Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 49114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 246(@200wpm)___ 196(@250wpm)___ 164(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 246(@200wpm)___ 196(@250wpm)___ 164(@300wpm)
I didn’t even want to be here. Just when I was finally settling into life without her in it, making plans for my future after leaving the boarding school she had packed me off to five years ago, she had to come drag me back into her madness again.
I knew as soon as it happened that it was going to be another disaster waiting to happen. It always is with mom. But I had no idea how much; until now. Until I felt a pair of arctic blue eyes peering into my soul. For some reason I imagined a wolf baring its teeth as it got ready to strike.
I was scared but trying really hard not to show it in front of Mr. Magnetic and my mother, if you can call her that. I didn’t have to take two guesses as to why she’d brought me here.
She was obviously trying to convince her new much older husband to be that she was mother of the year, if he only knew. Not that he should care. I’m not sure that he’s much better than she is as a human being.
I’d read all the sordid details of their affair in the tabloids. He’d left his wife of thirty something years I think they’d said, so that he could marry her. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, she had decided to drag me into this mess along with her.
Does that mean that people will think we’re alike her and I? Is that why he’s watching me like that? Or was it something else? Could it be…?
I got another kind of fluttering deep inside at the thought that he might be seeing me as a sexual conquest. But it died a quick death and I barely stifled the self-deprecating snort.
Someone like him wouldn’t be interested in a gauche nondescript eighteen year old who’s almost, not quite, but almost afraid of her own shadow.
No, I can only imagine the spectacular Mr. Carstairs paired with one of those very well put together society daughters, whose daddies’ names had as many zeroes in their bank accounts as his most obviously does.
I released my breath when the elder Mr. Carstairs’ maid came to lead me upstairs to freshen up. I was hot, sweaty and tired after the long flight from Arizona, which is where I’d been for the past five years, hidden away from Lisa and her life.
She’d stuck me out there at the age of thirteen and all but forgotten me until about three weeks ago. It had taken me that long, the whole five years, to get settled because Lisa, is never too sure about anything and cannot be trusted. So I lived each day there on tenterhooks, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I was just a pawn in her fishbowl of life, something to be used at her whim. But for those five years it’s like she’d forgotten that I even exist. I didn’t mind though, the less interactions I had with dear old mom, the better.
For the first four years or so, I never let myself relax, even though I inhaled everything that they taught me there. One of the nicer teachers had taught me early on that education is one of the greatest escapes this life has to offer. Unless of course you’re an athlete or entertainer of some sort. She had me at escape.
But I should’ve known, this last year, when I was finally beginning to feel like I belong. That it would be then Lisa would strike. She is the arbiter of all things destructive in my life and I wish I was strong enough to tell her no.
But she’s very good at what she is Lisa. She can spin a tale better than any master storyteller anywhere in the world. I’ve often wondered why she never made it in Hollywood, and yes she tried.
She would’ve been perfect there, in the land of make believe. Because her life is one long running Soap Opera script with more twists and turns that the real thing.
At first, after the first few phone calls, I’d fallen for her story of sudden maternal instinct. Though I tend to deal with Lisa the same way you would a basket of adders, I was tentatively hopeful I guess. No matter how old, or what the history, everyone wants to be truly loved by their mother, I think.
So, when she called and seemed so genuinely apologetic and remorseful, I once again as I did so many times before, fell for the act. And it was an Academy award winning performance. You’d think at my age, and after all the history, that I’d know better. But she really had me going this time.
That was until one of the other girls had taken such pleasure in throwing the first of many magazines in my face, replete with my mother’s scandalous behavior.