Chapter 9
First of all, flying? It was spectacular.
“Nolan! There’s a lake,” I told him. The clouds had parted a little and I could definitely see a body of water far below us. “Not a Great Lake, right?”
“There are only five of those and they’re all much, much bigger than what you see down there.”
I could see everything from up here and I had been glued to the window since we’d taken off. I moved my head away from the glass so that I could polish off the mark from my nose and glanced over at him. “Don’t you want to look?” I asked.
There were plenty of windows available because we were the only two people in this whole plane. It looked a lot like someone’s living room—not Kolter’s, because nothing was broken and taped, and not Cadence’s, where there were no lights. I could have lived in Nolans’ airplane very easily.
“I can’t believe you have this,” I told him.
“It was my grandfather’s,” he explained. “He used to travel constantly for business and owning a plane made sense. I’m not sure that it does for me, but I’ve kept it and kept it up.”
“I would do the same thing, if I were you. You could go anywhere at any time! You have no boundaries.”
“That’s always been one of my issues,” he agreed. I continued to look out of the window, but I did notice how his eyes kept moving to a shiny wood cabinet that was built into the wall of the plane.
“What’s that?” I asked finally. I pointed at it.
“It used to be where I kept the liquor. I drank a lot when I traveled.” His eyes went over again.
“Are there still bottles in there?”
“I think that I threw them all away the last time I took a trip.”
Just in case, I went to check, but it really was empty.
“I should have brought snacks,” I said. I’d made a big “happy birthday” breakfast for him today and we’d had fun going to the beach near his house to celebrate.
We’d even gotten into the water, although I didn’t know how to swim so he was nervous about it.
It was cold enough that I didn’t last long, but he’d gone back and forth a few times and I had decided to watch some videos to pick up tips for myself.
I thought it had been a good birthday for him so far, but food usually made things even better.
“On our next trip, I’ll have the plane catered in case you get hungry,” he said. “We’ll be landing…” At that point, the pilot spoke on the intercom to tell us that we had already begun our descent because Detroit wasn’t very far away if you went through the air.
As I re-buckled, I was thinking of how Nolan had said “our next trip.” On a private plane, you didn’t need ID. And he wanted to go places with me? I looked over at him and smiled, and he smiled back. A very nice one.
There was a car waiting for us at the airport and as we drove toward the suburb where his parents lived, he gave me the rundown on what would happen. “We’re supposed to have dinner with them,” he said.
Good, because I was hungry. I really should have brought snacks. “Great,” I answered enthusiastically.
“No, it certainly won’t be. By this time of the day, my dad will be on his second or third drink.”
“I don’t think that you should be around that,” I said.
“I asked him not to but he didn’t respond to that text. We’re supposed to eat at seven and my mother will be late. She’s usually at her law office for a few more hours and she let me know that leaving early was something special she was doing for me. But she’ll still be late.”
“Couldn’t we have met at her there during the day? So she wouldn’t be inconvenienced?”
“Then she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to talk about how she was inconvenienced,” he said. “This way, she’ll be able to discuss the sacrifice, repeatedly.”
“Maybe the food will make her forget to complain,” I suggested. Eating always made me feel better and cooking dinner had been one of the strategies I’d used to manage Kolter’s moods.
“She won’t eat,” he told me. “She doesn’t like to consume much food. Her caloric intake is done through alcohol.”
“Doesn’t she get sick?” I wondered.
“She may be a vampire,” Nolan told me. “No, not really. I don’t believe in those.”
I shrugged. Who knew?
“I asked her not to drink while I’m there and I think she’ll be able to control herself better than my father.
So, we’ll sit at the table, three of us will eat, and then we’ll go to the study and talk about your paperwork.
You and I will sleep at a hotel and tomorrow, we can sightsee.
There’s an amazing art museum in Detroit and we could go to Greenfield Village. Or we could just head back home.”
I had never actually been to a museum and was game for anything, which I told him.
