The Billionaire's Embrace (The Silver Cross Club) (13 page)

We sat at the dining table and drank coffee. Carter made toast for himself, but I didn’t feel like eating anything. “But breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” he teased.

“Actually, I read something about how that isn’t true, and it’s a false correlation because people who eat breakfast are more invested in their health in other ways,” I said. God, I sounded like such a know-it-all.

But Carter didn’t look annoyed. He cocked his head at me and said, “You know so many random things.”

I hunched my shoulders, feeling uncomfortable. “I just read stuff.”

He leaned across the table, fixing me with his piercing gaze. “What’s your dream in life?” he asked. “I know you don’t want to work at the club forever. What do you
really
want to do?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“Pretend that money is no object,” he said. “If you didn’t have to worry about that. If you could do anything you wanted to. What would it be?”

Dreams were dangerous. They gave you big ideas; they made you think that your life could be bigger, more meaningful, than was actually possible. I had spent my entire life deliberately tamping down my dreams, like useless soil underfoot.

Carter was someone who dreamed big. For him, anything was possible. He didn’t understand that most people’s lives had limits, borders: this far, and no further. Saying it aloud would make it real, would make me
hope
. Hope was dangerous.

But how could I explain that to him? The way he was looking at me, so steady and open, made me want to give him what he was asking for, no matter the risks.

“I’d like to be a lawyer,” I said, the words dragging out of me. “Maybe a public defender. Help people who need it. I worked at a law office for a while and I—liked it. The work. It was interesting.” I shrugged, painfully. “But I’d have to finish college, and then law school, so. It’s never going to happen?”

“Why not?” Carter said. “Why can’t it? I would pay your tuition myself if I thought you would accept it. I know you never would, so I won’t offer. But there are financial aid programs, loans—”

“I know,” I said. The thought of going into debt made me feel physically ill. I had seen what debt did to my parents. The payday loans, the endless calls from collection agencies... I never wanted to owe anyone money. I’d racked up a few thousand dollars on my credit cards right before I started working at the club, when I had no money and was desperate, and that had been a burden on my shoulders that didn’t lift until I paid off every last cent. Law school would require hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans—more money than I could fathom.

It was an impossible dream.

“I know some people at CUNY,” Carter said. “That’s where you were before, right? I can make a few phone calls—”

“No,” I said sharply. “I don’t want you
arranging
things for me. I can take care of myself.”

He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Okay. I’m sorry. I know you can.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to be nice. But I can’t just—let you fix everything about my life. I don’t want anyone to ever be able to imply that I’m just using you for your money.”

“So conscientious,” he said, and squeezed my hand. “Okay. I won’t bring it up again. But think about it, okay? You shouldn’t have to settle for anything less than what you
really
want.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

That seemed to placate him. He smiled at me, and finished his toast.

“What’s
your
dream, then?” I asked him. Turnabout was fair play.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at me, considering. “I want a family,” he said. “Kids. I always knew I would end up running the company. I’m glad to do it; it’s interesting work, and I’m good at it. But I don’t want it to be the
only
thing in my life.”

“Kids,” I said. “Really?” It surprised me. It wasn’t that I thought he would be a bad father, just that I’d assumed his dreams would be—larger. More ambitious. The governor’s mansion, the White House.

“Really,” he said. “Maybe a few dogs.” He shrugged. “I want a happy life. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

“Sure,” I said. I had never thought about it much. Happiness was just a word, and I wasn’t sure I believed in it—at least not the way that Carter meant, the kind of happiness that meant you lay on your deathbed and thought,
Gosh, it’s sure been a good life.

“Cocker spaniels,” Carter said.

I squinted at him. “What?”

“I’d like some cocker spaniels. That’s the kind of dog I had, growing up. They’re good dogs. Calm and affectionate. Good for apartment living.”

“Cocker spaniels are cute,” I said.

