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hey had endured another week of silent evenings and a weird-acting mother when Benjamin left the house one morning to go to work. He was dressed in a custom-tailored suit and was looking nothing short of stunning for his meeting with the investors from California.
It was a sunny morning; he might have even heard the birds chirping if it wasn’t for his mother’s ear-piercing shouts, which drowned out everything else within miles. She was arguing with someone in the driveway, behind the hedge. Without even seeing the scene, Benjamin knew right away with whom. People here usually know better than to disagree with her. Before the death of his father, he had many fond memories of his mother. Smiling, laughing, rolling with him in the grass. But that all had changed overnight when his father had passed away. From there on, his mother became known as a demanding woman who loved parties, friends, and most of all, expensive things. “Intense and demanding,” were the nicer words his staff would say about her. He had to pay most of the house staff almost double the going rate just so they would not quit the same day they met Lucy Radcliff. And yet, she was still his mother. One of the few people left in his life. So, what choice did he have but hold on to the memoires of the woman her father fell in love with? Remember the woman laughing and chasing him in the snow, as if that kinder version of herself was still in there somewhere?
“You are not driving this hunk of scrap into this place,” he heard his mother yell.
Benjamin, clutching his cup of coffee, craned his neck to see around the hedge. “What the—” he mumbled when he saw his mother jabbing her finger in the air like a magic scepter, talking loud and fast. He found Ava standing by her car and he immediately knew what the problem was. He didn’t care about the anger flowing out of his mother—she got angry over the most trivial of issues and he was used to it—but his eyes were on Ava. She, just like his mother, looked pretty upset. Her face was a light shade of pink, her eyes glaring fiercely, and her hands tightened as if ready to start dishing out blows. But no mean did he want to watch that show.
A loud slam shook him back to the present. “Here!” his mother had slammed her hand onto the hood of the car and snapped her fingers at one of the workers who came jostling down like an obedient, albeit frightened, pet. “Have this piece of trash towed immediately. I have important friends coming over and by God this thing better be gone by then.”
Benjamin bolted over, the hot coffee spilling onto his hand and burning him.
“I am tired of walking all the way down to the gate every morning and then all the way back up at night. I have to get up twenty minutes early to do so,” Ava announced, stepping closer to Lucy. A man jumped into the car and started revving the clanking engine so hard that it burped out thick smoke. Lucy coughed, exaggerating each exhalation like a naughty child seeking attention.
“Mother!” Benjamin tried to sound calm as he had finally made it to the scene.
“Thank the Lord, Benjamin!” Lucy coughed trying to make it look as if Ava was trying to kill her with her car. “Tell your wife that I don’t ever want to see this piece of trash again.”
Ava crossed her arms ready for Ben to do just that, but instead, Ben pursed his lips and turned to his mother.
“It’s just a car,” he said in a calm voice. Lucy’s eyes widened.
“Just a car? It’s barely a vehicle! It is nothing like the other cars in here!”
All eyes stared at Ava’s car which coughed and clanked, the metal body trembling as it was reversed down the long driveway to the gate. Even Ava seemed a little less confident in her case.
That is true… Benjamin wanted to say, but the thought of taking sides with his mother didn’t exactly appeal to him. Especially not after he spotted Ava’s disappointed look on her face when she saw Benjamin enter the picture and thought she would now be insulted by two Radcliffs. Their eyes met and he was somewhat startled by their sadness.Does she really think he hated her so much that he would actually side with his mother, even if she was overreacting?
He walked over to his mother and put a hand on her shoulder. “Mom…” he said and paused to take in a deep breath. “Ava lives here now. It makes no sense for her to have to walk all the way to the gate every day.” Benjamin braced himself for an explosion, but instead his mother threw Ava a nasty look and stormed off mumbling: “This is not over yet…”
Benjamin turned to Ava who was looking at him as if he was a rare species from a faraway land.
“T-thank you…” she almost whispered. He nodded.
“Not that I am trying to justify my mother’s temper, but you know that you can use any car that’s parked in the garage, right?”
“Yes. I do. But they are… well…” Ava pursed her lips.Was she trying to find the right words to be nice about it?
“Too fancy?” Ben smiles.
“…Too attractive,” Ava said with a faint smile. “It’s better if I don’t drive a nice car into a run-down neighborhood.”
“Fair enough. Maybe we can get you something else then. Something normal,” he joked.
Ava wanted to decline the offer, but Benjamin cut in before she could. “Something used that’s more reliable. “
Ava scratched her head, almost convinced. “I will take it out of your final cut of the marriage deal, of course,” he teased her. She laughed.
“In that case… why not.”
For a moment, they both just stood there smiling.
“Sir!” the man that had just driven her car to the gate shouted up to them from far away. “Do want me to park the car at the gate or behind it?”
“I gotta go to work,” she said.
“Yes, me too. I’ll see you at dinner.”
