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She shakes her head. “Don’t make me promises like that.”
“I want you to promise me that after I’ve kept a few, you’ll stop asking me not to make them.”
She nods, her smile wide. “It’s a deal.”
“Good. And you watch on Friday. I’ll send you a special message.”
“I’ll be watching.”
“See you later.” I give her a hard, fast kiss and rush out to my car.
My phone is dead when I pull it out of my pocket, but I don’t need to see it to know that there are missed calls and increasingly irate texts from my father.
It’s raining hard when I turn into the lake house’s drive, and I’m relieved to find the house completely dark. My dad must have given up and gone up to bed.
When I was leaving for her house last night, he’d discouraged me from going. Telling me I was only asking for trouble starting a relationship like this just when my career is taking off.
But he’s also the one who discouraged me from coming to East Winsome, said I’d be bored and begging to come back home after a few days. Look how wrong he turned out to be about that. I love it here. This pace feels better than my nonstop life in New York.
I don’t understand why my father hates it so much. But maybe if I had a family like his, I’d want to forget where I came from too.
He comes from a long line of unsuccessful liars—con artists, snake oil salesmen, and big tent preachers who’d never actually read The Bible.
Our family lore is a myriad of myths about the men and women—losers who’d tried to make themselves into legends—whose misdeeds caught up with them before they’d had a chance to taste the fruit of their spoils. And yet, when the opportunity to swindle, dissemble, or fabricate presented itself, past failures weren’t enough of a deterrent against the temptation of whatever swindle, hustle, or con they found themselves unable to resist. And as far back as we can trace our lineage, every single one of them was a repeat offender.
My father is the exception to that rule, he wasn’t able to avoid it completely, but he only fell prey to temptation’s call once.
Maybe having to live with an irrefutable testament to his sin had something to do with that.
I’d had private guitar, piano, and drum lessons most of my life and was quickly identified as virtuoso - I mastered every instrument I picked up and I learned to read music before I could read words proficiently.
When I was six, instead of starting kindergarten in my local Upper West Side elementary school, my father and I made an hour-long drive to a private school in Greenwich, Connecticut that was hailed as an incubator for young musicians.
I had tutors for my academics and took private swimming and tennis lessons on the weekend. I made friends with other kids at the music academy, but none of them lived close by. So play dates and birthday parties weren’t as plentiful as they were for other kids.
I’d tag along with Jack to the park, or with Nadia to the arcade where she met whichever boy she was dating. ,They’re twins and six years older than me, so I ended up watching longingly as kids my age played together.
So, when I saw a flyer for a Halloween party at the local school that was open to the whole neighborhood, I nagged my parents until they agreed to take me.
It had been a year since I’d seen my friends from preschool, but we found each other in the crowd pretty quickly and ran off to the playground.
It didn’t take long for me to regret it.
Alex, a freckled redhead who had been my best friend since I was three years old was the first to ask. “Why are you white and the rest of your family is Black?”
I wasn't bothered by that.
Penn, as everyone calls my stepmother, is the only mother I’ve ever known. But the first time I noticed how different I looked compared to the rest of them, I’d asked the question, too.
Penn had put me on her lap and explained that the woman who’s belly I’d grown in, and who I looked like, had gone to heaven. She told me she was my mother by choice, which was just as important as blood when it came to families. The way we looked had nothing to do with it. How we chose to love each other did.
Her answer had been a relief to the four-year-old me who’d been afraid I was pale because I was sick or something.
So, I repeated Penn’s answer to the group of children who’d gathered round me on the playground and expected that to be the end of it.
It was just the beginning.
“My mom said it’s cause your dad’s a cheater,” one of the boys taunted.
