Three

Henley

2017

September

My mother is leaving.

Fall Fashion Week in Paris and then to La Reserve in Ramatuelle for a few weeks. Because being the well-preserved trophy wife of a billionaire, old enough to be your father, is hard work.

Insert eye-roll here.

After that, she’ll flit around Europe until opening the London house for Christmas. And then it’ll be back to Paris for Spring Fashion Week because it’s so close and the collections previews were just so darling.

This has been my life for the past eight years. A far cry from our third-floor walk-up in Fenway. My drunk, disgruntled father and emotionally absent brother. If you ask my mother, she’ll wrinkle her nose and tell you she’s never even been to Boston. She barely even acknowledges that I have a brother—certainly not that he’s anything as common as a soldier.

“Honestly, Henley,” she says to me, heaving a long-suffering sigh. “I’d think you’d want to go.” She spears a piece of fresh-cut melon with the tines of her fork and lifts it to her collagen-plumped mouth. “It’s been years since you’ve been to Paris—tell her, Spencer.” She gives my step-father a pretty pout before slipping the melon between her lips.

Spencer looks at me over the top of his newspaper and rolls his eyes, making it nearly impossible to keep a straight face. He clears his throat and folds his paper away before setting it aside to reach for her hand.

“Now, Lydia, we’ve talked about this,” he tells her, giving her an indulgent smile while she scowls and chews. At least I think she’s scowling. Her face is so pumped full of Botox, it’s hard to tell. “Henley is old enough to make her own decisions. If she’d rather complete her internship than go to Paris, we can’t very well force her to do otherwise, can we?”

She looks at him like that’s exactly what she expects him to do. When he doesn’t relent, she re-focuses her efforts on me. “But Chicago, Henley?” she shakes her head at me like I told her I was going to spend ten weeks rolling around in the mud. “There are perfectly good libraries in Paris. I’m sure any one of them would be delighted—”

I take a breath, letting it out slowly. Saying no to her has never been easy for me. “I’ve already signed a contract,” I tell her, shaking my head. It’s the truth. I have signed a contract. Just not with a library in Chicago. If I told her where I was really going, she’d faint, right into her fruit cup.

She sniffs at me, letting out a small sigh. “Well, you’ll go with me, won’t you Celine,” my mother says, aiming a broad smile across the table at my step-sister. They can’t stand each other but put on a good show for Spencer. The only thing I’ve ever see rile him is the two of them fighting. So, for the health of their spending allowance, they pretend to get along.

“Of course!” Celine looks up from her phone. “It’s been our thing since I was ten,” she says, lifting her latte. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

What she doesn’t say is that she has every intention of ditching my mother as soon as can and meeting friends in Amsterdam. She’s been planning it for a month now.

“Then it’s settled,” my mother takes a careful sip from her cup. Hot water and lemon. Mixed fruit. Scrambled egg whites with brazed heirloom vegetables. The woman hasn’t even looked at a carb in almost a decade. “Henley, you and Celine will—”

“I’m not going to Paris, Mother,” I say shaking my head. “Spencer paid good money for my education, and I intend to use it.” I lift my napkin off my lap and fold it carefully before standing. As my chair scrapes across the floor, I distinctly hear Celine mutter kiss-ass, the insult buried beneath the sound.

“Jeremy and I will come to London for Christmas,” I say trying to mollify her. “I can’t speak for him, but I’ll stay through the New Year. We’ll do some shopping. How would that be?”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” she sniffs at me, dabbing the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “Will you excuse me?” She sets her napkin and stands before standing and flouncing out of the room in a huff.

A trophy wife tantrum.

“She’ll get over it, Sparkplug,” Spencer tells me, lifting his cup of coffee, using it to gesture in her direction. “She’s having a hard time letting go of her little girl is all.”

It’s not her little girl she’s having a hard time letting go of. It’s the control she’s used to exerting over me she’s pitching her fit over losing.

Celine snorts like she can read my mind and agrees.

I lay a hand on his shoulder, and he automatically reaches up to pat my hand, smiling up at me. “I’m twenty-six—hardly a little girl,” I say, bending down to kiss the top of his head.

He looks up at me in mock confusion. “Does that mean I have to stop calling you Sparkplug?”

“You better not.” I laugh at him even as the thought squeezes around my heart. In the eight years he’s been married to my mom, he’s been more of a father to me than my own ever was. “But it does mean I can’t spend my life shopping and lunching. I just can’t.”

“Your mother isn’t like us,” Spencer says, squeezing my hand. “She’s content with her life as it is—and I am content to make her happy.”