Then I thought of Kolter again and specifically, the relationship he had with his mother.
As far as I knew, he was currently living with her while he licked his wounds and she told him that he was responsible for nothing and that the world owed him a lot.
I remembered in particular how angry he got when I’d even inched toward the general area of insulting her and while I didn’t think that Nolan would react that way, I chose my next words carefully.
“Are they going to be nice at this dinner? Will they behave themselves?”
“My parents? No. No is the answer to both of those questions. They may not be nice to me or you, and they certainly won’t be nice to each other. They’ll be horribly rude to the housekeeper as she serves the meal.”
“It will be like a restaurant?”
“I’m sorry to subject you to this,” he said. “I know you want your paperwork problem solved and so do I. It’s one night and then you’ll never have to see them again.”
“I do want it solved but I wasn’t worried about how they’ll treat me. My feelings won’t be hurt no matter what they might say, so don’t think twice if you hear something insulting going in my direction. I won’t ever put sand in their gas tanks or release poisonous snakes in their bedroom.”
“Have you done that?”
“I never touched snakes, and my sister swore that she didn’t know that they were dangerous. How are you going to react to them? I mean your parents and not any reptiles we might find.”
“I’ve always tried to ignore everything.
My mom can’t seem to help herself from shooting out what my dad calls her ‘zingers.’ They’re little insults and they don’t seem like much, but she’s really good at picking at someone’s weaknesses and the zingers add up after a while.
They’re probably one of the reasons that he drinks so much—no, we’re all in control of ourselves.
He could always walk away from the marriage and so could she. ”
Maybe. You could get stuck in a relationship, though.
“My dad is disappointed in me and that feels worse than the zingers.” He frowned.
I wanted to resolve my paperwork dilemma but not at his expense. “Nolan, I’m not sure about this.”
“It’s a couple of hours. We’ll get what we need and then go.”
He didn’t seem concerned but I definitely was—again, not for myself.
I’d heard all kinds of insults and been called a lot of names, so his mom’s zingers weren’t a threat.
I didn’t want him to feel like he had to stand up for me, and I didn’t want to listen to them insult him or act disappointed, either.
And who really knew? Maybe he would suddenly side with them and they’d become like Kolter and his mom, defending each other’s bad behavior.
I didn’t expect that, but one thing I’d noticed in life was that people were weird about their families.
And yeah, I included myself in that weirdness. I had never gotten along with my sister but we had totally teamed up against my mom. I thought that was only because Patchouli hated her more than she hated me, though.
The car ride from the airport took almost as long as the flight but we did finally arrive at a house that surprised me.
It was big, which I expected, but it was totally different from Nolan’s and from the one that his grandparents had owned.
It was so modern! It looked like something out of a movie about the future, like our civilization hadn’t reached this level yet.
“They hired an architect from New York to design this before I was born,” he explained when I commented on it. “One of my mom’s favorite topics is how the result was a disaster. It’s been in a few books, though, and no one else seems to agree.”
I thought that it was beautiful—but so, so different from the place that he had chosen for himself and also hundreds of miles away. He had also chosen to live apart from them.
“Ready?” he asked me. “You don’t have to worry.” We walked toward the front door together.
I thought that we might have been met by a guy in a tuxedo, a butler.
But the black, metal slab swung open and I saw a man who seemed familiar, although we’d never met.
He was obviously Nolan’s dad. They looked so much alike, except this older man was a few inches shorter and he didn’t only look like he had more years on him.
It was also the miles. His face sagged and puffed out, but that was what drinking did to you. I had seen it with my mom.
“There you are,” he announced. He frowned and then added, “Right. Happy birthday.”
“Thank you, Dad. This is Vivi. Vivi, this is my father, Brock.”
“Hello,” I said, and he answered that it was a pleasure.
That didn’t seem to be true because he was still frowning, but he moved out of the way and let us enter with our bags.
They were a matched set and I was borrowing one, since I didn’t have anything besides what most people used for garbage and groceries.