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I’m not a legal expert but I have given it a lot of thought.
I know I’m a minor. Which means I do need a guardian in the state’s eyes.
But nowhere does it say that I need to be living with that guardian under the same roof, right?
I can still live in my old townhouse on Park Avenue only a couple of blocks from Central Park. That house is still a part of Charlie’s estate and from what I understand, it will become mine when I turn twenty-one. Until then, my guardian with the help of Marty will handle all the affairs.
And yes, I do understand that people frown upon minors living alone but the thing is that I’ve lived alone all my life. My mom was barely home and I was passed down from nannies to assistants to agents even, when Charlie used to be busy with her shoots and overseas commitments. So it’s not as if I don’t know how to handle myself. We can bring back the old staff and I can still live in New York.
And I open my mouth to tell him all that. To explain so he understands my unique situation.
But he speaks. And he speaks just one word.
“No.”
I draw back. Not because he’s spoken it loudly but because he’s done it so decisively. So clearly and in a way that makes everything final so that I’m left with a stumbling, “What?”
He takes my surprise in, sweeps his gaze over my face before throwing out a short nod. “Glad we had this chat. Now —”
“What, no,” I cut him off. “We haven’t had this chat. You haven’t even heard my plan yet.”
He gives me a look then. A thoughtful look from what I can gather.
Then, “If this new plan is anything like braving the woods in the middle of the night to get back to New York, I think you should save your breath and both our time.”
I can say so many things to him.
So many, many things in retort.
But.
This is serious. This is about my life, about me going back to New York.
So I curb all my sharp backtalk and try to appeal to him in a nice and calm and rational way. “As I said before, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. And it was very nice of you to let me stay in your house, but I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to live here. In this town. New York is where I grew up. I’ve lived my entire life there. My home is in New York and I need to go back. Now, I understand that I’m a minor and I do need some parental supervision. But the thing you have to understand is that I’m not like other teenagers. I’m capable of being on my own. I’ve spent more than half my life being on my own. So as I said, Marty can come up with a solution. I can bring back the old staff. The cooks, the maids, the driver. My mom’s old assistants. I always dealt with them anyway and —”
“I don’t think you can,” he says, cutting me off.
“What?”
Again, he studies me with his shimmering but unfathomable eyes. “From what I hear they won’t come back.” I frown as he keeps going, “Because you’ve got a reputation, haven’t you?”
My fingers flex around the umbrella. My heart twists.
“And your reputation is the reason,” he continues, his voice all deep and quiet, “why my father was named as your guardian. Because no one else would take you.”
My heart twists harder.
Reputation.
Yeah, I have one.
People think I’m a wild child. A problem child. An attention-seeking child. A hoyden, a harpy, a shrew.
A troublemaker.
It’s not unearned or undeserved.
I completely and fully accept the blame for it. I’ve done things, bad things, to annoy people. To bother them, to make their life difficult. And I’ve done all of this for one reason and one reason only.
To get my mother’s attention.
To get her love.
Because she didn’t, see. She never loved me and she had reasons.
The first is that I’m the result of a very ill-thought and short-lived affair that she’d had with a photographer who’d lured her in with the promises of making her a model at the age of seventeen but left her with me. He never even knew that the girl he screwed over — again my mom’s words — was going to have his baby. And she never bothered to tell him.
Honestly, I’ve never cared about my dad. If he was asshole enough to leave her and me then he can stay gone.
Anyway, the second reason why my mother hated me is because when her parents found out about her pregnancy, they kicked her out. And she had to crash on a friend’s couch in New York. Not to mention, I was difficult even when I was in her belly. I wreaked havoc on her body and when I got out, I wreaked havoc in her life by always demanding attention and care. It was a miracle that my mom became the star that she is — was — with a hellion of a daughter like me.
