Rowan

“Rowan!” My little brother, Isaac, runs into my arms the second Hannah and I cross the threshold of our parents’ Potomac estate.

“Happy birthday, buddy.” I ruffle his sandy brown hair and wrap him in my arms. “How does it feel to be eleven?”

I hope he’s always this sweet.

I hope he never changes.

I hope he never becomes a lying, cheating prick and he’s always content to play Legos and video games and baseball in the backyard for the rest of his life.

Screw adulthood.

“Do I look taller?” he asks, though he’s joking. When he was younger, maybe four or five, he woke up the morning of his birthday and tried to convince everyone he’d suddenly grown taller because he was older. We’ve teased him about it ever since.

“Girls, glad you could make it,” our mother, Deborah, glides across the foyer in her Chanel flats, placing her hands on our shoulders and kissing the air beside each of our cheeks, which is shocking since no one’s around to watch, but I suppose she’s in “public” mode with all these guests here for Isaac’s party. “How was the ride over?”

“Good. It was good.” Hannah glances over her shoulder, readjusting the brown leather duffel bag full of dirty laundry on her shoulder. “I’m just going to start a load really quick …”

My sister ditches me and Isaac slips his hand in mine. With a sixteen-year age difference, we’re fortunate to be so close, but looking into his innocent emerald eyes, I’m awash with guilt at the fact that I don’t come home nearly as much as I should.

While my parents’ house is nothing short of gorgeous, it symbolizes oppression to me; a stifled, stunted adolescence, unfair curfews, absentee parents, and irrationally strict house rules which we were never allowed to question or challenge unless we wanted to be shipped off to boarding school. Case in point? We were never allowed to have friends over, not even on weekends, which made it doubly hard to make friends at West Potomac Prep.

“You look … thinner,” my mother says, running her palm down her own flat stomach. Appearances are everything to her. So is competition. My father met her in the late eighties, when he was judging some local beauty pageant which my mother won by a landslide. She went on to run for Miss Maryland but didn’t make the cut, which was how she ended up at Wellesley studying human and family development. “Have you been eating?”

What she’s really asking is, “Have you stumbled upon some miraculous diet and exercise regimen I’ve yet to hear about?”

“It’s called being dumped by your boyfriend of almost two years when you least expect it,” I say, my tone dry and blunt.

Her jaw hangs. “What? Hunter broke up with you? How did I not know about this?”

I’d have figured Hannah would’ve told our other sister Adeline and Adeline would’ve told our other brother Deacon and at some point word would’ve made it back to my parents.

But I guess not.

“Sweetheart.” She slips into her comforting mother skin and wraps her arms around me, holding me tight. I inhale her Chanel No. 5, wishing it brought me reprieve instead of making me nauseous. “I had no idea. You two were so perfect together—political parties aside. Did he say why?”

“He wants to focus on his campaign,” I say.

“What a shame.” She clucks her tongue, looking at me now. I almost believe her sympathy is genuine. “Why don’t you come in, grab some food, and make the rounds. Aunt Cindy and Aunt Vicki flew in from Seattle. They’d love to catch up with you.”

Drawing in a deep breath, I prepare myself for the Spanish Inquisition that is Cindy and Vicki. Separate? I can handle them. Together? I better be quick on my feet.

The kitchen table is sporting not one but two extenders and at least a dozen or more seats, all but one of them filled, surround it. Guests fill every room in this house from the study to the family room to the two-story covered patio out back and the stamped cement that surrounds the lagoon pool.

Leave it to my mother to throw a hundred-person soiree for her baby’s eleventh birthday. Lord knows we didn’t get these kinds of parties. Sometimes I think she’s going all out and making up for forgetting the rest of our birthdays most of the time.

“Rowan, is that you? Oh. My. Goodness.” Aunt Vicki rises from her seat at the end of the kitchen table, arms outstretched, and waddles toward me. Wrapping me in a bear hug and rubbing her cheap perfume all over my blouse, she kisses my cheek before cupping my face in her hands. “Look how beautiful you’ve become.”

“She’s always been a beauty,” my mother muses from the doorway, her arms folded and a Mother of the Year smile on her face. “She’s only gotten better with age. It’s a shame she never got into pageantry. My Rowan would’ve owned the stage.”

Aunt Vicki poo-poos my mother. “Rowan was meant for bigger things than beauty pageants.”

Mom laughs, like she’s amused by Vicki’s comment, but I can tell by her eyes that she’s basking in the fact that beauty pageant or no, she’s the prettiest, smartest, most successful sister of the three.

“Where’s the food? I’m starving,” I say. My appetite’s been nonexistent lately, but I need a break from the spotlight already. Heading to the kitchen where an elaborate, obviously catered spread covers the marble island, I grab a plate and load it with cucumber sandwiches, macarons, and various vegetables cut into fancy shapes.

