Elsie
Chapter Forty
Ihated getting woken up by the Spice Girls.
During normal business hours, having my ringtone set to Wannabe really suited my whimsical nature, which meant I had to live with the curse of occasionally getting alerted to an early morning phone call by Scary Spice telling me what she really, really wants.
I groaned, reaching helplessly for the source of the noise. I blinked into the early morning light, momentarily confused at the bed I found myself in until I turned to see Will sleeping soundly beside me.
He must’ve carried me sometime in the middle of the night, and I would’ve been concerned at what a heavy sleeper I apparently was if it weren’t for the memory of why I’d been so exhausted in the first place.
“Hello?” I groaned into the phone.
“Good morning, Elspeth.”
My body jolted upright at the voice that wreaked more havoc on my nervous system than caffeine ever could.
“Mom?” I whispered, quickly climbing out of bed before I could wake Will.
I looked down at myself, wearing only one of Will’s oversized T-shirts, and scrambled for a pair of sweatpants to fight the morning chill.
“Glad to know you still know how to operate a telephone. Your father and I were worried you’d forgotten that skill.”
I rolled my eyes to the heavens, pushing open the sliding glass door to his back porch.
God, I needed a cup of coffee for this conversation.
“Mom.” I sighed before she jumped into what I already knew was a carefully planned speech.
“I’ve been waiting patiently for you to come to your senses on your own, Elspeth, but now I can see that I was a fool for even thinking you might consider doing what’s reasonable without my help.”
I gritted my teeth, reminding myself that she wasn’t here. Her words could not hurt me. And no matter what, she could not force me to go back.
I focused on the calm of the lake to steady myself as she spieled out her carefully cut words that had been wielded against me since childhood.
I should’ve been able to handle them by now, after twenty-six years of practice, but either I was getting weaker with age, or she was just getting better.
“You’ve sulked long enough.” Her tone was sharp and disapproving. “You took your break from real life, holed up wherever you are, doing God knows what—but it’s time to come back and face your responsibilities.”
Responsibilities. I laughed under my breath. I’ve had responsibilities since I was six years old, when I was told wearing the princess costume to our holiday dinner would disgrace our family.
“And what are my responsibilities, Mother?” I asked stiffly, hoping to rein in my emotional reaction.
“The fact that you’re asking that is outrageous, Elspeth.”
Stop calling me that, I mouthed against the phone, stop, stop, stop.
“You need to make things right with Andrew. I don’t care what you have to say or do. You just need to fix it.”
“Mom, there is no fixing this. Andrew and I, we wanted different things. I was never going to make him happy. You know that, Mom.”
You know it more than anyone.
“Listen to me, Elspeth Cameron.” My mother’s icy voice held power, even through the phone.
I fought the urge to cower. To give into her, yet again.
“You need to get back here and fulfill your obligations, or else you risk making a mockery of not just yourself, but two entire families. Do you want that? Was that your intention?”
“Mom, are you forgetting that I went along with all of it? That he was the one who walked out on me?”
“And you know perfectly well why he did!” she shrieked, and the geese that had been leisurely floating along the water’s surface all flew upward, as if they could hear the decibel of her disappointment even from there.
Fly away, I thought. At least you guys can escape this conversation.
“The way you behave, Elspeth!” she continued in my ear. “Honestly, it makes one question who raised you. Certainly not your father and I.”
“No,” I muttered under my breath. “Certainly not.”
“What was that?”
“I said,” my voice grew louder, “certainly not. You left that to a string of nannies, remember? Because you couldn’t be bothered. It’s not like you’re my mother or anything.”
“Oh, don’t give me that,” she hissed. “It was our job to provide for you, and we did. Did you not always have the best clothes? Vacations other girls could only dream of—”
I shook my head against the phone because it didn’t matter. None of that had meant anything to me. Not the way it did to her.
“Did we not send you to the best schools?” she continued, raging against my ungratefulness. “God, the money your father spent on your education! And you wasted it! You could’ve been anything! Anyone!”
“Except for who I wanted to be.”
“And what is that, Elspeth?” she retorted. “A no name writer living off credit cards she’ll never be able to pay off? Someone who chased away a respectable man because she didn’t know how to behave in polite society? Tell me, is that everything you dreamed of being?”