He grinned at me. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you start picking out baby names just yet.” Then he laughed and said, “Look at your face! I’m just kidding. Or am I? You’ll never really know.”

I kicked him beneath the table, and he grinned again, unrepentant.

But he had already put the thought in my mind, like a seed he planted there, and it grew, while I finished my coffee, into a dangerously appealing fantasy of what our children would look like, with my brown skin and his blue eyes...

I couldn’t think about it. “I should probably go,” I said.

“Of course,” he said. He leaned across the table and kissed me. “I’ll miss you. When do I get to see you again?”

We made tentative plans to have dinner in a few days, and then Carter had his driver take me home. It was still early enough that I had a couple of hours before the time I would usually even get out of bed, and I decided to make some more coffee and scrub my bathroom; and so it wasn’t until past noon that I finally sat down and checked my email.

I had to refresh my inbox three times before I understood what I was seeing.

It was an email from my mom, in her familiar broken English. For some reason I had never understood, she refused to write in Tagalog.

It was the first time she’d attempted to communicate with me since I left California six years earlier.

My grandmother had died, she said. She was asking me to come home.

* * *

“T
ake my jet,” Carter said.

I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me over the phone. “No,” I said firmly. “I’m going to fly coach, like a regular person.”

“I can come with you,” he said. “If you want.”

I cringed. I’d been afraid he would say that. I could imagine it all too well: Carter standing in my mother’s dingy living room, the walls stained yellow from nicotine; Carter in the church, meeting my suspicious relatives; Carter eating pancit in someone’s back yard. It would be like setting a fox among the chickens, and Carter wouldn’t be the fox. He would do everything wrong, and nobody would cut him any slack. He probably hadn’t even been to a wake before.

So I said, “I can’t ask you to do that. I know you’re busy.”

“If you want me there, I can put everything on hold,” he said. “There are things in life more important than running my business.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. I said nothing, and the moment dragged on too long, awkwardly. Finally I said, “Maybe not this time. My mom, you know. There are some family issues.”

“Sure,” he said, too lightly. I knew I had hurt him. I didn’t know how to apologize for it.

“I’ll be gone for a while,” I said. “Maybe a week. I have to—there’s the wake, and then the funeral, and—family stuff. And I’ll probably be pretty busy, so...”

“So don’t expect to hear much from you,” he said. “Right. Well.” A pause. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do?”

“No,” I said. “But—thanks.”

I had already called Sadie, who didn’t answer—she was at work—and Germaine, who did, and told me to take as much time as I needed. Now I checked Carter off my list. I still needed to buy plane tickets, pack, and email my mother to let her know I was coming.

I didn’t know why I was dropping everything to fly across the country and attend the funeral of a woman I hadn’t seen or spoken to since I was eighteen.

That wasn’t true. I knew exactly why.

Blood, after all, was thicker than water.

I flew out to California the next afternoon, Newark to Ontario with a stop in Phoenix. There was no fast or convenient way to get to San Bernardino; it was a dead end, somewhere people left and didn’t return to. The ticket cost enough to make me feel a little nauseated, but I reminded myself that this was the reason I had taken the job at the club: so that I could handle emergencies like last-minute plane tickets without having to worry.

It was only a few days before Christmas, and the airport was a madhouse. It took me more than an hour just to get through security. For a few dark minutes, trapped behind a woman arguing with the TSA agent about why she shouldn’t have to remove her shoes, I wished I had taken Carter up on his offer.

I had a window seat, at least. I had only flown a couple of times, and it was still sort of a novelty, watching the ground recede as we took off, and the huge, fluffy clouds. The woman sitting beside me cracked open a book as soon as we started taxiing. Fine with me; I didn’t want to talk. I balled up my coat into a makeshift pillow and did my best to sleep.

I was planning to rent a car in Ontario and drive out to San Bernardino, but when I rolled my suitcase out of the security area, one of my cousins was waiting for me.

