Page 54 of Becoming Mila
Unfortunately for me, I am riding shotgun. I sit stock-rigid with my knees together, my shoulders drawn tight, and my hands under my thighs to stop myself from playing nervously with my fingers. I can’t bring myself to even glimpse at LeAnne, so my eyes are fastened to the blur of trees outside the window. It’s too awkward, not because I was kissing her son not so long ago, but because it’s so painfully clear that LeAnne really does not like me.
The road we’re traveling down becomes slowly recognizable in the dark. The Harding Estate can’t be much further, except. . . We’re coming at it from the wrong direction. We’re going to reach the Willowbank ranch first.No, no, no.
A familiar sense of dread chokes itself around me. It’s the same feeling that took over the night of the tailgate party, when I was already uncomfortable around Blake and ended up alone in his truck with him while he dropped me off. But this. . .This is farfarworse. LeAnne is a million times more intimidating than Blake will ever be. Plus, I get the feeling she has significantly more power than her son to make my life a misery.
“Home safe and sound with no citations,” LeAnne says as the Tesla quietly rolls to a stop. She twists her neck to glower at her niece and nephew in the backseat. “Now go on. Inside.”
Myles throws open the car door and climbs out at lightning speed. “Thanks for being a buzzkill, Mayor Avery! If I ever move to the city, please be assured that you donothave my vote!” He slams the door and strides off through the field toward the Bennett farmhouse.
Savannah is much more civilized. “Thanks for the ride,” she mumbles to her aunt. The sympathetic frown she offers me as she gets out of the car only intensifies my anxiety, but there’s nothing she can do to help me right now. She disappears out of sight, following in Myles’s footsteps.
The car begins to move again. LeAnne drives with both hands together on top of the steering wheel, her body bolt upright and slightly hunched forward. Any normal person, regardless of their opinion on the kid in their car, would surely force themselves to be civil and communicate to avoid an atmosphere as palpable as this one. It’s terrifying that LeAnne remains perfectly quiet, like shewantsme to feel uncomfortable.
The two minutes it takes to reach the Harding Estate feel like the longest two minutes of my entire life. By the time LeAnne pulls up outside the now-familiar gates, I have never been more relieved to see them. I grab my shoulder bag from the floor and root around inside it for the gate remote.
“I knew this ranch before it required any of these security measures.”
My hands freeze and I look up. “What?”
LeAnne exhales a long, heavy breath. She slumps back against her seat, staring straight ahead into the darkness, unblinking. “Would I be right to assume that Blake hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Oh, he’s a nice boy – Blake. Of course, he knows it’s not his place to tell you,” she says quietly. She rests her hands on the bottom of the steering wheel now. “But it’s definitely my place.”
“What are you. . .” The words stick in my throat, rasping it dry like sandpaper. “What are you talking about?”
LeAnne’s dark eyes, big and brown just like Blake’s, move to me. She doesn’t turn her head, just stares at me with a look that sends a chill down my spine. “I knew your father when I was young. In fact, I knew himreallywell. I knew Everett Harding before the world did.”
“Well, sure. You must have attended Fairview High too,” I say in a weak voice, as I try to make sense of this exchange. Where is this going? What is she about to tell me? The coldness in her eyes tells me I do not want to know.
LeAnne tuts at my naive innocence. “Mila. . . Sweetie. Your father and I. . .” she says, turning her head to look at me through narrowed eyes. Then she takes a deep gulp of air and looks away. “We were engaged.”
I stare at LeAnne with an expression so blank it’s as though her words have gone straight over my head. They don’t hit me in the way they should, they don’t sink in. I don’t understand. My Dad? Engaged? To Blake’smom?
“That’s a surprise to you, isn’t it?” LeAnne continues over my silence. She presses her lips together into forced pity. “It’s no surprise to me, though, that your parents wouldn’t tell you about their own infidelity.”
The heat across my face turns to ice and I feel deathly sick all of a sudden. All the oxygen seems to have been vacuumed out of the car – my breaths grow labored. “What are. . .What are you saying?” I whisper, shaking my head in disbelief. Why is she telling me these nasty lies? What did I do to make her treat me like this?
“Oh, this is such a shame that I have to be the one to tell you,” she sighs, but the undertow of glee in her voice implies that this is anythingbuta shame for her to be the one to tell me. With a gentle cough to clear her throat, she sits up and clasps her hands together in front of her the same way I imagine she does when delivering a speech. “Everett and I were high school sweethearts,” she begins. “We started dating in our sophomore year and got engaged the summer after graduation. We were so young; I should have known it was a silly, silly idea. And then we went off to college. Your father went to Belmont to study theater arts; I ventured further, to Yale to study political science. The creative arts are such a flimsy option. . . No stability in those careers. I had my head screwed on too tight for your father, and it pushed us apart when he met someone at Belmont who showed enthusiasm for hisactingin a way that I didn’t.”
“My mom,” I whisper.
I’ve always known exactly how my parents met. They met in college, at Belmont University here in Nashville. Mom had moved from South Carolina to study in a city that she believed was expressive and full of life, and it was at school that she met Dad. She loved that he wanted to pursue acting, and he loved that she supported his dream despite how out of reach it may have seemed. They got married after they graduated and settled in Fairview together in the house where I lived the first six years of my life in. That’s their story.That’show they met.
Except right now LeAnne is retelling the story in an entirely different light.
“Yes, your mom,” she says bitterly. “You’d think, having met someone else, that Everett would have the courtesy to call off the engagement. Your parents snuck around behind my back for two months, all because I was at school a few hours away and your dad claims that he wanted to wait until he next saw me –face to face– before calling it quits. I’d have rather heard the truth over a phone call – hell, a text would’ve been fine – on day one than be told the truth to my face months down the line. But no, Everett chose to cheat.”
“You’re lying,” I gasp through clenched teeth. “None of this is true!”
I mean, it can’t be. . . The Mayor of Nashville is telling me that my dad cheated on her – with my mom? My dad was supposed to bemarriedto LeAnne? This is all a bizarre fantasy. There’s no way it can be true. My parents have told me how they met, and their version of events did not involve an engagement to someone else. There’s a dirty taste of grit in my mouth at the thought.
“Mila, what possible reason could I have to lie about something like this?” LeAnne says in a voice seemingly full of pity, cocking her head to one side to observe me. She can tell that I don’t believe a word she says. “We called off the engagement and I took a few years to find myself while your parents got married instead. I met someone else, I became a mother, and I threw myself into my work with the council. But then your father made his Hollywood debut.”
As I look at her, the only thing flashing through my mind is my parents’ reactions when I mentioned her name over video call earlier this week. Mom became wide-eyed and quiet; Dad filled with a rage so intense he slammed his laptop screen shut. . . Thereisobviously something there between my parents and LeAnne Avery, but it can’t be. . .
It can’t bethis.
