a little life
I remember the holiday on the French Riviera for a few reasons.
It was the last coven trip of the summer before I was to start at The Academy of Bluestone for the Education of Exceptional and Elite Society.
Mr Strom arrived with his daughters, but not his wife, who went off to visit her family in Aspen instead.
And Mr Barlow was in a sour mood the whole time because we—the Cravens, as well as the Sinclairs—chose not to stay at the Barlow’s estate of sprawling vineyards, but rather at a five-star hotel in the heart of Nice.
It was only a three-night trip, but I remember the day at the private beach best.
The memory is as clear as freshly cleaned glass, even after all this time.
The beach was a glaze of cream-hued parasols and loungers and deckchairs, all the way along the shore of pebbles and sand, up to the exclusive Mediterranean restaurant.
Mr Barlow spent the day by the bar, and that was great news for me, because he was out of the way. Landon was always more fun with his father out of the way.
And he sure was a lot of fun that day.
Together, we ran in and out of the waters, chasing the waves, running from them, kicking the sea at each other, and stacking pebbles into pyramids and walls.
But Mother called me back to her on the daybed so many times, over and over, that by the time I returned to play, he had already moved on with the others.
Every two hours, Mother applied sunscreen to me. She never let anyone else do it, not even the female servants, not even her dresser.
Under the shade of the canopy, Mother dragged the sunscreen over my arms and shoulders and down my back, so distractedly and harshly that I swayed with her movements.
Her attention was on Amelia, sprawled out on the daybed with her.
Amelia gestured to the private beach, where only the coven’s children ran. “Who in their right mind would choose poverty over wealth, confinement over experience, a small, little life over this?”
Mother’s handling of me was harsh. But unintentionally so. Amelia’s curt words held her attention, and so as she turned me around to face the sea, and started running sunscreen down my back, I bobbed with each forceful swipe.
I watched Oliver tackle Dray into a sandpit they’d spent all morning digging.
Amelia tutted, and the sharp sound wasn’t unlike her glacier eyes that she lifted to Mother over her sunglasses. “She brings the Stroms too close to disgrace with these antics of hers.”
“Well, Lana does come from gentry,” Mother whispered, and it furrowed my face under my sunhat because Mother came from gentry, too. But then she added, “She must be under some delusion that separate living is an option in aristos society.”
The discussion of Mrs Strom’s absence was juicy enough that I didn’t whine for Mother to hurry up.
Amelia scoffed a single, curt sound, a bitter almost-laugh, and it was lovely, it was silk, like the pearly coverup she wore. “She forgets herself and her place. To reject our traditions and our time together in favour of her family on another continent? So much ignorance in one act of disrespect.”
“It is her own fault. She chose terribly.” Mother tapped me on the head, like she wanted me to hear this next part, really hear it. “A woman should only ever marry a man who loves her more than she loves him.”
It invited me into the conversation. The gossip.
I turned to face them and, slowly, cautiously, climbed onto the edge of the daybed.
I wasn’t kicked off.
Amelia’s smile was slick around her words, “Lana heard ‘the founding family of Monaco’ and tripped over her rags to get there.”
Mother’s laugh was a bell caught in her throat. She tightened her mouth shut on it and slapped some sunscreen onto my face.
I squinted against the cold smears.
Amelia added, just as a waiter appeared and lowered fresh cocktails onto the side table, “No one told her the Stroms are broke.”
Broke for aristos. I wasn’t confused about that. But it was new information.
Amelia added, “If she had done her research, she would have learned the cost of going against the coven.”
I was grimaced against Mother’s uncaring application of the lotion to my face, dragging it all over, even around my ears, but her gaze was on the reddish cocktail that Amelia plucked from the table.
My question was muffled by her hands pulling against my mouth, “Are the Stroms poor?”
Mother’s smile came with a curt, choked laugh.
Amelia nudged me with her foot. “Do not eavesdrop, Olivia.” Then she hid her smile behind her glass. “But, yes, almost.”
