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June blanched as if Tove had stood up and smacked her on the cheek with such harsh, caustic words. “Well!” she said with a cough. “She had heard the rumors, of course. That her Aunt Tove was cavorting with a female outsider young enough to be her daughter. Now here she was,servingher…”
“We really must discuss her age,” Kiersten said. “She’s much too young, Tove.”
That was rich! “Why? Because I am also a woman? Nobody blinks twice at the age gap between Thomas and Polly.” She said that while looking at Gretchen, who was on the verge of tipping out of her chair. “That’s not why you hold so much disdain for her.”
“My daughter-in-law is not related to this conversation,” Gretchen snapped.
“We’re not here to talk about Polly and Thomas,” Kiersten concurred. “This is about your personal life, Tove. We’re not only in your quaint home because we are concerned about the woman you’re dating and how it reflects upon the Fredriksson name. This is also aboutyou.This behavior is most unlike you. It’s concerning.”
“What behavior? Why do you care if I’m in a relationship with someone in her thirties? Let alone a working woman who earns her own money? Really.” Nemo brushed up against Tove’s legs before wandering toward his food bowl. None of the guests in the living area were used to being near a cat chowing down on dry food. The ones who owned cats kept that far away from them.Wait until they find out where the litter box is.And who cleaned it out every day… “You must know me fairly well by now. I don’t like to make a big deal out of things, and I’m certainly after no splashes. My only concern is a chance at happiness. Just because I’ve been single for twenty years doesn’t mean I like to be without companionship. For God’s sake, I’m fifty. None of you have to worry about a surprise baby mucking things up.” Once again, she said that in Gretchen’s direction, who shifted uncomfortably on the edge of her seat.
“To be frank,” Kiersten said, finally cutting to the chase, “she is uncouth and rough around the edges. Her manner of dress is unbecoming of someone who desires to be on the periphery of our vision - I saw what was beneath that sweater she wore to the country club. Her having a career is of no concern, until that career opens the family up to issues around town. It doesn’t look right for her to work for a company our own Nils owns. Nor in a service, public-facing position. Tammy recognized her. Who else might? What will this Kayla Smith say when asked questions on the spot? We always have reporters and delinquents sniffing around…”
“Isn’t that another issue?” Gretchen blurted out. “The woman is a gold digger. Like Polly. There, I said it.”
Tove kept her anger locked up inside of her, but she couldn’t hide the way her fingers pressed into her hot tea mug. “Excuse me?” she cautiously asked her aunt.
Gretchen shrugged as if she had merely spoken off the cuff. “Nothing to be done about Polly now, as long as Thomas understands to keep her behavior under control. You, however, do not have a mother to watch out for you. That’s where we step in.”
“I’ll have you know that my mother is alive.”
“Is she well?” June asked. “No.”
Tove placed her mug on the coffee table before she spilled it on her carpet.No coaster. Take that, you witches.“This is a serious accusation. What proof do you have?”
“Proof?” Kiersten softly said. “We don’t need concrete proof to see it with our own eyes. We are matriarchs and mothers. I have twenty years of experience over you, including matchmaking experience. Gretchen has two boys she had to watch over, and now June takes decadent care of her two sons. You’ve heard about Elias and his darling girlfriend, yes?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“The point is that June has done an impeccable job watching out for her sons. No doubt that Elias was swarmed by girls who only cared about his looks and money while at school.”
“You have no idea how many girls I’ve had to make go away,” June muttered. “He’s quite the ladies’ man. He gets it from his father.”
Yes, Tove had not forgotten how much philandering Cousin Nils had gotten into when they were younger.I had to fix up some of that, too.Back before Tove was the go-to girl. She had proven herself somehow.
“We know what gold diggers look like,” Kiersten said. “A thousand of them come through here every year trying to get money. Don’t you think we know what’s going on with your Kayla? She’s new in town, she meets Thomas on the first day, and within a week she’s dating you. She has no background, no discernible family, and do you know who she lives with?”
“One of her friends,” Tove said through gritted teeth. “I haven’t met them yet. They seem quite busy, but I know the friend’s husband is a successful entrepreneur.” Or so Tove vaguely recalled. She knew the name Huey Pine. Chrissy might have been the wife and friend’s name. “She’s staying in one of their spare rooms.” What Tove didn’t mention – and she probably didn’t have to, because surely Aunt Kiersten had done her homework – was that they lived in one of the new cul-de-sac neighborhoods to spring up in the past few years. The houses were worth nearly a million dollars, but they weren’t the “million dollars” that the Fredrikssons were accustomed to.
Kiersten was not impressed with the information Tove forked over. “Huey Pine is a member of our family’s club, so he does well enough to be recognized somewhere in the line. He’s not our concern. It’s his wife. She is much younger than him, and the two were an ‘arrangement’ before marrying a while ago.”
“You can smell it a mile away,” June said with a shake of her head. “It’s one thing for these older new money men to flush their funds away on women who do not truly contribute anything to society besides being pretty and charming. It’s quite another for someone in our family to fall in with women who wish to do our image harm.”
“You know…” Tove was backed into a corner in her own home, but it wasn’t the first time. Nor would it probably be the last.I’ve got a few weapons in my arsenal.Starting with the exact things her family would want to hear. “When I first met her, I assumed she was a gold digger, too.” At least that was the truth. Tove had walked back on that assumption now that she had gotten to know Kayla better. “I’m perceptive to such types as well. Don’t you know who is helping you clean up the mess most of them leave behind?” She turned to June. “You seem to have forgotten who it was cutting a check to Elias’s last serious girlfriend. It was me, from the family’s emergency fund.”
June did not respond. She was too busy looking away.
“So don’t think I’m so naïve because a pretty face has walked into my life. We’re in no hurry to take things any more seriously than we already are. When I told her my initial worries that she might have been targeting Thomas in what we thought was the middle of his divorce from thefirstgold digger, she was hurt but understood where I was coming from. Kayla is a diligent worker. She’s never asked me for money. She doesn’t even ask me many questions about this family. She’s quite respectful of your privacy.”
Only Gretchen and June looked slightly remorseful. Kiersten hadn’t felt bad about her behavior one day in her life.
“We do not mean to insult your intelligence, Tove,” the matriarch said with a distant and snotty tone. “Of course you’ve seen the rodeo from the sidelines, and we’re quite grateful for your help in our times of need. Nobody is more fastidious with coffers and checks than you. But… pardon me, it is much easier to see it happening to other people than to yourself. Even I have almost been taken for a ride by men who only cared for what I was, notwhoI was. Of course, that was when I was a much younger, much sillier girl. You wouldn’t remember because you were a child at the time.”
“I remember your fiancé whom you broke up with around the time I also broke up with my last girlfriend.”
Kiersten narrowed her eyes. June physically pulled herself closer to the corner of the couch, as if a bomb were about to go off beside her and she wished to prevent shrapnel from hitting her in the face. “Those were separate circumstances. Besides, my former fiancé came from a very respectable family of his own and did not need this family’s funds. It’s quite a different scenario. Unlike…” She patted the hair on her head. “Unlike your relationships with lower-class women.”
“We know you grew up differently from us,” Gretchen said. “You have a greater kinship with the working class than those who might frequent the club, for example, but this opens you up to different challenges. We’re simply looking out for your best interests… and our own, yes. Because a problem in your relationship causes problems for the rest of us as well.”
