“That’s true. Maybe I’ll tell her I’m leaving Phillip for another woman. See if I can make her stroke out.”
We both laugh.
It’s always been like this between us—easy, effortless. Finding Whitney in a place like this, where people care more about their yachts than their families, feels like a gift. A blonde, blue-eyed socialite who doesn’t quite fit the mold. Neither of us does. We may have grown up with silver spoons, but ours were tarnished from the start.
When I arrived at Miami University as a freshman, I didn’t know anyone. But I learned quickly how to sound like I belong somewhere I don’t. By the end of my first semester, I still didn’t have a group—but I had Whitney.
And that’s enough.
I’m used to being an outsider. Being the token Native girl adopted into one of Collier County’s wealthiest families is both a blessing and a curse. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like if Jon and Kathy Williams hadn’t taken me in.
I’ve never met my mother—a white woman with addiction issues my father dated one summer before she got pregnant. They tried to stay together for me, but she left when I was a year old, dropping me on the reservation with him.
He did his best.
It wasn’t enough.
By the time I was two, he put me into foster care. A twenty-year-old man can’t raise a child when he can barely support himself. The tribe didn’t like that I was sent off to outsiders, but there wasn’t another option.
I think about it sometimes—what my life would have looked like if I’d stayed. Tradition. Culture. Poverty.
When I was twelve, my adoptive parents took me back once. They donated to the new Seminole school, watched me learn beadwork and pottery, clap along to dances I didn’t know the rhythm to.
We didn’t go back again.
Not because they didn’t want to.
Because I didn’t.
I don’t remember my life there before I was adopted. And when I met my father’s family at twelve, they were kind enough—but even I can tell we didn’t fit. I never fit.
Too white for the reservation.
Too Native for Collier County.
Dropped into the middle of the reservation after ten years as a country club kid, I felt like a fraud in both directions. I expected the teepee jokes from the rich kids at school. I was prepared for that kind of ignorance.
I was not prepared for the quiet judgment from my own blood.
That’s what lingers.
That, and the name—McCullough. Strange on my tongue, a legacy I don’t quite know how to carry.
“So what’s your plan?” I ask.
“I don’t have one,” Whitney says. “Other than finishing this Bloody Mary before I have to go home and look at Phillip’s face.”
We laugh again. I like that we can still do that—even now.
“At least you don’t have kids,” I say. “Can you imagine doing this as a single parent?”
“If we had kids, I already would be,” she says. “He works enough as it is. He’d disappear completely and leave me with them.” She takes another sip, then sets the glass down. “There’s something else.”
“Oh?”
“He increased the coverage on my life insurance policy.”
“What?” I nearly choke on my drink.
