“Okay. You didn’t know. Didn’t know what, exactly?” That he was married, that he had a gorgeous, pregnant wife at home.
“He is a twin. You remember that, right?”
“Aye, okay. Is the twin brother also called Ben then?”
“No.” The shame washes over me like a fog, creeping in to cover and conceal.
“I didn’t fucking think so. So, tell me this, why did Ben, the same Ben that sat in our kitchen for tea back in May, suddenly have a wife and wee baby with him in December?”
“I didn’t know he was married, okay?” The tears well.
“What about the baby?”
“Of course not. He didn’t have a ring and told me he was separated from his wife pending divorce proceedings. I took him at his word, and I feel like an idiot.”
“All you can do is take someone at their word, Brina. Whatever fantasy he created around his life and circumstances, you are as much a victim as his wife and child are. I hope you realize that.”
“I want to believe you. But I still feel like a shitty person every day because of it. She came to work to see her brother-in-law, the one who set us up in the first place, mind you. She was convinced he was cheating because he was! With me! I heard it all: how she was pregnant and her husband was out at all hours. With me, Mom. I heard her call me every filthy name under the sun, and I wanted to sink under the weight of her words. They were true. All of them.”
“Oh, Bubble.”
“She stopped by my desk and commented on the flower. I panicked, so I gave it to her.”
“Brina, I understand, love.”
“Do you? Christ, I’m a failure.”
“You’re not a failure, Bubble. You have a tremendous heart and a sense of right and wrong. I know you didn’t set out to hurt anyone. Men can be right dicks sometimes. He told you what he wanted to be true. He created the illusion, not you.”
Fat drops pour down my cheeks, the dam having lost the struggle to contain the tears.
“Hey now, don’t cry. Everything happens for a reason, right? You were approached by that media company and offered a promotion. That’s some silver lining, Brina. It’s no wonder you left publishing and went to work with Mr. Fancy Pants. Life has a funny way of working out the way it issupposed to. Remember that the next time you beat yourself up over something totally outside of your control. Aye?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Please fasten seatbelts in preparation for landing,” the flight attendant says while walking through the cabin. Don’t worry, darlin’, my belt is firmly fastened. Go check across the aisle where a raven-haired beautyisthe seatbelt for our moody boss. For someone who had never flown on a private jet before, Bri has sure made herself at home.
We’re in the final stages of a get in, get it done and get out mission for Abe Grenfer’s signature to commence the pilot shows for his radio stint. Abe is an elusive old bastard, but Mason has Bri and me on that matter, while he catches up with another network executive. Two birds, one stone, and all that. That was the best news I’ve had in weeks because if we manage to wrap this up before Christmas, I’m sure the pudding will go down a little easier. And that will be the only thing going down, unless Bri manages to snap Mason out of his moody funk with some exceptional oral work.
“Welcome to Houston,” says the attendant. “The weather is a temperate sixty-three degrees.” Thank fuck for that. The ever-present chill from the snow is beginning to seep into my bones and turn me into a geriatric complainant before my time. I love New York, don’t get me wrong, but I hate long periods of cold and snow that just won't let up.
“Come on, Bubble, the sooner we get that signature, the sooner we can get back. The autograph might turn Captain Grumpy into Captain Gracious, for once.”
Mason fires me the look that weakens the resolve of floundering interns and makes adversaries pause to consider him more. Yeah, Mercer, I’ve known you half your life. I have years of walled immunity to that stare.
The get in,get it done and get out memorandum was fine in theory. Well, reality can be a bitch, and Abe Grenfer can be one difficult motherfucker to get a hold of. Mason took the jet back to New York. Sabrina was summoned to return with him until both of us realized she’d be more of an asset down here than back up there. Soft-spoken, empathetic females are often used as a kind of savvy business Trojan horse. Their curves can provide that razor’s edge swipe needed to cement a deal or sever one. Now Bri and Isaac Grenfer are winding up contract talks that continue to have roots in stubborn southern persistence. Abe won’t meet face to face, still self-conscious. Bri has opened up about her childhood, need for asthma medication, and the side effects of the drugs almost overnight, and colossal weight gain. Both of us sit transfixed, listening to this confident, capable woman talk about her struggle with self-worth and body dysmorphia. When she touched on the shaming by Juliette, my chest jack-knifed with powerful surges of furious anger, and the need to protect this woman at all costs from all threats.
Isaac continues to sip his negroni, interjecting with confirmations and anecdotes about his own life in the shadow of his famous father. How he’d often miss out on seeing him for weeks on end when filming his many game shows and interviews took him out to the West Coast and away from his family. That’s the thing about the media industry, I guess. While it brings the news and current affairs into the sittingrooms of billions worldwide, linking every family to world events in real time, others are torn from theirs as they report, film, or debate the latest declaration of war or celebrity cheating crisis. As I listen to Sabrina recount her childhood and own conflicts of maturity and search for inner strength, I’m forced back into the attic of boxes in my brain, where some of the most blissful and painful memories are catalogued and stored in neatly indexed rows. Three people are sitting and sipping at a corner table in a Houston Jazz House. One, a proud southern man of color whose father is one of the most iconic presenters of our time, his career spanning decades. Me, the only child of a Texan tycoon, the widowed man intent on keeping his skeletoned closet firmly locked and dead bolted. His desire to keep those secrets from ever seeing the light of day and somehow tarnishing his impeccable reputation is only shadowed by his audacity to bed every socialite drawn to his silver tongue and soaring bank balance. Then there is Sabrina Arden Broe, rhymes with snow. The one thing I want to see less of, yet want to fly us back to JFK to surround ourselves in it. The daughter of Irish immigrants, part of a big, boisterous family of eight. A family who, unlike the Grenfers, or the Hynds, or even the untouchable Mercers, holds family and connection above all else. While Isaac, who prefers to go by Zac, Mas, and I all had the latest gadgets and toys. We vacationed in carefully selected holiday spots depending on the need to broadcast wealth and excess or escape the prying eyes of both, Sabrina had no such luxuries.
“Wait, you’ve never heard of a tin can potluck?” she asks, hand covering her chest with indignation and alarm.
“But you’re going to share with the group, right?” Zac commands our complete attention with a flourish of his hand. Unnecessary, because we’re both hanging on her every word.
“It started when we were camping. You both knowcamping, right? You pitch tents and sleep on lumpy air mattresses and have to sleep in all your clothes, so you don’t freeze to death?” We nod. We both understand camping, obviously. The last time I was in a tent, Mason Mercer was sharing it with me. We were on an overnight hike as part of our boarding school’s team building and resilience activities.
“Okay, well, we used to get the cans from stores that didn’t have labels. Most of them were like ten or twenty cents. Some had tiny dents and stuff; those were pretty sketchy, but anyway, we used to get whole trunkfuls of these cheap cans because the stores couldn’t sell them. When we went camping, and I’m talking most of the aunts and uncles,all the cousins, not just the few you met at Thanksgiving, Trys.”
All the cousins? There are more?
