CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
“No, I’m dating my awesome, caring boyfriend. He’s a bullshit macho guy when he gets around his bullshit macho friends,” I snapped. “I appreciate the situation you’re in, but I don’t appreciate the way you were so fucking judgmental of Matt and I, and then you do this.”
“ I haven’t done anything. Except pick up Catherine from her lawyer’s office.” He swore under his breath.
But it was too late. “You’re in New York?” I checked over my shoulder, hoping my shriek didn’t bring Matt back. “Elizabeth has been panicked about her daughter going missing and you’ve been in New York the entire time?”
“She’s not panicked about her daughter going missing,” Scott corrected me. “She’s panicked about her daughter making her look bad.”
Okay, that was accurate. No argument required.
“What does it matter if Elizabeth is angry with me? How does that affect you negatively?” Scott demanded. “Have you suddenly started caring about impressing the Connecticut snob set?”
“Of course, I care!” As much as I wished I didn’t, there wasn’t much of a choice.
“I have to care. This is Matt’s family, Matt’s world…
I have to be able to fit into it for the sake of our future.
And I didn’t see you rolling into Elizabeth’s garden party with copies of the Communist Manifesto.
You were eating those little caviar appetizers right alongside everybody else. ”
“Yeah, I came to the party. Because I was trying to reconnect with the woman I love.” His voice dripped with contempt. “I wasn’t there trying to become one of them.”
“I’m not trying to become one of them, either,” I protested. “Matt’s been trying not to be one of them for years. He’s just super bad at it.”
“They don’t change,” Scott argued. “Deep down, no matter how nice Elizabeth is to your face, no matter how much Matt might brag about living in the dorms right alongside the commoners, they’re all the same rich asshole underneath.”
“Except for Catherine, right?” I snapped.
“Catherine’s the one leaving!”
“And I’m sure she’s going to be eating beans under a bridge when that alimony settlement check clears!
” I’d raised my voice too much, and the house had ears.
“I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t appreciate being blindsided.
Matt is your best friend. I’m your sister.
Fuck, Catherine is Matt’s sister. Why didn’t you guys give us a heads up? ”
“Because what happens between us is between us, Charlotte.” The fight went completely out of Scott. He sounded tired in a way I’d never heard before. “Catherine and Matt don’t have a great relationship. They’re not the kind of siblings who call each other up when the shit hits the fan.”
“But we’re that kind.” There was something plaintive and childish in my voice. “We were, before.”
“We still are,” he promised. “I’m not dumping you as my sister. I’m putting Catherine first. The way a person is supposed to, when they’re in love.”
Once again, the why, though?! of it all raged to the front of my brain, and I struggled against the urge to voice it. Scott was never going to be able to explain why the fuck he loved Catherine, at least, never in a way that wouldn’t sound like science fiction.
“I’ll keep you in the loop, but not about Catherine’s private life, okay?” he said finally.
And that was reasonable. “Okay. That’s fair. I don’t have the right to question my adult sibling’s relationship. No matter how much I might want to.”
“I—” Scott started.
“You heard what I said,” was my only reply before I ended the call.
I shook off the interaction, still pretty pissed. He didn’t have to tell us everything, but he could have given us a heads up that this was coming.
Since it was safe for Matt to come back, I set out to find him.
Compared to Elizabeth’s birthday weekend, the house was deserted.
The corridors weren’t lit by anything other than an occasional floor-level nightlight, and frankly, I got spooked.
I thought about calling out for Matt, but somehow convinced myself that would summon ghosts to my location, so I went on ahead silently, my heart pounding.
I peeked into a few rooms, but upstairs they were mostly empty guest rooms, which freaked me out. There was something weird about bedrooms that didn’t get used every night. I was convinced I’d see the ghost of an old lady grinning creepily from one of the beds, so I stopped checking.
I hoped Matt never inherited the place.
I knew the downstairs a little better than the upstairs, and, bonus, the lights were on. If Matt was anywhere, it was probably the library or—
Raised voices drew me to the half-open parlor door.
