Lizzie pressed her hand over her mouth.
“The police came. My mother was still high but coherent enough to know she was going to jail. So she told them I had taken the car. That I’d stolen the keys and gone for a joyride. Made me go along with the story. Told me later that if I didn’t back her up, she’d make sure I ended up in foster care where worse things would happen to me.”
“You were thirteen years old. That’s abuse. All of it is. Your neighbor didn’t say that it was her who hit him, nor you?” Tears pooled in her eyes.
“I don’t think he saw who drove. It was dark. Anyway, I ended up with a slap on the wrist and an entry in my record that was sealed when I was eighteen.” Sarah’s voice went flat. “If my mother had been charged as an adult addict who’d driven high and hurt someone, she would have gone to prison. So I took the fall. And I learned that the people who were supposed to protect you were the ones most likely to hurt you.”
Lizzie was crying openly now but Sarah couldn’t stop. The dam had broken.
“I stayed for three more years. Kept going to school. Kept trying to take care of them. But nothing changed. They’d promise to get clean and then I’d find needles in the bathroom again. My mother would cry and say she was sorry and then steal money from my backpack to buy more drugs.”
Sarah stood and walked to the window. She couldn’t sit still anymore.
“When I was fifteen, I went to court and filed for emancipation. Used everything. The accident. Their addiction. Photos of the house. Testimony from teachers and neighbors. The judge granted it. I moved out the same day with nothing but a backpack and two hundred dollars I’d saved from babysitting jobs.”
“Where did you go?”
“San Francisco. I don’t even know why. Just got on a bus and picked a city far away.” Sarah pressed her forehead against the cool glass. “I slept in a homeless shelter for three months. Got a job cleaning rooms at a motel. The owner knew I was living in the shelter, but she didn’t care as long as I showed up and worked hard.”
Lizzie was silent. Sarah could feel her watching but couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t see the pity that must be there.
“I got my GED. Worked as a maid during the day and a waitress at night. I moved into an apartment with five roommates in a terrible neighborhood, but I saved every penny I could. By the time I was nineteen, I’d worked my way up to a nicer hotel. The Fairmont. That’s where I met Billy.”
The memory was still so clear. Sarah in her housekeeping uniform, Billy in an expensive suit, both of them in the service elevator.
“Billy had just bought the hotel. He was restructuring everything. I kept my head down and worked harder than anyone else.” Sarah turned around. “Then one day he found me crying in the supply closet. I’d gotten a letter from my mother asking for money. The first contact I’d had with her in three years. I still don’t know how she found my address.”
“What did Billy do?”
“He asked what was wrong. I don’t know why I told him. Maybe because I was just so tired of holding it all in.” Sarah sat back down. “I told him everything. I expected him to let me go. Who wants an employee with a past like mine?”
“But he didn’t.” Lizzie had walked to her side, one hand on the small of her back.
“He didn’t. He said that what my parents did wasn’t my fault. Then he asked me if I wanted to learn the hotel business properly.” Sarah smiled despite herself. “He sent me on training courses. Front desk operations at first, then hospitality management. We became friends. It was odd because when we met I was nineteen and he was fifty-three. Yet, we had so much in common. Then, one day when we went out to a diner to eat, someone mistook me for his girlfriend. One of his associates. It was odd. The guy was so thrilled that Billy was with a woman.”
Sarah shook her head, remembering that night.
“That night, we had a talk. Billy told me that ever since his wife, Catherine, died, his associates were pushing him to remarry, that it looked odd that a man his age wasn’t with someone. Catherine had been dead about eight years by then. People were speculating and trying to set him up. But he just wasn’t interested in anyone else. He admitted that it would be good for his reputation to be married to a pretty young thing, that’s what he called me. PYT was a nickname he used for years for me later on.” A small laugh escaped her.
“Anyway, we talked and he said he had a proposition for me. A marriage of convenience. He needed a wife to stop people from constantly trying to set him up. To stop the rumors and the questions. I needed protection. Security. A way to build a lifethat wasn’t constantly threatened by my past. I was worried he was after more, so I told him I was gay. I had actually just broken up with a serious girlfriend.”
“The peanut butter one?” Lizzie asked with a grin.
“Yeah, that one.” They exchanged a smile.
“Did you tell him? About being gay.”
“Oh, he knew. I told him early one just so he wouldn’t get ideas. That’s when he first told me about Catherine. There were never secrets between us.”
“So you married him.”
“We genuinely loved each other. Just not romantically. He was my best friend. My mentor. The father I never had.” Sarah’s voice broke. “Over the years, we built the hotel empire together. I proved myself at every level. Billy made me GM at two different properties before the Carlson.”
“What about your parents?”
“I cut her off, but she kept finding me. She made veiled threats about telling the world who I really am and I was terrified. By then, Billy and I had erased the past with a fake back story so I could really start over. Eventually my mom found out though. I guess we were in some magazine together or something. Hotel magnate and his young wife… that type of stuff. She asked for money, I ignored her. She disappeared eventually and I thought she got the message, but really Billy was paying her off behind my back.”
Lizzie gasped. “You didn’t know?”
