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I followed him into the living room to find an army of Milenna PR, legal, and media associates congregating on our leather sofa and green velvet armchairs, hovering over the marble coffee table. They were all on edge. I scanned the faces of people I vaguely recognized. They seemed scared, worried. No one was looking at me.
There was a tall, Korean guy in a dark, fitted suit standing near the bookshelves. He met my gaze and held it. His eye contact wasn’t full of sparks or sending off warning bells in my head. Instead, it was comforting. I appreciated someone acknowledging my presence in the room.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Laina,” said Mr. Delancey, without looking at me. “Your parents-”
I immediately felt an absence in my chest, like someone had pulled my heart out, a cavernous ache hollowing out behind my ribs.
Mr. Delancey came closer, taking my hand in his for a moment before I snatched it back.
“Tell me.”
He tried to clear his throat. My patience was running out when he finally spoke. “Your parents were in Paris, but they…they died in a plane crash over the Alps. We just got word. There was a fire. No survivors.”
People around me were breaking out in sobbing and weeping and I knew in my heart what was happening, but my body and my brain were accepting it in slow motion. I scanned the room again. No one said anything to me.
I looked at the guy in the corner and he straightened up and came over to where Mr. Delancey and I were standing. Even in my heeled boots, he was taller than me by a few inches and he blocked my view of the rest of the living room like a wall.
“I’m so sorry,” he said in a low, smooth voice. His eyes told me his sympathy was genuine.
“Thank you,” I managed to exhale.
“This is Everett Park,” explained Mr. Delancey. “He’ll be your executive security from now on.”
“My what?”
“I’m your bodyguard,” said Everett. And that was about the last thing I heard.
I remember going straight to my room, calling my parents, and listening to their voicemail greetings over and over and over. I fell asleep at some point and woke up to an empty house, the sun sinking, making the shadows long and the hallway dark. I walked down the long hallway to the kitchen and traced my fingers over the multitude of family pictures that lined the walls.
When I made it to the kitchen, I turned on the light and jumped. Everett was leaning against the counter, without his suit jacket, tie flipped over his shoulder, eating cereal. He stood up straight and set the bowl down on the counter, wiping his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I was really hungry. I don’t know what the etiquette is.”
He was basically standing at attention and I realized I was his boss now.
“It’s okay,” I answered. “I’m glad you helped yourself.”
I got a glass bottle of water out of the fridge and let the water soothe my dry, parched throat.
“If you’re okay with it, I’d like to do something for you,” Everett said. I leaned back against the counter, hugging my arms across my chest. I had taken off my boots at some point, but I was still in my dress. I didn’t know when I would change, didn’t know if I wanted to.
“Like what?”
“Can I make you dinner? I’m decent at a few things.”
“I don’t know if I can eat anything.”
He nodded. “The day I found out my parents died, I forgot to eat all day and then I woke up in the dead of night super hungry and it was the most depressing thing I’ve ever experienced.”
My eyes welled with tears for him. He knew, he understood, but I wished he didn’t. I wished no one did.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“We’re orphans,” he said with a shrug.
It struck me as morbidly funny and I smiled. “When someone says orphans, I picture little Victorian children at a train station with a brown tag pinned to their jacket.”