I stopped dead, dumbfounded. I’d told my mother what time I would be arriving, but I hadn’t expected her to send someone to pick me up—much less JP, who had never liked me, and who had told me, when he found out I was moving to New York, that I had betrayed the family. Like we were the Mafia or something.

“Regan,” he said stiffly, and tried to take my suitcase from me. I backed up a step without meaning to, and his frown deepened. “Fine, carry it yourself.”

“Um, thanks for coming to get me,” I said.

He snorted. “Don’t thank me. It’s not like I had a choice. Your mom called my mom. You know how it goes.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Some things never changed.

We went out to where JP had parked his car, a beat-up Cadillac with shiny new rims. I shrugged out of my coat. I’d forgotten how warm it could be in December. JP threw my suitcase in the trunk, and we peeled out of the parking lot.

We headed east on the 10. It was a little after 6, California time, and the sun had set already, turning the desert landscape into a blur of headlights.

I wished it was still light, so that I could see the mountains. One thing I missed about California was being able to see the mountains.

Maybe the
only
thing.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, I said, “So, what are you up to these days?”

JP’s face settled deeper into its scowl. “The fuck do you think I’m doing? I’m still working at the warehouse, and I’ll probably be working there until I die.”

“You could always leave, you know,” I said quietly.

He laughed, and unpleasant bark of sound. “Leave, my ass. My mom depends on me, you know that? Yours depended on you. But you only cared about yourself.”

I turned my face to the window, flushing with anger and embarrassment. They probably all thought the same thing, all of my relatives—that I had abandoned my filial duty, and left my mother alone and helpless. Never mind the fact that she had told me to leave. Screamed it at me, standing in the back yard, her face still red from where my father had struck her.

Whatever. It wasn’t my problem anymore.

I pulled out my phone and texted Carter.
In California. It’s warm here
.

Snowing here
, he responded.
Hope everything’s going okay so far
.

Well, JP hadn’t stopped the car and told me to get out, so it was going better than I had expected. I didn’t respond to Carter’s text, though. There was too much history involved, too many years of complicated family dynamics for me to be able to explain to him what was going on.

A few minutes went by in silence. Then I said, “Do you know if my dad’s going to be there?”

JP snorted. “You don’t know?” We had been speaking English, but he switched into Tagalog abruptly, and said, “You don’t even know where your own father is? He left. He’s
gone
. Six months after you.” He shook his head. “Shameful. You just walked away, and left us all behind. Your mom
needed
you. And so did your grandma, and now she’s dead, and you never called her, not once.”

I slumped down in my seat. My grandmother, the last time I saw her, told me I was a useless whore, that I would never amount to anything, and that if I treated myself like trash, everyone else would too. All because she had caught me kissing my boyfriend in the front seat of his car after he brought me home from a date. Never mind the fact that kissing was all we ever did. I tried so hard to be good that I never even let him take off my shirt.

My grandmother wouldn’t have
wanted
me to call her. And so I never did.

But I knew better than to speak ill of the dead.

We drove the rest of the way in silence, broken only by JP muttering angrily at other drivers. The highway was so barren and isolated that there was nothing to see, no landmarks, until he exited and started driving toward my mother’s house.

And then I was overwhelmed by familiar places: the Catholic church, the tire shop, the elementary school, the roads I knew like the back of my hand. I felt tears welling up in my eyes, and bit down hard on my lip to hold them back. It wasn’t that I was glad to be home. It wasn’t home anymore, and I had no happy memories associated with any of these places. But seeing everything so unchanged, as if I had just turned away for a few moments, gave me the disconcerting feeling that my old life was waiting to rise up and engulf me again. That I would never really be able to leave.

We turned onto my mother’s street, and JP slowly rolled to a stop in front of the house. I was born here, in the living room, because my father was too drunk to drive to the hospital, and my mother refused to call an ambulance until it was too late. She liked to point to the stain in the carpet that never quite came out and say,
Here’s where my daughter made me suffer
.