Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 98324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
It’s true, up to a point. I know how to install a dishwasher, and how to change a flat, and how to manage my money. “But it wasn’t my choice. You made that choice for me.” And it turns out I’m angrier about that than I realized. “And the worst part—the thing you really ought to realize—is that the dishonesty of it is the real sin.”
Her eyes flare. “It was your choice. You knew your father was paying for the twins’ college educations. You must have known he’d pay for yours. Even when you made the difficult decision to leave NYU, you never mentioned your father.”
“At the wise old age of nineteen?” I felt like an adult making my own decisions. I know I did. But it all looks very different seven years later. I open my mouth to say that, but something else pops out instead. “Did you ever miss him? After he was gone?”
Which only goes to show where my brain has been this month.
My mother blinks. Then she takes a sip of her iced coffee, playing for time. “No, not exactly,” she says quietly. “His treachery made that impossible. Every time it was tempting to miss him, I thought about how big a fool I was. All those times he didn’t make it home for dinner—or to one of your choir concerts. I’d thought he was just too busy providing for his family.”
“He was,” I say darkly. “His other one.”
She gives me a little smile. “That’s exactly it. I was too angry to mourn him properly. If I missed anything, I guess it was my own ignorance.”
I think back to that time, and I know just what she means. When I was a child, my father used to call me at bedtime when he was away on one of his business trips. But after I inadvertently blew up his double life, I realized that sometimes he’d been calling me from Marblehead, not LA.
It hurt. A lot. It still does.
“Like I’ve always said—I trusted him too much. I trusted my heart, not my brain,” my mother says softly. “Even though I knew better. Your grandfather was just the same kind of husband, did you know that? A man who made his own rules and made his poor wife suffer.”
“Really?” This is not a story I’ve heard before. “Which grandfather?”
“Which one do you think?” Her eyes narrow. “Your father’s father. They had the same marriage—a rich man who married a woman of lesser means. That’s how they keep control. Your grandmother warned me right before I married your father. She showed me a diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist. She said it was the gift she’d demanded after his second affair. She told me to choose a more expensive gift each time, so he learns to think twice.”
I stare at her in disbelief. My grandfather was a gentle, loving man who’d died when I was ten. Grandma died a year later of a broken heart, I’d always believed. They’d seemed like a lifelong team. “Jesus.”
“I brushed off the lesson she tried to teach me,” my mother says quietly. “And it bit me in the ass. I wasn’t about to let the same thing happen to you, honey. I wanted you to be prepared for whatever life throws at you.”
“Like… working twice as hard for my college degree as everyone else?”
She sighs. “Everything you have is something you did yourself. Nobody can ever take credit. Nobody can dull your shine. Struggle is noble, Darcy. It’s the same for those athletes you work with. Nobody succeeds without sweat.”
Noble, huh? My blood fizzes with anger, and it’s a struggle to swallow my bite of cake. “Do you know what happens when a teenage athlete gets drafted? The first thing they do is thank their parents for all that expensive hockey gear, and those brutal road trips.”
Her shoulders droop. “You can stay mad at me if you want to. It’s your call.” She takes an envelope out of her purse and hands it to me. “Here’s the latest statement. I never open them. Do whatever you want with this.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking it.
Then her eyes get red. “But please ask yourself if you really think I should have just demanded a diamond necklace and accepted your father’s behavior. There’s no diamond big enough to make me eat my pride like that. It’s something I hope you never actually understand.”
Then she gets up and walks away.
Chapter 38
Edgework and World Domination
Darcy
As August progresses, the temperature in New York City climbs into the nineties and stays there. Every time I have to run outside the building for Mr. Sharp’s lunch order, it’s like jogging through hell. I hurry down Twenty-First Street, sweating in my pencil skirt and blouse.
When I push through the revolving doors and into our headquarters, the air temperature drops a good ten degrees. In this building, though, there are challenges that have nothing to do with the air temperature. Mentally bracing myself, I press through the double doors and into the full-sized rink, where Sharp and the rest of management are camped out in the press box. They’re watching the players and strategizing about the new season.