“So Rowan, get back over here and tell us what you’ve been up to,” Aunt Cindy calls from the table. “How’s that boyfriend of yours? The one with the Southern accent and those big, broad shoulders? What was his name? Brett?”

I almost choke on the flower-shaped carrot I’ve just put in my mouth.

“Hunter,” my mother says, her gaze flicking to me. “And they’ve recently parted ways, so she’s back on the market.”

“I’m sure someone’ll snatch her up in no time,” Aunt Cindy says. “You’re too good of a catch. Highly doubt you’ll be waiting much longer.”

Taking a seat between my aunts, I grab another cracker. “I have no intentions of dating again anytime soon. I kind of just want to work and focus on myself.”

My mother exhales, tucking her pointed chin against her chest. Work is a sore subject for her given the fact that I turned in my notice last month.

I don’t want to work for family anymore.

I want to actually use my degree and work my way to the top and rest on my own laurels for once. It was kind of them to give me a job out of college, but I’ve realized they’re doing me no favors in the long run. Plus, a change would be good for me. Maybe I’ll even get out of DC one of these days.

Wouldn’t that be something …

“Tell them about the president’s son,” Hannah says, appearing in the doorway with a shit-eating grin. I’m glad she’s amused by this.

“Hannah,” I say her name under my breath.

“What?” She shrugs a lanky shoulder. “Those are some major bragging rights, Row.”

“Should I tell them about the entire night or just the—”

Quickly remembering the reason why the Secret Service agents had to escort her from a party to the back of Keir’s SUV, she blushes. “The condensed version.”

That’s what I thought.

All eyes rest on me, wide and eager to hear the story. There’s no getting out of this. Too bad my sister, Adeline, isn’t here. She’s always been good at reading my mind and gracefully changing subjects without people noticing.

Alas, she’s in Seattle, stuck at work.

“I ran into Keir Montgomery the other night and we had coffee,” I lie, giving them alternative facts. What they don’t know won’t hurt them. “Before any of you get your hopes up, you should know it was completely innocent.”

The room is quiet except for the sliding glass door behind us and one of the kids from the backyard running in with muddy shoes and a sweaty face. One of my mom’s friends rises from the table to assist him, telling him to remove his shoes before he tracks mud all over Deborah’s beautiful floors. My mother insists it’s fine, and for the tiniest moment the attention isn’t focused on me.

I finish most of the food on my plate in record time and dump the rest in the trash in the kitchen, hoping I can sneak upstairs and lock myself in my room for a second so I can have one moment of silence amidst the chaos of the party.

I don’t want to talk about Hunter. I don’t want to talk about being single. I don’t want to talk about the president’s son.

No one ever fixates on Adeline or Hannah’s dating lives.

Always mine.

The heat in the house is stifling as the late August sun burns through the back windows of the house, creating a makeshift sauna.

“Rowan, where are you going?” Mom stops me, digging her manicured hand into my forearm before leaning closer. “You can’t wander off with all these people here. It’s rude.”

“I just need a second,” I say, jerking my arm away and heading toward the stairs. I don’t wait for her to respond. She probably wouldn’t anyway. Deborah Aldridge wouldn’t be caught dead making a scene in front of all these people, not when she wrote the gold standard book on how to handle a parent-child conflict the peaceful way.

Climbing the left half of the grand staircase off the foyer, I turn at the top and head to the last door on the left. The south half of the upstairs housed all the children’s bedrooms. The north half was my parents’ private wing along with two seldom-used guest rooms that were mostly for show.

When I finally make it to my old room, I kick off my ballet flats and lock the door behind me before curling up on my bed. Everything smells the same, a mixture of raspberry body spray and fabric softener and watermelon Bubble Yum. It’s amazing how the scents of my childhood have seeped into the carpet, the walls, the pile of stuffed animals in the corner, just lingering.

Resting my head on my pillow, I glance down at my outfit. White shorts and a red striped Breton top, a carefully crafted New England-chic outfit intended not to invite curious stares from my mother when no one’s looking.

I’m somewhere lost in thought when my phone vibrates in my pocket.

Checking it, I suck in a startled breath when I find Keir’s name flashing across my screen.

My thumb hovers over the answer button. He was so sweet last night, bringing over ice cream and popcorn and cracking jokes. And he seemed, for a moment, so down to earth.

I spent most of the night wondering who the real Keir Montgomery was because the one sitting next to me didn’t match the one I’d read dozens of gossip articles about.

The phone stops buzzing before I’ve had a chance to make my decision.

It’s for the best, anyway.

I don’t want to date him.

I don’t want to date anybody.