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"Why are you alphabetizing them?"
"I can read, you know." He arched an eyebrow.
"I know that. My dad would hardly want an illiterate man to take over his company. Why does he want you so badly, anyway?"
He looked at his hands, stained with dirt, as he had never seen them before. "I'm good at what he needs."
"What, plowing the fields?"
There was that mouth twitch again. "Something like that."
"There's a lot at stake, you know. Daddy built up his business from nothing. He was just another boy in Detroit, one out of millions. He worked his way out of the kind of place that is so dangerous that he won't even take me back. It's important to me."
"Why isn't he giving it to you, then?"
I flushed. "He wanted to, but I'm...not right."
"Why not? You seem smart enough." Was that a compliment?
"I'm an artist. I'm all paint-splattered clothes and very little of the practical side. Dad makes my life run smoothly. He's like my patron, if I were working in an Italian court for a noble or something. When Daddy talks about what's going on with his business, Mom would always tell him, 'Not at the dinner table.' It's something that have no interest in. Dad tried to teach me when I was a kid. I understand the basics of accounting. It's not that hard. He taught me how to read financial statements when I was six, in secret from my mom. He kept paying me in toys. When my mom found out, she said that I was too young for that kind of thing. She threw a fit. She made him stop, and she threw me harder into painting, dancing, and singing."
I looked down, though there was no real reason for me to lower my eyes. "My grandfather made Mom become an accountant. Her other options were engineer or lawyer. Maybe a PhD, if it was the right field. He was so strict with her that my parents were sort of the other end of the spectrum. They let me do whatever I wanted. They gave me anything I wanted."
"So that's how you ended up so inappropriately fancy?”
I gasped. "How dare you!"
"It hasn't showed up much, but you have to admit that there aren't too many people who would wear Prabal Gurung to Blain's Farm and Fleet."
My interest sharpened like a knife with a whetstone. "How on Earth would you know that it's Prabal Gurung."
He looked like someone had just shoved a pine cone up his butt. "Uh..."
I crossed my arms, and his eyes dipped to the cleavage that I created.
"I'm waiting."
He gulped. "I have a mom, you know."
"A mom who wears this kind of stuff?"
He winced. "Yes. Prabal Gurung is pretty distinctive."
Even though he had his farm-boy veneer on, he was obviously wealthy.
"Where is your mom? She isn't here."
"No. She lives in Chicago. After my dad died, there wasn't any reason for her to be here."
"And you're here alone."
"This is where I grew up. It's where I went to high school." He looked at me steadily and lifted his chin a little bit. "This is where I belong. This is my home. My roots are here."
Unspoken was the challenge. I'll never move anywhere else, he was telling me. We were getting along for a half second, but now he was reminding me why I was leaving in less than a week. This was not the right place for me, a place where the biggest store in town was the Farm and Fleet.
"I'm going to my room." I walked up the stairs, and I took off my Prabal Gurung dress. I hung it up in my tiny closet. I dressed in some very plain gray J. Crew in a dress that I normally dressed up with a colorful Hermès scarf. I'd never bought it until Michelle Obama kept dressing her girls in it for public appearances. Then there was a run for the simple, clean lines. I took off my feathers. I pulled my Brazilian blowout into a simple bun at the base of my neck.
I sat on my bed and cried a little bit. Was this what my dad had wanted? For me to become one of these monochrome people?
