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“I’m sorry, Emma. You know what she’s like...”
“Goodbye, August,” she snaps back.
And then she’s gone, riding the elevator down to the ground floor.
I stand completely still, even after the elevator doors shut close.
I’ve really, truly fucked up.
“You know, it’s good she’s gone,” Mother calls to me from across my penthouse as I stand at the shut elevator doors. “Good for you, especially. You don’t want girls like that, August, especially not where there are respectable girls like Octavia Beaumont willing and ready to date a Penmayne.”
Don’t react strongly. Don’t get angry. Don’t let her see how much this is affecting you.
“She’s not just any girl, Mother.”
“I thought I had ended all that silliness years ago when I caught you two at Crystal River Airport.”
I refuse to look at her. I keep my back turned.
“Well, she’s come back into my life,” I reply. “And I think it’s like fate has willed us together, and I think I’ve just ruined it this morning.”
“As I said, that’s a good thing. You’ll see.”
I remember what Emma said to me. I am my own man.
And this is what I want. I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life.
I want Emma Tucker.
Sure, family is important. Family is all we can rely upon. We stick together. As Victor said –the whole world can be against us sometimes, so what do we have other than family?
But I am also my own person.
I am a man who is in love with a woman. And my family can’t get in the way of that. Not even Mother.
I choose who I love.
Even Mother can learn to appreciate that - even she has her own story about impossible love defying the odds.
And I can make her understand.
“Mother, tell me how you met Father again?” I ask her slowly and deliberately.
This is where I make her comprehend what is going on. This is where I stand up to her. This is her impossible love story that I can use to hammer home my independence.
There’s a pause from her as she absorbs my pointed question.
I’ve got to her. I’ve broken through her defenses.
“You know the story, August,” she replies, her voice uncharacteristically close to a weak whisper. “It doesn’t need repeating.”
“Maybe you think about that story before you judge Emma,” I say.
“Her and I have nothing in common,” she replies. There’s a dropping of her trademark icy coolness. Something bordering on emotion uncharacteristically creeps into her voice. “Nothing.”
I spin around to face her.
“Like Emma, I can’t deal with this,” I say, “or with your Penmayne theatrics. Coming here early in the morning on your helicopter and trying to dictate my life.”
