanted to hurt someone.”
She blows out a quiet breath and shakes her head. “The people in this world. I’ll never understand what makes them do the things they do. You must have been terrified.”
“I was,” I admit. “Especially when the fire broke out. He seemed like he wanted to use it to hurt me, and I… it almost felt like it gave me flashbacks to the fire I survived as a kid, even though I know I was too young to really remember it.”
The churning in my stomach is getting worse, and my hands shake when I lift my coffee cup to my lips.
Olivia seems to notice, because she clears her throat, giving me a sympathetic smile.
“Let’s talk about something else, shall we?” she offers. “Tell me more about your life. I’m so curious about what you’ve been doing all this time.”
My fingers tighten around the coffee mug.
That’s hardly a better subject, honestly.
There’s nothing in my life that’s been exciting or worthy of praise.
Nothing that will impress this woman or make her proud to be related to me.
Compared to the opulence Olivia lives in, anything I can say will just make me seem trashy and low class by comparison.
Between my adopted mother being a hooker and me working in a strip club just to barely make ends meet, there’s not much to say.
But Olivia looks so eager to get to know me, and I don’t want to lie to her or disappoint her.
“Sure,” I say, trying to find some place to start. “I mean, I never knew who my real parents were. I ended up in the system when I was pretty young, and I got adopted by a woman named Misty Hayes.”
“And Misty was good to you?” Olivia asks, leaning closer, her breakfast forgotten.
I blink for a second, trying to figure out how to answer that.
“She did her best,” I settle on saying, even though that’s not really true at all.
Or maybe it is, I don’t know. Misty’s best is probably a lot of other people’s worst. “We didn’t have a lot of money, like I was saying last night—er, this morning,” I correct myself.
“So we had to try to make ends meet however we could. Misty worked, I worked, but the money always seemed to just… never be enough.”
Because my drug using mother would spend it on whatever she wanted and not pay the bills.
I don’t say that either, but apparently, I don’t need to.
Between what I’ve just told her and what I revealed on the car ride over here, Olivia has clearly gotten a sense that my life has been hard. Sympathy shines in her eyes, the soft wrinkles on her face deepening as she purses her lips.
I swallow another swig of coffee and keep going.
“As soon as I could, I enrolled in college at Wayne State. I’ve been working on my degree so that I can make a better life for myself.”
I don’t mention that I haven’t been to classes in a while because the dangerous brothers I was living with didn’t think it was safe for me to be out of their sight.
“That’s wonderful,” Olivia replies. “I’m so impressed with your drive to improve your circumstances and not let the negativities of your life hold you back. That takes an incredible amount of strength.”
“I… I guess. I just really want to live a life I can be proud of.”
My grandmother smiles. “I haven’t known you for very long, Willow, but I can see the determination in you so clearly.”
Her smile drops a little, and she turns her eyes back down to her nearly empty plate. She fidgets a bit with her fork, and for the first time since I met her, she seems ill at ease.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Yes.” She takes a breath and looks up. “I’m just… so very sorry that I wasn’t there for you. You needed your family, and you didn’t have anyone.”
“Oh. It’s okay,” I try to reassure her, shifting awkwardly in my chair. “You didn’t know where I was. If you’d known, you would have been there, I’m sure.”
“I would have done everything in my power to bring you home, if I’d known,” she agrees, her refined voice taking on a fierce tone.
“I believe you,” I whisper.
It’s almost impossible to comprehend how different my life would have been if she had known. I would probably be on a completely different path right now, and I don’t even know how to begin to imagine the person I could’ve been if I had grown up with my real family.
But there’s no use dwelling on it. It’s not like there’s a way to go back and change the past. All I can do is what I always do: keep moving forward as best I can.
“Um, is it okay if I ask you some things?” I ask, feeling suddenly shy.
“Of course.” She nods emphatically. “You must have so many questions.”
“Could you… tell me about my parents?”
Olivia folds her hands in her lap, hesitating for a moment before she speaks. “They adored you. When you were born, it brightened their lives in a way that only a true blessing can. Your mother had some… emotional issues, but your father loved her so much, and he tried his best to help her.”
My brows furrow. “I feel like there’s another ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
She sighs, a pained expression crossing her face. “Yes, there is. Unfortunately, her issues won out in the end. She started a fire in their home one night. The blaze spread quickly, and when the firefighters cleared the scene, they found her body burned in the ashes.”
My heart clenches, a chill washing over me.
“She set the fire?” I whisper, staring across the table at Olivia.
“I’m afraid so. Your father wasn’t home at the time, and although we never found your remains in the ashes, it was assumed that you had been killed as well.
Now I have to wonder if perhaps your mother was able to surface from the darkness of her depression long enough to realize that she didn’t want her baby to die along with her.
Enough to get you out before the house burned, even if she went back inside to let it consume her. ”
My eyes burn, and I blink rapidly to push back the tears that threaten. Thinking of my mother, who was so troubled that she wanted to die but loved me enough to get me out and make sure I wasn’t burned with her, makes my heart ache.
I close my eyes and try to search for an image of her face, a memory of her voice. Anything. But there’s nothing there. Just the vague memories of flame and heat that I still don’t know if I made up.
“We may never know the truth of what happened that night,” Olivia continues.
“Either way, there was a frantic search for you after that. The house was destroyed entirely by the fire, burnt all the way down to the foundation. They never found your remains, but we knew there was a chance that your body had simply been buried and couldn’t be found. We searched as well as we could.”
She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine, and I realize that it’s shaking slightly.
“I hoped for a very long time that you were still alive, by some miracle. That the reason we couldn’t find your body was because you had survived.
I can’t tell you how happy I am that my prayers were answered.
And… I would very much like to be a part of your life now, Willow.
If you’ll let me. It sounds as though you’ve been through quite a lot, and I’d like to help you in any way I can, with whatever I can. ”
I swallow hard, suddenly overcome with emotion. Everything has been so much, from the moment I got out of Ransom’s bed and saw that sex tape of myself, to being kidnapped, to meeting Olivia, to hearing this story. It’s been one thing right after the other.
Before, all I wanted was to flee Detroit. To put as much distance as I could between me and the Voronin brothers, to make it so that they could never find me again.
But now?
I don’t want to go.
The only family I have in the world is here, and she’s offering to help me—something no one else has ever really done before, at least not without expecting something in return.
“I… I’d like that,” I tell her after a long moment. “Right now, I just want to keep going to school. I had to miss a good bit of it recently, but I really want to finish my degree.”
A relieved smile pulls at Olivia’s lips, and she gives my hand a squeeze. “Of course. I think I can help with that.”