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It takes a few seconds for the news to sink in. Her words are perfect English, yet somehow they don’t quite fit together. My brow furrows as I look at her. Reaching up, I adjust the pink frame of my glasses and nod slowly in understanding. “I…see.”
“He’s a devil, that one. All those boys are.”All those boys. She means the ones currently running New York like it’s their personal playground and verging on world domination just from the size of their bank accounts. Coleman ‘King’ Huntington-Ward, Aillard Brookwell, and Thorin Ravenscroft. “They party a lot, I’ve heard.”
I don’t respond at first. I knew them once upon a time, thoseboysshe’s mentioning. They didn’t party back then, but maybe their growing fortune has changed the way they live their lives now. “Where did you hear that?”
“Online.”
A soft laugh escapes before I can help it. “Perhaps they’re wrong.”
Nana Noel murmurs something I can’t hear. “Maybe. You have a big, bleeding heart for everyone. Even those who’ve wronged you.” Man, the hits keep coming. She walks a few paces away, setting her watering can down on a wrought iron table close to one of the trees. “Not to add more depressing news to this conversation, but have you spoken with your father recently? We’re coming up on the first Saturday of the month.”
I flinch, taking a half step away from her in the process. Very few things in this world make me shudder, and my father is one of them. Dad and I may work together, but that’s where our conversations end. Nana Noel instills a monthly meeting for us to get together as a family to eat to remember my Mom. When she passed away, we all began floating in different directions until Nana Noel forced us back together. She’s been doing it for years, trying to rebuild the connection we lost. Dad handed over custody of me to her when I was a teenager before officially cutting me off when I was in college.
We may work at Hastings Center together, but he turned his back on me over a fuckingdegree change. But he couldn’t not include me in the family business, it would be bad for the press to see the already fracturing Hastings family deteriorate completely. There’s no financial aid for the leading philanthropic giant catering to the whims of celebrities. It’s all about helping the elite society who want to give back without putting in the effort to find a suitable charity. If you make too much, you deserve to pay out of pocket for education. I suppose that’s a fair assumption to make in some regards, until you’re cut off without a place to live or a way to pay. Loans only grow heftier the more you pile them on.
Hence why I’m standing a few feet away from where I rent out a space from my grandmother, who happens to own a majority stake in Hastings Center, absorbing my mother’s portion and adding it to her own since I’m not allowed to do anything other than review manuscripts of speeches for people and edit documents with my proudly acquired English degree.
I was drowning in a sea of debt with familial wealth far beyond my years. Too much pride and anger keeps me from reaching out for a lifeline and help. Iknowthey would help, but it would be met with too many questions about what really happened between Dad and me.
“Bexley.” Nana Noel’s voice penetrates the air between us, dragging me away from the tumultuous thoughts pounding in my head. “Are you alright?”
Breathing out a slow breath, I nod to her. “I’m fine. It’s a hot morning, the sun must be getting to me.”
Even though she can smell the bullshit I’m trying to peddle to her, she doesn’t comment on it. “Summer is over but the heat appears to not be going anywhere. Anyways, I was thinking of the menu for Saturday. What are you thinking of as a better option, roast or a pasta salad? I can’t decide if it’s too hot to do anything other than a cold meal.”
“We could always have milkshakes for dinner,” I offer as another option, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear.
“That’s hardly appropriate for a meal.”
I beg to differ. Milkshakes were a firm staple of my college food groups since they were free in the student cafeteria with my meal plan. Looking back, it’s crazy I didn’t gain as much weight as I should have past the freshman fifteen.
“Do you want to pick the menu for a change?” Nana Noel pushes.
God no. We’d end up eating Chinese takeout and Dad would waltz in just to turn around and head for the door again. “Pasta salad. Leave the roast for when fall really starts to kick in.”
“I could have Arthur come over and fire up the smoker. He loves to tinker with it.”
Arthur Wellington is our next door neighbor, seventy-three, and thinks Nana Noel walks on water. He offers to smoke just about anything if she’ll let him come over and try to feed her. “That sounds like a good alternative. Look at you, producing so many choices,” I tease.
She gives me the stink eye. “Yes, well after your mention of milkshakes it was clear you’re not going to help me be civil.”
“I’m not being purposely obtuse.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Nana Noel–”
“At some point, I have to accept that you and your father will never see eye to eye. I haven’t reached that point yet. There is still time for you to mend bridges. Preferably, I’d like for it to happen while having a decent meal where you’re forced into close proximity or risk making a frail old woman sad.”
I shut my eyes. Not because her words sting, they barely dent my hardened heart. No, I close my eyes because I can picture her frail body in front of me, every freckle and liver spot on her precious, wrinkly skin and know that I have maybe a decade left with her in this world before she moves on to be with her daughter, my mother.
“Now, onto happier moments, did you see that they have a new app that lets you track the groceries you buy if you scan your receipt’s barcode?”
For a few beats, I open my eyes and simply stare at her. Then I begin laughing rather loudly. “I did not. How did you hear about that?”
“Aggie told me,” Nana Noel grins. Aggie is her best friend who also happens to be my father’s assistant at work. “She said someone in the admin pool showed her because it made creating grocery lists easier, noting what she was buying constantly. I go through a lot of tuna, did you know that?”
“You feed every stray cat in a five mile radius, so yeah, I know you go through a lot of tuna,” I snicker.
