Page 4 of Back for More
“Yeah, my dad told me. It’s a nice name.” He returned to the edge of the garden bed, picked up a shovel, and began shoveling the soil from the wheelbarrow and carefully depositing it around the clusters of calla lilies. They were thriving now, in early summer, and my heart ached because my mother wasn’t at home to enjoy them.
“So, you’re all moved into the back house?”
“Yeah. Is that what you call it? Because from there,yourhouse is the back house.” He didn’t look over his shoulder at me, but I could tell from his voice that he was smirking.
The Barnes house was a six-bedroom mansion. The groundskeeper’s house was a two-bedroom near the rear entrance to the property. While I liked my own room and my mother’s bathroom and library, I was always more comfortable in smaller homes. The shoeboxes I would later inhabit in New York and LA were just fine with me.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked.
“She lives in Europe now,” he stated very plainly.
“Lucky. Why aren’t you guys there too?”
“She ran off with someone.”
I blinked, confused. “Wait. What? Oh, your parents are divorced?”
“Not technically. They’re separated. My dad doesn’t know exactly where she is, so he can’t file papers.”
“How do you know all that?”
He squinted at me. “What do you mean? My mom told me she was leaving. And my dad told me he doesn’t think she’s coming back.”
“I mean…why would he tell you all that? Why wouldn’t he just lie and say she’s on a cruise and the ship got taken over by pirates or something?”
“Because he knows I can handle the truth and I’m not an idiot, I guess.”
I bristled at that. Was he implying that I was an idiot who couldn’t handle the truth? And if so, how could he tell this when I had spent so many years of my life trying to hide it? “Pirates take over cruise ships all the time.”
“First of all, they do not attack cruise ships all the time. Secondly, my mom would never take a cruise. And third, if she did, she’s smart enough to avoid pirate-infested waters.”
“Well, if she’s so great, then why’d she leave you?”
“She’ll be back. Where’syourmom?”
“She’s at a spa. She was getting really skinny and pale and tired, so she’s at a spa for a while. To rest.”
“Oh.” He looked at me like he was about to say that he was sorry but held back.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Hope she gets better.”
“Of course she will.” Did he know something I didn’t know? That she wasn’t really at a spa? Did he feel sorry for me? None of this was acceptable, and all of it was unbearable. “What’s that even supposed to mean? Rich women go to spas all the time. You wouldn’t know because you’re justthe help.”
I hated myself for saying that, but I hated so much more how he was making me feel. I hated that he thought he knew more than I did. I hated that I knew he was right. I really hated that he was completely immune to my venomous remarks. I stormed off, felt him watch me go, and didn’t stop thinking about him for the rest of the day.
* * *
At a certain point, being around him would become the worst kind of torture a sheltered, rich white girl could imagine.
A year after we’d met, after my mother had passed away, there were only two things I knew for sure: I would leave our small Southern Oregon town because it was no longer my home, and Wes Carver would never leave with me.
It made me want to grow up even faster, because once I turned eighteen and graduated high school, I would take the portion of inheritance from my mom that I had access to and never look back. I would take all the words I had never said to my father or Wes with me. I would prove to myself and my father that I could make it on my own, without him or his money. I would prove to myself and Wes that I wasn’t in love with him, whether he cared or not.
