Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“What this?” I ask. “The fact that we don’t like a single thing about the other person?”
His smile is grim. “Exactly. With all this antagonism and bickering, if Immigration Services comes looking for us, there should be no doubt in their mind that we are, in fact, man and wife.”
Chapter 6
Thursday, August 20
“I still can’t believe you’re back!”
I laugh as I’m pulled into what is probably the tenth hug of the evening, each one getting a little bit sloppier as our drink count ticks steadily up.
“I can’t believe we’re drinking legally now,” I say, grinning at the petite honey-blond woman sitting next to me at the bar.
Meghan Barker was once one of my closest friends, and though our contact over the past few years has been mostly limited to birthday phone calls and Facebook messages, I’m delighted to find that the rapport of our teen years holds strong in our thirties.
“Oh, God,” she says with a laugh, taking another sip of the Champagne she’s switched to after declaring herself over the cocktails we’d started the evening with. “Do you remember the first time we tried Scotch?”
I wince at the memory. “I don’t know who was more pissed, my dad that we’d helped ourselves to ‘his best bottle,’ or me that I’d gotten grounded for trying something that tasted so god-awful. What a waste.”
“It was god-awful,” she agrees. “Though, to be fair, I seem to remember that usually when you got grounded, it was for things that were worth it.”
“It certainly seemed that way at the time,” I say with a smile into my own Champagne, remembering the rather numerous occasions my exasperated parents banished me to my bedroom for all sorts of classic teenage offenses. Helping myself to the liquor cabinet. My first cigarette. Letting Drew Callahan get to second base when I was supposed to be helping set up for the church fundraiser. Though, I would like to be very clear, I did help set up for the church fundraiser, we just wrapped up earlier than expected. And then I let Drew get to second base.
And all that was just during summer vacations. If my parents had known and grounded me for every bit of mischief I got into at boarding school, I’d have spent my entire teenage career under lock and key.
Still, I have a hard time mustering up much regret for those years of my life. I was a rule breaker but the harmless variety. Rebellious, yes, but the annoying kind of rebellious, not the dangerous variety.
“How are your parents?” Meghan asks. “I saw them a few months ago at … gosh, I don’t remember. Someone’s wedding, I think. They look exactly the same.”
“They’re fine!” I say, grateful that Meghan doesn’t know me quite as well as she once did and doesn’t realize that my voice is just a touch too high at the lie.
I don’t really know how my parents are. I mean, I do. They’re alive. Healthy, I think. I hope. But Meghan’s words cause an unexpected pang at the realization that she’s seen them more recently than I have. Her brief encounter with them at a wedding is about as much as I’ve had with them in the past decade.
If you walk out that door, Charlotte Spencer, don’t expect to walk back in again, now or ever again.
I hadn’t expected to. And I haven’t walked back in again.
Years later, I can understand that my mother said those words in anger and probably no small amount of hurt. She’d just found out that her only daughter had not only gotten married without telling her but had booked a flight to San Francisco for the very next day. Looking back, it’s easy to see that I’d been young and more than a little careless with my parents’ feelings.
Just like I also know that there were two sides of the war that was my youth, and not all the mistakes had been mine. I can’t even remember how many nights I’d sit on my bed, pep talking myself to gather the courage to go downstairs to talk to them. Just to talk. To tell them about my dreams, about things that excited me in hopes that they could be happy for me, if not necessarily with me.
I’d wanted—needed—someone to listen. To at least try and understand, even if they couldn’t support. Instead, I’d gotten dismissive eye rolls and comments that it was my youth talking. I’d gotten sent back to my bedroom with instructions not to speak again until I’d come to my senses. But worst of all were the icy silences, as though they hoped if they didn’t move, or blink, or speak, that I’d suddenly become the perfect cookie-cutter daughter they so clearly wanted.
Strictly speaking, my parents hadn’t thrown me out of the house. The twenty-one-year-old Charlotte and thirty-one-year-old Charlotte know that I was the one who bought that plane ticket; I’m the one who got married for the sole purpose of financial freedom from them. I’m the one who left.