Mother said, “The coven is only strong when we stand together, isn’t that right?”
I nodded. But I was sure some sunscreen was leaking into my eyes, because they were starting to sting.
“Without the coven,” Amelia warned, “then we would all be sentenced to a little life.”
She shook her head with the disgust of it, then sipped from her blood-red cocktail.
“Go play.” Mother booped me on the nose “And don’t you dare go in the water for the next thirty minutes. Let it dry first.”
Again, I nodded, then practically flung myself off the daybed. My bare feet came smacking down on hard, smooth pebbles that sent winces shooting up me—but I remember how excited I was to rejoin the others.
With fresh gossip.
I avoided Landon, who still played in the water. He would not have appreciated it. Besides, Asta and Serena had joined him.
So I ran straight for the pit dug into the sand.
The pebbles slowed me down, but when I reached the transition of pebbles to sand, my legs moved faster.
I scrambled to the pit, falling to my knees, and looked down at them.
Oliver and Dray sat in there, not wrestling or fighting like I expected, but rather, they picked through the menu book from the restaurant and bickered over lunch orders.
They both looked up at me, squinting against the midday sun.
“Mr Strom is angry because Mrs Strom is sad that they are poor, and now she’s choosing the little life.”
For a moment they just blinked at me.
Then Oliver dropped his frown to Dray. “What about the paella?”
Dray flicked the page of the menu. “I hate Mediterranean cuisine.”
He wasn’t allowed to say that. He would never say it now, not as adults. But when we were children, and it was just the three of us, filters faded.
Oliver smacked my hand, curled on the edge of the sandpit. “Get in here before someone sees you.”
I climbed into the pit.
As I dropped onto my bottom, Oliver hit the edge of my ugly sunhat that Mother made me wear.
“It’s an exclusive pit,” my brother added with a pointed look.
That meant I couldn’t invite anyone in. It was just us three.
I didn’t mind.
“I think a little life is when people die from heartbreak,” I decided and basketed my legs, “from being poor.”
Dray frowned at the pages. “The Stroms aren’t poor.”
I made a face at him. “Your mother said they are.”
“Oh.” Dray couldn’t have cared less. He pushed the menu onto my lap. “Split a gelato?”
I sifted over the dessert page. “There’s no cannoli?”
Impatient, Oliver snatched the menu from me. “No one else likes cannoli. You have to pick food we all like.”
My mouth puckered, moody. “Do we have to share?”
“Mother said we only get one dessert between us.” Oliver flicked the page, too rough, and it tore at the edge. “And one meal to share.”
Dray nudged me with his shoulder. “It’s your fault. You ate so much you were sick last night. If you weren’t sick, we wouldn’t have been caught.”
Oliver’s face twisted. “It stunk of liquorice.”
True.
It did stink.
I stole too much from Grandmother Ethel’s stash of chocolate-coated liquorice. I ate too much of it.
Got the cane for it, too.
Oliver smacked the book shut. “We will order cannoli—” Dray made a face. “—if you ask Mother what a little life is.”
I stuck out my hand.
He stuck out his.
And we shook on it.
The three of us clambered out of the pit. And shadows had stretched over us.
I looked up and saw two lovely faces angled down at us.
Serena and Asta had found us.
Serena started, “What are you do—"
“Go away,” Oliver snapped as he scrambled to his feet. “You are not invited!”
I snickered and chased at his heels, Dray at mine, and we ran back to the daybeds.
Oliver flattened the menu on the mattress, beside Mother’s stretched out legs.
She looked over her sunglasses at us. “Is it lunch already?”
Oliver then threw an expectant look at me, just as Dray dropped onto the daybed, exhausted from digging sand pits in the sun.
I nudged myself between Amelia and Mother. “What’s a little life?”
Mother’s smile was tired and smelled of those nice cocktails she and Amelia had been drinking all morning.
Amelia sang her question, “Have you all been repeating things the adults said?”
I nodded, firm.
Dray yawned, “And we picked our lunch order.”
