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I smiled. “A jitterbug.” I decided to press my luck. “And a kid who would benefit from being around other kids her age, especially in an early learning center or preschool setting.”
“We’ll pick you up in the car at 5 p.m. on Saturday,” Graham informed me in clear dismissal. “It’s a formal dinner.”
“How formal are we talking?” I asked, but he answered a phone call and just waved me away. Get out. Goodbye. Just like Collins, when she was done with someone.
12
Heather
While I raided my mom’s closet and went through some of the boxes that had already been packed up, I puzzled at my hurt. Wasn’t this what I wanted? I didn’t want to be in California, and I hadn’t wanted to make the attachments I had to Graham and Collins. Yet, they were both such warm and welcome distractions from the heartbreak I’d left in New York that I almost felt like I was healing, in a way, from it all.
That perhaps Graham Hilborne was all it took to get over the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. That he could banish the bad thoughts and welcome the new life I deserved.
I settled on a vintage linen dress printed with a rainbow of paisleys and swirls. My mom kept nearly everything she’d accumulated over the course of her life, which was why it was such a chore to clear everything out of the house. But I was incredibly thankful for rediscovering this dress. It fit like a charm, reminding me that my mom and I weren’t so different after all. I cinched it with a leather belt I unearthed from another region of my mom’s stash.
“Wow,” Collins gushed, leaning out of the car as Graham’s driver opened the door for me. I’d gone out to wait for them on the sidewalk so I wouldn’t have to inconvenience anybody. “You look like a famous dancer!”
“Very disco,” Graham said drily, taking me by the elbow to help me into the car. “Collins, I’m not going to tell you again to keep your seatbelt buckled. I don’t care if you’re in your car seat. It needs to stay fastened to the other seat.”
“Thank you both for your observations and compliments,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure Graham’s words were complimentary. “This used to be my mom’s dress.”
“Carol wore that?” Collins asked, swinging her feet so excitedly that she kicked her dad directly on the shin.
To Graham’s credit, he didn’t curse. He just exhaled long and slow, eyeing me. “Collins has been pretty excited that you were coming to dinner tonight.”
“I’ve been excited, too,” I said brightly—more to Collins than to Graham. “Isn’t it so much fun to have an excuse to get all dressed up? I love your dress, too. You’re going to have to show me how you dance in it when we arrive at the restaurant.”
“It’s not a restaurant,” Graham informed me. “It’s my parents’ house.”
Why did that piece of information matter so much to me all of a sudden? I knew I would essentially be meeting his family, but there was something so much more intimate and more daunting, knowing where the meeting would be taking place.
I would be completely out of my element. Utterly adrift without a single element to save me.
I laughingly thought of Graham’s house as “the manor.” But this place made his home look downright modest. The estate encompassed rolling hills, meticulous landscaping, and a house you could probably get lost in.
Collins seemed to know the way, however—unbuckling herself before the driver could get the door open before bounding out of the car and sashaying her way to the front door.
“You did a good job with her,” I told Graham. “That braid? Amazing. She looks adorable.”
“And you look delectable,” he said just loud enough to make me shiver before casually walking away and leaving me behind.
How was I going to make it through this without doing something I was bound to regret?
The things I might regret were numerous, including inadvertently insulting a family member I didn’t know, tucking my dress into my panties, having uncontrollable sex with Graham in a semi-public place, and many more nightmares I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around.
The Hilbornes were old wealth, and extremely difficult people to be around, as it turned out. Well, just his parents. His father was impossible to get a read on, and his mother insulted you even while she smiled. After the introductions were made, her first words to me were: “What a lovely dress. How extraordinarily…retro? Is that what they say?”
I blinked before smiling like I didn’t quite understand. “Thank you! What a good eye you have. Itisvintage.” A vintage fashion I wasn’t about to shy away from or explain away. It was the dress covering my naked body, and the Hilbornes were just going to have to figure it out.
We were all there to celebrate Lauren, Graham’s younger sister, on her birthday, but all I could hear were Mrs. Hilborne’s casual cruelties.
To Collins: “That hair! Were you in a hurricane on your way over here? Pretty little girls don’t let themselves get into a tizzy like this. You’re going to want to gaze upon the face of the man you’re going to marry before you do so, right? How can you do that if your hair is hanging in front of your eyes?”
To Graham: “Have you finally earned enough money to actually come and see the people who gave you life? Are you satisfied enough with your work to give the time of day to your mother and father?” It seemed less of an admonition and more like a threat to me, but I wasn’t here to judge.
To Lauren: “This is the birthday where you want to start on the serious maintenance. I’ll give you my surgeon’s number. You’re going to want to do something about your neck immediately. I always told you not to read too much. Now, look at you. You live in wrinkles and are going nowhere but down. Botox is such a simple thing—natural like you always rail about. You’ll be fabulous, and you’ll never stop after the first one.”
To Noah, who appeared in a video call on the gigantic flatscreen above the fireplace: “Has that woman left you yet so you can come home and actually be with the people who love you? It’s ridiculous that you think you can have a life with someone who refuses to put down roots anywhere.”
