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I’ve always known Milly was the love of my life. I knew when I was eighteen I loved her. I thought I would marry her.
I spent a year or two after she was gone trying to convince myself that I would get over her. But I found out in less than two minutes of being near her, that there was no getting over her.
I tried to find substitutes, but no one was Milly. No one had her gentle assertiveness. Nor her quick wit. Nor her innate sense of decency. There was no one I’d been able to talk with for hours about what was happening in the world, or about my family. And no one looked like her. That body. We’d never made love—she wanted me to wait until prom—but I knew it would have been spectacular.
I sit down at my desk and start reading emails. Canceling my meeting with Cristal means I now have a few extra hours to kill before my flight to New York, I might as well use them to get some work done.
Of course, this is futile; my mind is fixated on the woman I have spent all my adult life trying to forget.
I remember the last time I saw her, before she disappeared into thin air.
* * *
December 3, 2001
“Red, you’ve got to calm down!” I try to whisper so that no one will hear me. I sneaked into her bedroom while her mother was preoccupied and have been in here with her for the last hour.
We are sitting on her bed facing each other with our legs crossed in front of our bodies. Our hands are clasped as we talk. I rub my thumb over the ring on her ring finger of her right hand. It’s a silver band connected by a heart. She never takes it off.
“Calm down? How can you even say that, D?” she whispers back but her eyes are angry and scared.
“Listen to what they are saying on the news about my father. And he’s gone. No one knows where he is! My mother is either crying or locked in her room on the phone. Our house is a crime scene! You had to sneak in here tonight! How can I be calm?”
Her eyes are blazing gold bullion as each question, each statement answers her original question. The last forty-eight hours have been pure mayhem. Not just in her life but in mine, too.
My father, a company president at Enron also lost his job and he and my mother have been in a raging fight ever since. The only time they stopped yelling at each other was when my mother stopped to yell at me. She warned me about going anywhere near the “daughter of that dirty thief.” But, as it has been for the last two years, in times of trouble there was only one person I could think about talking to.
We’d been paired up in history class in the first week of our sophomore year. Milly was so outwardly reserved. The first thing I noticed about her was her posture. She sat up so straight I was convinced she was wearing a back brace.
When I introduced myself, she only said, “I know who you are,” and kept facing forward.
“Okay, Red,” I returned, giving her this nickname because of her hair.
She only rolled her eyes, but told me later—much later—it thrilled her when I said it the first time.
I would come to find out that not only did she have a fiercely loyal heart, but also, a very dark, wicked sense of humor.
We’d been inseparable after we finished our project and we moved from friendship to romance as seamlessly as we had done everything else.
The afternoon after our presentation, I walked with her to her next class and as we said goodbye, I leaned in and almost kissed her. She smiled at me but leaned out of my reach, her eyes—those golden kaleidoscopes the mirror to her every emotion—were full of happiness. She said, “My kisses aren’t free, and trust me when I say you can’t afford them yet.” And then walked into her classroom. I fell in love with her right then and made winning her over my personal mission. We have been together ever since.
Right now, though, I don’t recognize her. Milly is the calm one. She's always rational. She always thinks things through. She's the one who tells me to calm down. I don’t know how to soothe her.
Her father is gone. He ran off with a lot of money. They are saying he ran because he had something to do with the fraud at Enron.
So many futures have been ruined. Generations of people will feel the ripple effect of this. College funds depleted. Retirement savings gone. My father has lost everything.
Milly and I applied early admission to Stanford and we both got in. We are supposed to go to college together. I'm determined we still will. My mother may hate her family, but she didn’t do anything wrong.
“Red
, yes, everything is crazy, but what can you do right now? We have to wait for more information.” I try to sound calm.
The remaining executives are all still in Houston, but none of them have shown their faces. Enron was the city’s largest employer—the entire town is reeling. And Mr. Hassan’s disappearing act has turned the rage of the city squarely onto his family.
“Dean, I'm so scared. What’s going to happen to us? Do you think they are going to arrest us? I mean, they have been questioning us like they think we know where he is. Why would he do this?”
She falls forward on that question, more of a wail than a spoken sentence, and leans on my chest. I let go of her hands and wrap my arms around her.