I sucked in a breath, humiliated to have my worst fears for my life painted so vividly by the one person whose words had always cut deepest.
Humiliated that it still somehow stung.
“I didn’t dream of being in a loveless marriage, either,” I said softly, thinking words I would never say out loud. And I don’t think you did either.
Some part of me thinks she heard them anyway, because for once in her life she remained silent on the other side of the line.
“But I’d been willing to do it. For you. Because that marriage was so important to you. But I’m not the one who ran out the night before the wedding. That was Andrew.”
Charming, perfect, prodigal Andrew, who my parents had wanted for a son-in-law since the sonogram proved I’d be a daughter.
“And do you know what he said to me, Mom?” I asked her, eyes welling with tears. “He told me that he couldn’t marry me because he couldn’t bear to spend the rest of his life with a wife he was ashamed of.”
When I said the words out loud, I felt the memory play out like a punch to the gut.
How broken I’d been by his words, my mother’s disappointment, the embarrassment of all of Boston knowing what my family had always made me perfectly aware of: I wasn’t good enough.
Not for the Cameron name.
Not for Andrew.
Not for her.
“I’m giving you a week,” she said with a tone of finality. “If you aren’t back in Boston by then, ready to apologize to your father and me…” She didn’t need to finish. Her implication was clear.
“Cutting me out of the will, then?” I laughed with no trace of humor. “Because I couldn’t force the man you chose to be in love with me?”
She didn’t respond.
“Money can buy a lot of things, mother, but it’s never been able to buy happiness. Not yours. And definitely not mine.”
I heard the words settle over her, filling her with discomfort. I pictured her red lips set in a straight line against her perfectly porcelain face.
When she spoke, I thought about what it might cost me to finally act so heavily against her wishes. I worried how it would change the course of my life.
“You still have a chance to make this right, Elspeth,” she said, her tone ringing with the finality of her last warning.
But it didn’t matter anymore. I think we both knew it. That this would be the straw that broke the Cameron dynasty forever.
“So did you,” I told her, so utterly heartbroken. “And you just wasted it.”
The line went dead, and I cradled it against my ear, frozen, listening to the silence because I knew with a certainty—that would be the last time she called me.
“Who are you talking to so early in the morning?”
The sliding glass door alerted me to Will’s arrival, and in a few steps he was behind me, his arms wrapping around me in an embrace I melted into.
“Oh, that?” I arched my neck to look up at him. “I was just calling for an Uber home.”
He stiffened.
“I’m kidding.” I laughed, patting him on the arm. “But glad to know you like having me around.”
“That wasn’t funny,” he said, his hold tightening.
“It was to anyone who got to see that grumpy look on your face.” I poked the frown lines on his cheek.
“I’m more worried about the grumpy look on your face,” he countered, brushing my hair back with a gentleness that surprised me. “I haven’t really seen that one on you before and, to be honest, I’m not a fan.”
He touched the frown that still seemed to force my lips downward, and I sighed, burrowing against him.
“What’s wrong? I can fix it.”
“You don’t even know what it is.” I smiled into his chest.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said adamantly. “I’ll take care of it.”
I laughed at his confidence, feeling okay for only a moment before the memory of my mother’s words resurfaced. Inescapable. I groaned into his shirt.
“Who called you?” he asked.
“My mother.” And then, not wanting him to worry, added. “She can be…a lot.”
He blew out a breath of relief, and I looked up at him questioningly.
“Sorry, it’s just that for a second I was worried it was that other guy you told me about.” He hesitated. “I thought maybe you were having second thoughts.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “No. Absolutely not. This thing between us?” I gestured with a hand. “There’s no room allowed for any thoughts besides positive ones. Okay?”
“Thank fucking God for that,” he blew out. “Because, to be honest, I don’t think I’d handle it as graciously as I handled you being with Theo.”
I huffed a short laugh. “You think that was you being gracious?”
“I could’ve been a hell of a lot worse,” he grumbled.
“I’d like to see that sometime.” I smirked.
“Yeah, well, I hope the situation never arises again,” he said and then nodded toward the door. “Come on, I’ll make coffee.”
“Fine,” I said. “But it’s totally not fair that you know you can distract me from any conversation by offering coffee.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “I have a feeling that’ll come in handy in the future.”