Why couldn’t her car have stalled on the way over here or, better yet, run out of gas, leaving her stranded at the mercy of the wildlife that would maul her and save her from this hell? Was that really too much to ask?
She ran a hand over her blouse to smooth it down as she approached the front door. Before she could knock, the door opened. Jameson, her parents’ butler of ten years, looked distastefully down his nose at her.
“Your mother expected you a half an hour ago, Miss Blaine,” he said with a haughty sniff. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he called her sisters by their first names and even smiled when he did it. It was just another reminder that she didn’t fit in.
“Where is she?” Haley asked, hoping to get this over with.
Another sniff. “Madam is in the backyard. She’s very exhausted. She’s been working day and night on this barbecue. She was up at the crack of dawn and hasn’t rested since!”
“Uh-huh,” Haley absently said as she walked past people that she didn’t know. Funny how family barbecues in her family really meant inviting everyone they wanted to impress. It seemed that she was the only one that didn’t bring an entourage with her. She had friends that she really cared about and could have brought, but well, it was because she cared about them that she wouldn’t inflict this upon them.
“Haley, so nice to see you!” her cousin Jacob said. “You should come to the Vineyard this summer and stay at my new cottage. It’s fabulous, you’ll love it!” he said loud enough to draw attention to himself. She had no doubt that it was for the benefit of the crowd surrounding him since he hated her. It might have something to do with her putting Nair in his shampoo bottle when they were kids.
Ah, whatever.
Haley simply gave that fake smile that her mother had drilled into her head growing up. She made her way to the backyard, where she found her mother working hard at sipping a martini and gossiping with Haley’s sisters, a few aunts, and her grandmother snoozing in a wheelchair a few feet away under her own umbrella.
Her father, brothers-in-law, several uncles, cousins, and men she didn’t recognize sat on the opposite end of the large brick patio that spanned the entire length of the mansion. On the lawn, professional caterers were grilling on huge gas grills while others placed food on tables and set up chairs around the tables that now covered a small portion of her parents’ ten-acre backyard.
It didn’t surprise her that there were no kids at the family barbecue. To even suggest bringing a child here would have sent her mother into a snit. A social queen her mother definitely was, a mother and grandmother? Not even a little bit. She’d hardly been there for their childhood. Why do it when she could pay someone else? was her mother’s motto. Nannies and maids had raised her and her siblings until the ripe old age of ten when they’d each, in turn, were sent away to a private year-round boarding school. From then on, it became obvious that they were only guests here.
Some might think it was a pathetic upbringing and, to a point, she would agree. Since her parents only saw children as an accessory, they’d really had no business having them. It would have been a horrible childhood if her grandparents hadn’t bought a house close to her school the first week and brought her to live with them. Thanks to her grandparents, she’d had a wonderful childhood. She loved the life her grandparents had given her, which was one of the reasons why at eighteen, she’d taken over her life and decided to pursue her own dreams instead of following in her family’s footsteps.
“Oh, Haley! There you are, dear!” her mother said cheerfully. Was she trying to smile? No, it was just Botox. Her whole face looked completely frozen in a pained grimace.
“Hello, Mother,” Haley said, giving her mother a barely-there kiss on the cheek as her mother did the same.
“Have a seat, dear!” Her mother gestured to the seat next to her. Haley’s sisters, Martha and Rose, sent her identical smirks as they picked up their glasses and fluffed back their hair in an attempt to show off whatever new trinket their husbands, more likely husbands’ secretaries, bought for them.
“It’s so nice to see you, Haley,” Rose said with a cool smile as she displayed her diamond bracelet.
“It’s nice to see you too, Rose. How are your children?” Haley asked.
Rose gave her a rather bland look as she asked, “How would I know?”
Haley opened her mouth to point out that they were, in fact, her children but decided against it.
Martha leaned in, trying to look discreet. The fact that she raised her voice kind of wrecked the effect. “You poor thing! I see the diet didn’t work.” She pouted. “Did you get dumped again?” She shook her head as if it was of no consequence and pulled out a business card that she’d probably been waiting for this moment to give her. “Here’s the name of a great plastic surgeon who does wonders with liposuction.”
Still smiling, Haley accepted the card. Since she’d lost a few pounds in the last couple of weeks and didn’t consider herself fat, especially since her stomach was flat, she knew that her sister was just trying to point out that Haley wasn’t stick thin like the rest of them. Flat breasts and looking skeletal was apparently in. Since she would never look like them or wanted to, she simply left the business card on the table.
Haley had no problem with the way that she looked. She was comfortable with her curves. In fact, she had the same curves that her grandmother had when she was younger. The same grandmother out cold in her wheelchair and the one that everyone here, but her, feared to piss off. They all looked down on her for her middle-class ways, forgetting that it was her hard work and sacrifices that made the family what it was today.
“You know they can reduce those things these days,” Rose said distastefully, pulling Haley away from her thoughts.
“What things?” Haley asked, distracted by one of her cousins eying their grandmother like a vulture. She had no doubt that he was counting her breaths. Hell, the little prick was mouthing the words. These people were pathetic.
“Your breasts, dear. They’re…well, they’re so lower class. They make you look like a waitress or something,” her aunt said sympathetically.
“I think you would look great with less…curves,” Rose added.
Smile. “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Oh, wait, dear!” her mother said, holding up her hand. “I wanted to ask you how your little hobby was going.”
Her little hobby, meaning her job. Smile. “It’s going great. Thank you for asking. We’ll be breaking for the summer in two months. I’m thinking about traveling or renting a cabin in New Hampshire for a few weeks.”
“Honestly, dear, I don’t know why you do it. If you’re so determined to work, then you should go back to school and get a real degree in law or medicine like your father. Is it because you’re trying to meet a man?” her mother asked, sounding hopeful.
