“No.” A distant realization blazed inside me.Save the Children.
“It’s his specialty.” She looked away again, seeming lost in her own thoughts. “He researches the markets, finds companies with potential that are struggling or doomed, and saves them. Even the ones no one else believes in.”
If realizations had sounds, one had just blared inside me. From what my mother had told me, his father used to take over companies, bleed them dry, and move on with the profit to invest bigger in other businesses, rinsing and repeating, ruining livelihoods and legacies. She might have cleaned his house, but she didn’t have much respect for the man.
Blanche was speaking of business, but the expression on her beautiful face immediately gave her away. She was in love with him. And seemed to be at the receiving end of Oliver’s “First sign of feelings and I’m gone.”
“Have you known him long?” she asked, placing an elegant hand on the marble counter.
“Yes.”
She looked away again, as if she was conjuring words, memories. “He has a capability to look at you, and you feel like if you look deep enough, you could see a whole universe in there. But in a blink, it’s gone. You’re gone. He never lets you look long enough.” She tapped the counter gently as she said the last words and shifted her gaze back to me. I didn’t think she actually saw me, she seemed too lost in her own head.
Her accent made her speech sound as melancholy as a gray afternoon in Paris, or at least, how I imagined such an afternoon looked like.
I knew exactly what she was talking about. In the few days we had shared this space, Oliver had looked right into me, held my gaze, but only until I felt like I was about to discover something in his. Moreover, he made me feel like there was nothing else inside that universe in his eyes but me. Then, in a blink, it was gone.
I felt sorry for this beautiful, cool, and genuinely nice woman who looked like the many dollars I was owing the banks.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not really sure why I was apologizing on his behalf.
She let out a little embarrassed scoff, as if she realized she was pouring her heart out to a complete stranger. She then straightened up, and the confident amazon she had been at the door before was back. I could tell now that she was the CEO of a company.
“Well, I must go. I wasted enough of your time. Thank you for the hospitality. It was nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” I said as we both began to make our way to the front door.
Right at the door, she shook my hand again. “Please, I will mention to Oliver this visit when I see him. Please don’t say anything, if it’s possible.”
“No problem.” I smiled at her.
“Thank you.” Her smile was grateful. I liked her. I could see what Oliver saw in her.
If he didn’t bend hisno-relationshiprule for her, I didn’t stand a chance.
After Blanche left, I finished organizing the cabana, left a thank-you note on the main house’s fridge door, locked everything behind me, and drove Pretty back to Riviera View with my suitcases in the back seat.
June’s place wasn’t smaller than the pool house, but everything was in the same space—living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom—all meticulously arranged like one of those tiny Ikea showrooms that mimic a tiny apartment. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves in each other’s way.
We made dinner together, watched a rerun of Law & Order on TV, laughed about twenty years of wanting Benson and Stabler to get together, and chatted about everything. Everything except the obvious elephant in the room—the elephant that forced me to seek a temporary haven on her sofa.
When she went to bed, I was right there on the sofa, tossing and turning. It wasn’t late, but she had always been an early bird. Maybe that was how you achieved things in life. June didn’t have to criticize me; her life was the opposite reflection of mine, and that, in itself, made me question myself.
It was so dead quiet in the studio that when my incoming message tone sounded an hour later, it felt like church bells were ringing inside the small space.
Still struggling to sleep, I pawed for the phone on the coffee table. The lit screen felt obtrusive, and I was hoping that my sister was sleeping too soundly to wake.
“Expect a surprise!” Will wrote.
“No surprises, Will. But if it’s about Stephanie, I’d love to meet her, just give me a heads-up,” I texted back, my stomach churning. I couldn’t handle surprises, not if it meant my kids were planning on coming to a home that wasn’t there. And bringing Will’s new girlfriend. What relationship could survive a girl finding out her boyfriend was practically homeless?
“I’ll think about it, but it’s something else. Check out the group chat in 3, 2, 1.”
I opened our group chat with Lennox, and two pictures appeared. I magnified the first.
A muffled scream escaped my lips as I rose to sit on the sofa. Magnifying the other screenshot, I threw my hands over my mouth to muffle another scream.
“It is our pleasure to announce that you were chosen as a recipient of the Future Bright Scholarship,” the texts in both screenshots read.
