10.
Isla
In a way, it was a good time to go to New York.
As I drove away, I let myself imagine that I was driving away from all my problems, that when I returned they would have magically disappeared. When I got into the city, I parked in a nearby parking garage, checked into my hotel, and then looked on Google maps to help me find the address Daniel Frederickson’s office.
It was weird being back in the city. I was not a city girl by any stretch of the imagination, and when I’d first moved here with Mom, I’d been wide-eyed with both awe and shock. Just the sheer amount of people, the height of the towering buildings, the frenetic energy of it all. I’d been away from the city long enough to forget how that felt, and as I walked to the lawyer’s office, I could feel myself getting swept up in all of that again.
I found the office easily and went inside, taking the elevator up. A man in a suit and wire-rimmed glasses was standing there, as though he were waiting for me. I was surprised when he introduced himself as Alex’s lawyer. I figured he would’ve had an assistant have me sit on a couch and wait a few minutes for him.
“Nice to meet you, Isla,” he said, smiling as he held out his hand to me. “I’m Daniel Frederickson.” I shook his hand, hoping my palms weren’t too sweaty. We were on the twenty-seventh floor of a high rise, and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of vertigo every time I looked out one of the windows. How did people actually manage to work in a place like this? “Why don’t we go into my office and have a chat.”
I followed him down a short hallway into a corner office with big windows. The walls were adorned with classical paintings in big, gold-gilded frames. The ceiling had fancy crown molding, and the whole place felt more like an art exhibit than a lawyer’s office. I sat in a leather wingback chair and Daniel went around and sat behind his desk.
“So, let’s just get right to it,” he said. “Alex has listed you as a beneficiary. He’s left you quite a large sum of money. One billion dollars, to be exact.”
I blinked, certain that
I’d heard him wrong. “Pardon?”
Daniel smiled. “This is the kind of news that I like to deliver. Yes, Alex left
you one billion dollars. Congratulations.”
“A billion dollars?”
“A billion dollars. Might I suggest that you hire a financial advisor? It’s quite a bit of money, and if you’re not accustomed to dealing with such a large sum, I can imagine it’s rather overwhelming.”
“I don’t even think I have a thousand dollars in my savings account,” I said. “And now you’re telling me that I have a billion dollars.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. He left it in a living trust, as opposed to a will, so you don’t have to deal with going through probate. The funds can be available to you almost immediately; Alex’s business associate, Cal Illes is the successor trustee, so he is the one with authority to transfer the funds to you. I told him we could arrange another meeting at some point.”
I nodded. “Okay. Sure. That sounds fine.” I kept waiting for someone to deliver the punchline, for Daniel to start laughing and say that it was all a joke. But he didn’t.
After I left Daniel’s office, I stood outside on the sidewalk, trying to get my bearings back. I was glad to be back on the ground floor, that was for sure. I pulled my phone out of my purse and called Sophie.
“So how’d it go? What happened?” she asked.
“You’re not going to believe this,” I said. “In fact, I don’t even think I believe it.” I paused, still unsure I could actually put words to it.
“Well, I won’t if you don’t tell me!” she said.
“He left me money.”
“I knew it.”
“A lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
“It’s . . . he left me one billion dollars.”
“A million dollars?! Wow! Isla, that’s awesome, you’ll be able to pay off the gym and maybe do some investing—”
“No, not a million. A billion. With a b.”
Silence. Several seconds of it, which, for Sophie, was definitely saying something.
“Did you just say a billion, with a b?” she finally said.
“Yes, with a b. A billion.” I didn’t know if I was going to jump for joy or burst into tears. Maybe both. I leaned against the side of the building. “I’m having a hard time believing it myself.”
Sophie let out a yell, so loud that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. When I put it back up, the yell had transformed into laughter. “Oh my god!” she was saying. “I can’t believe this! You lucky bitch! This is like out of a movie or something! Holy shit, Isla. Your ex-stepfather has just made you a billionaire. Wow. Does your mom know?”
“No, I haven’t told her yet. Well, she knew I was coming here and having a meeting with one of Alex’s lawyers, but she didn’t know.”
