She goes stiff for a heartbeat—a marble statue in a camel coat—but then she leans in. She pats my back awkwardly, the way you might comfort a strange cat, but it’s there. The effort is there.
“I want to see you,” I whisper into her shoulder. “I want you to know Leo. And Emma. You’d love her, Mom. She’s…she’s a force of nature.”
She pulls back, her composure carefully reassembled, and looks back at the fridge, at Emma’s wide smile. She’s quiet for a full minute, the only sound the distant wail of a siren.
“I think I would like that,” she says, finally. Then, so quietly I almost miss it: “You don’t think it’s too late for us, Annemarie? For you and me to…get to know each other?”
The hope in her voice is a tiny, fragile bird. “It’s never too late,” I say, and I mean it.
She nearly smiles—a genuine, flickering thing. “I would love to stay longer but I have to go. I have a meeting with Martin Scorsese. I’ve landed a role in his new project. It seems I’m playing a very complicated matriarch.”
“You’re acting again?” I ask, my heart lifting. “Mom, that’s amazing. Really.”
She shrugs, though I can see the spark of excitement she’s trying to hide. “It’s true what they say about old dogs and new tricks, I suppose. I’ll be in the city quite a bit this spring andsummer for filming. Perhaps we can…find some time for dinners or seeing the city.”
“I’d love that.”
She nods, content, and moves toward the door, pausing with her hand on the knob. When she turns back, her eyes travel to my green plaid knit and she pinches a bit of the wool between two fingers. “Please do me a favor and burn this, darling.”
She gives me a sharp, elegant smirk and starts down the stairs, her heels clicking a rhythmic, expensive beat against the wood.
I stand in the doorway, clutching the envelope and the memory of her hug, and I start to laugh.
***********
It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m curled up on Leo’s couch with a glass of champagne in my hand, watching Dick Clark count down to midnight on the TV.
The apartment is a soft, warm cave against the sharp, celebratory cold outside. The only light comes from the TV, flickering with the pre-midnight festivities from Times Square, and from the strands of fairy lights we’d woven through Emma’s paper chain garland.
We’d made it back in early December, a riot of colored construction paper loops she’d glued together with intense focus. It had stretched nearly the entire length of the living room, a cheerful, glittery, crinkly rainbow. Every night at dinner, she’d stand on a chair, select a loop, and tear it off with a satisfying rip. Tonight, we’d torn off the very last one—a gold loop for New Year’s Eve. She’d been buzzing with the solemn duty of it.
She’d sworn, with the fierce conviction only a five-year-old can muster, that she would stay awake until midnight. “I’m a big kid now, Daddy. I can do it.” Leo had just nodded, said, “We’ll see,” and poured her a tiny, ceremonial cup of sparklingcider. Now, at eleven-fifty, she’s sprawled across the other sofa, a tangle of limbs and striped pajamas, snoring softly against a pile of throw pillows. The “party” hat she insisted on wearing is currently flattened under her cheek. In the quiet, the little pops and fizzes from our glasses of champagne feel extravagantly loud.
Leo passes me my flute. “To almost making it,” he whispers, nodding toward our sleeping chaperone.
I clink my glass gently against his. “She went out in a blaze of glory.”
My feet are tucked under his thigh on the couch, and his free hand rests on my ankle, his thumb making absent, soothing circles. I’m quiet for a moment, watching the throngs of people in Times Square on the screen. They look cold, packed together like sardines in knitted hats, waiting for a ball to drop. My mind is blocks away, tucked into the desk drawer of my apartment, where a thick packet of cream-colored stationery sits.
I haven’t told him yet. I’ve been holding my trust close to my chest, partially because I needed to see the ink to believe it, and partially because I’ve spent my time waiting for my father to pull the rug out from under my feet. I expected a phone call from a lawyer saying there had been a “clerical error” or a “reinterpretation of intent.”
But it turns out that a properly structured trust, especially one set up by a man as meticulous as my grandfather, isn’t so easily dismantled by a furious father. The terms were the terms. I was to receive my grandfather’s trust no sooner than December of 1994. My heart had hammered against my ribs as I’d read the sterile, financial-ese.Per the directives of the Collier Family Trust, established by Clive Atticus Collier…the sum has been vested to the beneficiary, Annemarie June Collier…assets have been liquidated and transferred to the designated account…
There were phone numbers to call. An assigned account manager with a very calm, reassuring voice named Charles. There were forms to sign, sent via overnight mail, which I’d done at a FedEx office with trembling hands. And then, two days ago, a call from Charles. “The wire has cleared, Miss Collier. The funds are available.”
Twelve million dollars. Originally, it was going to be ten million. The two extra million had come from some accumulated interest and a secondary bond my grandfather had set up that even my mother hadn’t mentioned.
It doesn’t feel real. It feels like a theoretical concept, like the distance between stars. It sits in a new, high-yield savings account at a bank I’d never heard of before last week, and I haven’t touched it. I can’t even imagine what touching it would look like. Part of me is still waiting for a team of lawyers to burst in, declaring it all a clerical error.
But Charles’s voice had been so calm. So final. “The funds are available.”
It’s a strange, vertigo-inducing weight. I could buy the building we’re sitting in. I could ensure Emma never has to worry about anything more serious than a glitter shortage ever again. I could give Leo the kind of freedom he doesn’t even know he’s missing.
Leo nudges his shoulder gently against mine. “Hey. What’s going on in there?” He taps his temple.
“Nothing,” I say, but it comes out too quick, too thin.
His brows knit together. “You’ve been quiet for like, twenty minutes.” He laces his fingers through mine, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. “What are you thinking about?”