Content? She has an obscenely rich husband who worships the ground she walks on, one who actively encourages her to indulge in every whim and fantasy she can come up with. My mother isn’t content. She’s happier than a pig in shit.

“I know you are,” I pull my hand from under his, lifting the silver coffee urn from its warmer to freshen up his cup. “And I’m grateful.”

Another snort from Celine.

Ignoring her, I set the urn back on its warmer and add a sugar cube to his cup. “I’m going to call Jeremy,” I say giving him another smile before leaving the room. I not even out of the room before I hear the rattle of Spencer’s newspaper.

Upstairs, I’m careful to lock my bedroom door before I head into my closet. I shut and lock that door too, retrieving the cell phone I keep hidden in the pocket of an old backpack I’ve had for years. One of the only things I have left from my old life.

Powering it up, I call the only number I have saved and listen to it ring.

“O’Connell,” Ryan barks into his phone.

“It’s Henley.” He sounds like he’s in a wind tunnel. I shout as loud as I can. “Can you talk?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Hang on a sec.”

It sounds like the phone is passed through a meat grinder and I have to hold it away from my ear, but when he comes back on a few seconds later, all I can hear is him.

“How’s the other half livin’?” he says, his way of asking me how I am. I pretend not to hear the note of bitterness streaked through his words.

“Champagne and caviar,” I say, giving him my standard answer. “I’m swimming in my pool full of money as we speak.”

He laughs, and I’m glad to hear it. He doesn’t do it often enough. At least not with me. “I suppose you’re calling to put off the Boston trip again, huh?”

“Actually no,” I tell him, sinking slowly until my ass hits the chaise lounge under the window. “Mother is leaving for Paris in a few days so, I’ll be leaving on Friday.” My news is met with silence. “Ryan? Are you there?”

A few more seconds before he answers. “Shit—yeah, I’m here.” A harsh sigh, followed by a rasp, like he’s passing his hand over his face. “It’s just—are you sure about this, Hen? I mean—are you sure you want to go home?”

Home. Boston.

“Yes,” I say, looking out the window. I have a view of the East River from my closet. “As a matter of fact, I’m planning on staying a little longer than originally planned.”

“Longer?” Ryan sounds irritated. “What the fuck for, Hen?”

“I have other people I’d like to see besides Dad.” I hedge, not wanting him to call Conner and tell him. I suspect it was hard enough to get him to agree to escort me on my search for our father. If he knows I’m planning to stay more than a few days, he might refuse to see me altogether.

“I don’t like this.” Ryan sighs. “I have a few weeks leave coming—wait until Christmas. I’ll come home. We can go see him together.”

Christmas. The thought of it tightens my throat. “I can’t,” I say, my voice sounding strained. Strangled. I clear my throat and try again. “We’re going to London for Christmas,” I say, and he chuckles at the way it rolls off my tongue. I know what he thinks. That I’ve become spoiled. Indulged. We don’t know each other. Not anymore. “Come with us.” I make the offer on impulse. My mother will blow a gasket when I tell her, but I don’t care. Suddenly, I’m desperate to see him. To know my brother again.

It’s been eight years.

“Come to London?” He says it like I’m crazy. “Mom will shit a brick if I show up there.”

“I don’t care,” I tell him and I mean it. “I miss my brother.”

He was an unbearable asshole most of the time, and he left me alone to deal with our parents while he essentially buried his head in the sand, but he’s the only person left in my life who knows me.

The real me.

“I can’t.”

That’s all he says.

I can’t.

“Okay.” I nod my head, my view of the East River growing blurry. “I understand,” I say, and I do. It’s her. Our mother. He can’t face her. Is probably afraid of what he’ll say or do if he’s finally confronted with the woman who essentially abandoned him.

But understanding doesn’t make it hurt any less.

He clears his throat. “Let me get you Con’s number,” he says. “You got something to write with?”

Conner.

I feel my throat squeeze closed again. “Yes,” I tell him, fishing a pen and receipt from Bergdorf’s from the Chanel purse I tossed onto the chaise last night when I came in from my dinner date with Jeremy.

He rattles off a number with a Boston area code and a scribble it down. “I’ve got to go,” he says. “We’re gearing up for a thing.”

A thing.

I know that what that means. It means something dangerous.

“Okay,” I say. Too bright. Too cheerful.

“I’ll call Con and tell him to expect your call.” A pause while he waits for me to affirm what he just said. When I don’t, he sighs. “I’ll be okay, Hennie.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” he says. “I love you, little sister.”

“I love you too.”

And then he’s gone.