Page 6 of Trust Fund (The Trust Fund Duet 0.50)
That’s my opening to tell her about Daddy’s new wife. She used to scoop every detail out of me like I was a melon, hollowed out and left dry. “Mostly I’ve been sleeping.”
“Are you still in bed?” she asks, laughing a little. “Me too.”
That makes me smile. “You should be relaxing. You’re a free woman. Stay out late. Go to a party. You don’t have a kid at home to take care of.”
“I don’t think I’ve had to take care of you since you were eight.”
That’s probably true. I was the one who brought her breakfast and her medicine in the morning. I signed my own permission slips and called the driver when my art club meeting ended.
“How is he?” she asks, her voice soft and a little sad.
“He’s good. Same old Daddy.”
“And his… family?”
“I’m not sure. His new wife seems okay. She mostly just ignores me which is fine. She has a son, though. He’s… older.”
She must sense something in my words, because her tone changes. “How much older? He isn’t being a bully, is he? Or worse?”
“It’s nothing like that,” I promise her, because if I wouldn’t put it past her to fly out to Logan International by tonight if I didn’t reassure her. She felt terrible about the job website man. “He’s nice, actually. Nicer than I expected.”
A pause. “Don’t get too close, Harper. It’s only temporary.”
I can’t blame her for the warning. She knows all too well how temporary being the wife of Graham St. Claire can be. Theirs had been a whirlwind relationship, the kind that every man and woman envied. By all accounts, even their own, they had been in love.
And then something had happened. To this day I still don’t know what.
Now they hate each other. It scares me when I think about it, how two people can go from love to hate so quickly. It scares me enough that I try not to think about it. About the way Daddy could have given her enough money to be set for life, it would have been pennies to him, but he denied her everything that wasn’t court-ordered out of spite. The child support they negotiated was contingent on a third party auditing her bank account to make sure every cent of it goes to my care. If she eats a Snickers bar purchased from his check, he could sue.
If that’s what happens to people in love I don’t want any part of it.
I find Daddy at the breakfast table, the newspaper propped open like I knew it would be. He’s not content without reading three newspapers every morning, even when we’re on a trip. It comes ferried to us via a speedboat at 5 a.m., along with fresh supplies because God knows what we would do without catch of the day lobster for dinner every night.
“Morning,” he says without looking up.
I dig in the pile for the Art & Style section, like I always do. Other kids may have read Garfield, but I’ve always been a Dolce and Gabbana girl. “Good morning.”
A chocolate chip pancake appears in front of me, the butter melting in a delicious puddle. I’m a continent away from our apartment in LA, but it might as well be a different planet. I don’t have to use my lunch money to tip the bellman so word doesn’t get back that we’re flat broke. Don’t have to work an evening shift at the deli down the block to pay the bills.
“How’s your mother?” The question comes in that neutral voice, so without inflection that it conveys everything. The way they end up screaming at each other on the phone. The very careful way that Daddy agrees to pay for my prep school tuition and the exorbitant rent in the luxury loft—but nothing else. On that point he stands firm.
I once told my friend in middle school, because she didn’t understand how the daughter of a billionaire couldn’t afford to take the school trip to France. I would be pissed, she said, sounding scandalized. Like he’s trying to control you with money, even though he has so much. It doesn’t make me angry, because I understand he has terrible and complicated feelings about money.
Terrible and complicated feelings about money, like my mother.
“Good,” I say, because we decided a long time ago, when I was only ten, that it was me and her against the world. If I tell Daddy what it’s like when she’s between husbands, how it feels to be hungry or cold, he’ll take me away from her.
“And how’s school?”
“I’m working on a sculpture for the spring art festival. My teacher said it’s inspired and strange and sinister. That’s a direct quote.”
Daddy gives me a fond look, mixed with the kind of bemusement he’s always given me. It would be so much easier if I loved the stock market or international law. “Christopher told me about last night.”
Panic squeezes my throat. That bastard.
Maybe it’s not fair to get mad at someone who saved my life, but still. He seemed like he was going to be cool about it. I’m two seconds away from saying, he took a drag of the weed too! Before reason prevails. Never give them eight words when two will suffice.
“He did?”