“Is that more important than your child’s happiness?”
Matt? I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I’d never heard him sound so angry.
“It’s not about happiness. It’s about tradition.” Elizabeth. Holy shit, he was yelling at his mother? That didn’t seem like the kind of thing Matt could ever be reduced to.
But here we were. “Fuck tradition!”
“Do not use that vulgar language with me. I cannot stand it.” Elizabeth’s imperious tone would have sent me over the edge into violence, but Matt was used to snobs.
How quickly my opinion of her had fallen in one day.
“That ring is meant for a woman of breeding. Sophistication,” she went on, and my heart sank.
“And you don’t feel she’s sophisticated? That she has good breeding?” he scoffed.
“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Elizabeth went on. “She’s exhibited exactly what sort of character and class she has, and I find those qualities severely lacking. Your grandmother wore that ring!”
Ring? They were arguing over a ring. Fuck me, they were arguing over a family heirloom ring and someone being unworthy of it? My guts churned. Was Matt going to propose to me? With some family ring that his mother wouldn’t give him because I wasn’t the perfect little society doll?
She was right. I hadn’t displayed any class or sophistication when I’d taken her to task that morning. But was this how she’d always thought of me? Was Scott right? That there was no way to stop these people from being snobs?
Not even Matt?
I almost wanted to burst through the doors and give her a piece of my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to cause yet another scene.
Plus, I was great at defending other people, but severely bad at defending myself.
What was I going to do? Fly into the parlor in a rage and my denim cut-offs, barefoot, shouting about how motherfucking classy I was?
“She deserves the ring as much as Grandmother Ashe did,” Matt shot back. “You don’t have to approve of her, but if you’re so concerned with tradition, you’ll hand the damn thing over.”
At some point, their fight would be finished, and someone would come storming out of that parlor.
I couldn’t be stuck standing there when it happened.
I backed up slowly, not allowing myself to run until I reached the staircase in the foyer.
I’d been worried about a ghost getting me, before.
Now, I was worried about that damn ever-present butler catching me.
I was halfway up the stairs when I heard Matt’s cane echoing off the marble floor, and I quickly pivoted as if I had been descending. I was a little out of breath when he came through the archway and into the foyer, and I covered it by pretending to be startled.
Just like he covered up the anger tensing his shoulders with a flash of a broad smile I knew he didn’t feel.
“There you are,” I said, my voice thin and high.
He frowned. “Everything all right? How did things go with Scott?”
I waited for Matt on the steps, explaining, “Everything’s fine. This place is creeping me out. And everything with Scott is...you know.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” Matt said, and offered no further explanation. So, I hadn’t been meant to overhear that conversation.
I pretended that I hadn’t. I would pretend I hadn’t until the day I died, if I had to.
“Where did you run off to?” I asked. If his answer was, “Fighting with my mother over a ring,” I wouldn’t have to pretend, and it might save me time.
But he lied. “The kitchen. I was pecking around. Are you hungry?”
“No.” I wouldn’t hold his lie against him. If someone in my family had said such hurtful things about him, I never would pass them on. Like I wouldn’t tell Scott what Elizabeth had said about him. Matt’s lie was meant to protect me. “I am tired, though. I’m thinking of turning in.”
He checked his watch. “It’s nine-thirty.”
“Yeah, well. Stressful day,” I offered pathetically.
“I feel you. Will you mind if I come back to the room and watch television? Or will that keep you up?” he asked.
The gnawing worry in the pit of my stomach was what would keep me up. I gave him a tight-lipped smile. “You won’t bother me at all.”
We walked back to the room in silence. It sucked that I couldn’t ask him specifically about what was bothering him; we were supposed to be there for each other.
He needed to hear that I didn’t want some ugly old ring he practically had to steal from his mother.
I would have to wait and tell him when he actually proposed, and I could chuck the ring in that old bitch’s face.