“Holy shit. She’s going to freak.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
My mother had met Alex when I was fourteen; our ninth grade class had taken a three-day trip to New York City and she’d been a chaperone. She was coming out of a bagel shop and he was leaving (or vice versa, the story changed) and one bumped into the other, and it was very Hollywood movie.
So was the fact that he was a billionaire, this CEO on Wall Street, though you wouldn’t have known it that day, because he was wearing a golf shirt and shorts, nothing flashy. And Mom was a secretary, back when they still called it secretary and not administrative assistant. She worked for the town hall, in the building department, which was a decent enough job but there wasn’t a lot of money left over for extras.
And then there was their whirlwind romance, which meant Mom and I moved from our two-bedroom ranch into Alex’s penthouse on the Upper East Side. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before and I felt as though I were visiting a foreign country.
“I’ll call you a little later, okay?” I said to Sophie. I wanted to go back to my hotel room and have some seclusion so I could absorb this news.
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “I’m so excited for you!”
I put the phone in my purse and was about to start walking when I saw him. My former stepbrother, Levi, strolling down the sidewalk like he owned the thing. I almost didn’t say anything, because I thought he was just going to walk by—and he certainly wouldn’t recognize me—but then he turned at last second and headed for the building. He must be going to meet with Daniel. I wondered if he knew yet that his father had left some of the money for me.
His hand was on the door, pushing it open, but then he stopped in his tracks, his head swiveling toward me. Someone was right behind him, but he didn’t move, he just stood there, looking at me.
“Excuse me,” the man behind him said.
Levi didn’t appear to hear him. A smile broke out onto his face. “Well, I’ll be,” he said.
“Could you get the hell out of the way?” the man said. Levi turned and looked at the man, who must’ve recognized him as Alex Bassett’s son, because he flinched and all the color drained from his face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was you,” he mumbled. “I’m late for a meeting.” He skirted around Levi and scurried inside.
Levi had that effect on people, even lawyers who were twice his age. He still looked as handsome as I remembered him, and part of me wanted to hug him, but another part of me just wanted to run the other direction. Levi had been both kind to me and incredibly cruel. When Mom and I first moved in, he’d been welcoming and showed me around. The place was massive, and it was easy to get lost; more than once I’d end up in a different room than the one I was looking for. One night, I was sitting in the living room (there were two of them, plus a more casually-appointed family room), trying to figure out how to get the TV to turn on. Well, the TV was on, but it was just a blue screen, and I was panicking, thinking I’d broken it somehow, because I’d knocked the remote onto the floor. Levi sat down on the couch next to me, showed me the right button to push to get the channels to come on. The Shining was playing, and we discovered that we shared a love for both Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King. We stayed up long after the movie was over, talking, and that still remained one of my favorite memories of all time. I began to feel a little better about this whole moving thing, about suddenly being uprooted from where I’d grown up my whole life and transplanted to this completely different world.
But then a few days later, I got home from school to find that Levi had some friends over, and they were in the den, watching a movie. Without even really thinking about it, I went in and started to sit down on the couch, next to a boy I didn’t recognize. Levi was in the recliner, next to the couch. I was about to say hi and ask what movie they were watching when Levi spoke.
“Yeah, I don’t know if that couch is going to be strong enough.”
I froze; it felt like blood had turned to ice. I could still remember exactly how it felt, and the smirks and laughter from his friends. If he’d said I don’t know if the couch is going to be big enough, I could’ve let it go, I could’ve believed that he meant there were just too many people on it for someone else to be able to fit comfortably, but he hadn’t chosen that adjective. One of the kids made a snorting sound, like a pig, and the others laughed, including Levi. I was too stunned to cry; I just left without saying a word.
It happened like that over the years, until our parents divorced when I was nineteen. Levi would be kind to me when it was just the two of us, but whenever his friends were around, he was the class clown, always with a sharp insult on the tip of his tongue, just for me. When Mom and I moved back to Maryland, I figured that I’d never see Levi again, and I was fine with that.
But now here he was. He was tan, he looked incredibly healthy, his thick, light-brown hair was tousled, as though he’d just blew in from some big adventure. I was aware of the looks women threw in his direction as they walked past us, like they couldn’t help but be magnetically drawn to him. It was like there was something in aura that just drew people to him, like moths to a light.
I had really thought that I’d never see him again. Except here was, right in front of me.