Amelia reached out and gave him a half-hearted smack. “Manners, Dray. Cover your mouth when you yawn.”
Unbothered, he rolled onto his side, like he was ready for a nap. Serena called them siestas, and I was fond of them, especially in the summer heat of the French Riviera.
“A little life,” Mother started, and looked over her shoulder at the shadow drawing closer—Father, carrying nothing but a glass of water, “is a life without travelling, without power, without sufficient education. It is insignificant and dull. It is simply small.” She turned her smile on me.
Oliver stretched over the edge of the daybed and mused, “The lives of krums are little.”
I frowned at him for a beat, my mind snagged on the education. Krums didn’t go to Bluestone.
So I asked, “I don’t want to go to the academy. Can I have a little life?”
Dray snorted behind me, and Oliver buried his smile in the crook of his elbow.
Father’s face was stone. He dropped onto the deckchair and raised his chin, as if to look down his nose at me.
Mother forced one of those tight smiles of hers, the kind that meant I said something wrong and she was about to give me the chance to correct it.
But I just really didn’t want to go to Bluestone.
I dreaded the day of leaving Mother and Father and Elcott Abbey.
I wanted to stay with my governess, not go to a boarding school in another country. And it was only weeks until Oliver and I were to be sent off with our luggage to stay at some strange, new place without our parents.
I heard the magic there was so strong, the mountain so high, the snow so thick, the winds so powerful, that the phonelines sometimes cut out. So what if I needed my parents, but I couldn’t call them?
I didn’t like that at all.
Mother leaned closer, slow, like a snake about to strike, and it clenched my insides.
“Then you will have to give back everything you have.” Her voice lowered into a dangerous whisper, forged in steel, and my fingers started to wring together on my lap.
“You will have to give back all your toys. All your books. Everything pretty in your bedroom. Your animals. Your shoes and dresses. Your lovely home. And all the other homes. All the trips, the jet, the friends… the family.”
The blood left my head and a wave of dizziness pulsated in my brain.
I didn’t want to give up any of those things.
Out the corner of my eye, Oliver’s sneer was as obvious as paint dripping down him. He wore it proudly for me to see.
Father’s order was firm. “Don’t fidget, Olivia.”
My fingers froze on my lap.
Mother arched her preened, dark eyebrows. “Do you want to go home now and pack up everything?”
I shook my head.
It wasn’t enough.
“Don’t you want to leave all the beauty, all the luxury, all the gifts, all the friends, the love and support, the privilege you deserve… and go live in some little swallow of misery?”
Again, I shook my head.
Still, it wasn’t enough.
Mother’s hair glistened darker than ink—and her tone was a threat wrapped in faux-concern. “You changed your mind? You don’t want to be out there with them?”
I was recoiling now. Folding into myself.
And I threw a moody look from beneath my lashes at Oliver as he pushed the menu closer to Mother.
“The lamb and hummus for lunch.” He slid a smirk to me. “And gelato for dessert.”
Then he took off. Launched himself from the daybed and ran back to the waters.
“You stay here,” Mother said softly—but there was nothing soft about the way she lingered a look over me.
Dray slipped off the daybed then, with a glance at me, his mouth flattened into a slanted line, left without a word.
I stayed on the daybed for lunch.
Mother ordered me a Greek salad. No dessert.
And she didn’t excuse me until the last hour of the outing, when all the children were tired, and slow-moving, and Serena and Asta were asleep on loungers.
Landon and Oliver filled up the sandpit with water.
Dray ditched them and chased me into the water. I only knew he followed me when he splashed water up my back, and he teased, “Do you still want a little life?”
I shook my head, face scrunched between the tears I silently wept on the daybed and the moodiness settled deep in me.
But Dray just advanced on me.
His steps were slow and playful, his smirk ghosting over his lips.
Instinct jolted through me and I made to run deeper into the waters—but Dray caught me, fast.
His arms, his weight, spun around my midsection before I was tackled off my feet.
And I came down in the water with a giggle.