Priceless (4 page)

Just
the mention of her made a raw wave of pain rush at me.  I struggled to hold back the flood ready to spill over.

“Now I’ve upset you, my darling, and I am so sorry.”  My dad was straight
-up hard line with most things, but when it came to his kids, and even the memory of my mother, he was very tenderhearted.  He was a wonderful parent to me, and the fault wasn’t anything he did wrong.

Nothing other than the fact he wasn’t a woman.  He wasn’t a mother. 
He wasn’t
my
mother.

My dad
was a brilliant father, but sometimes a girl just needed her mom, and right now really felt like one of those times.

“It’s okay, Dad.  I just miss her and sometimes I need someone to talk to abou—I mean
—I just wish I could ask her for some advice—”  I stopped blabbering, realizing how hurtful my words sounded.  I didn’t mean to make him feel bad, but I’m sure I just had.

“And I’m no substitute, am I?” he asked quietly.

“No—Dad, it’s not you at all.  You’re always there for me, and you always have been.  I love you and you’re all I’ve got.”

“That’
s never true, Gaby.  You have your sister and brother, and your mum is still watching over all of you from heaven as she always will be.”

“I know
—”

“And it’s normal for you to miss her
, darling.  I am very aware I’m just a useless old man but I
am
capable of listening…and I want you to know you can come to me to talk about anything at all.  I might still be totally useless to you, but I do love you and want you to be happy.”

“I know you do, Dad.  And you’re never useless.  Forget what I said before.  I’m the one that’s useless right now.  I think I need to get more sleep.”
  I tried to make light of my situation.

“
Now there’s something I can endorse.  Get more sleep and I’m sure you’ll feel a great deal better in no time.”

Right, Dad.  More sleep
is so going to help me with my “problem.”

Spoken like a true man.  I’d given him an out and he grabbed onto it as quickly as he could.  My poor father was trying to be a rock of support to me, but he just didn’t have the
right equipment, a vagina of course, to do it.

He did everything well, but again, he was
a man, and he was not my mom.

Despite his sweet offer to help me unburden my worries,
if he knew the real reason for my depression right now, then “sweet” would be the last thing my dad was.  He would want Mr. Ivanhoe’s balls and probably his neck, too.  Repeatedly.

There are many things I can
share with my father, but tonight’s escapade was definitely
not
one of them.

And my
tears were just that much closer to spilling over.

I hauled myself into the shower a
fter saying goodbye to him.  As soon as I was under the warm spray, I let the tears loose in a torrent that did little to cleanse the stains that shone on my soul.  I had been weak tonight just as I had been weak before.  Nothing much had changed in me.  I was still the same.

And that dirt just wasn’t coming off.

MY roommate was annoyingly early the following morning when she called.  I woke feeling like the zombie apocalypse had found me in the night.  Becoming a zombie might just be the answer to my prayers, I thought wryly.

“Hello?” I managed
, fumbling to silence the shrill of Brynne’s ringtone drilling into my frontal lobe, having to do it by touch since my eyes weren’t going to function until I got my reading glasses on.

“You won
’t believe what I’m staring at,” she gushed.

“Do you know what time it is
—because I sure do and I’m sure it’s time for me to be sleeping.”

“S
orry, Gab, but I had to. You would be drooling if you could see this…oh…midcentury
Mallerton
looming not a foot from me. I could rub my hands all over it if I wanted to.”

“Better not do that, Bree. 
Tell me,” I demanded, suddenly somewhat interested in the topic that thrust me into wakefulness.

“Well, it’s probably about seven feet by four, and gorgeous as hell.
A family portrait of a blonde woman and her husband, and their two children, a boy and a girl. She’s wearing a pink gown and pearls that look like they belong in the Tower’s crown jewels collection. He looks like he’s in love with his wife. God, it’s beautiful.”

My mind started processing what she described but it didn’t sound familiar to me. 
“Hmmm, I can’t place it offhand. Can you ask if it’s all right to take a picture and send it to me?”

“I will, as soon as I meet someone I can ask.”

“Can you make out his signature?”

“Of course.
It was the first thing I looked for. Bottom right,
T. Mallerton
in those distinctive block letters of his. It is, without a doubt, the real deal.”

“Wow.”  I tried to imagine what she’d just described and wished I could see
.

“Is everything okay with you?
Last night was insane and I never saw you after that alarm went off. I wasn’t feeling well and Ethan was in high-stress mode from some other stuff that happened.”

“Like what
other stuff?”

“Umm, not really sure yet.
Some weird message on my old phone came through when Ethan had it on him. The person sent a crazy text and the song from…ah…that video they made of me.”

“Shit, are you serious?”
  I felt for my friend.  She’d been through hell because her douchebag boyfriend from years ago happened to be the son of the new running mate of the anticipated next United States president.  Her ex had made a disgusting sex tape of them back when they were teenagers, and now Brynne was a potential target, because nobody wanted that video to resurface.  Not the senator candidate, and not Brynne either.  That video had nearly destroyed her at one time.  Her boyfriend, Ethan Blackstone, ran a security company and had her well protected now, but I could only imagine how paranoid he was after the bomb threat last night, and now some creepy anonymous text to Brynne’s phone.

“Yep.
I am afraid so,” she said dismissively.

“No wonder Ethan was stressed, Bree.
Why aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.
I just want to believe nobody is after me and that this is just some kind of blip on the radar that will go away when the election is over. Trust me, Ethan is all over it.”

“Yeah, we
ll, it’s good someone is,” I grumbled.

“Hey,” she asked,
“you didn’t answer my question. Are you okay? Last night was so messed up. I know we exchanged texts and no damage done, but still…”

I didn’t know what to say to her.  And the truth was I wasn’t okay.  I couldn’t very well
tell her I’d gotten busy with a hot guy I’d never met before.  She’d be horrified as she should be, and I just couldn’t make her uncomfortable by sharing.  Brynne was too sensitive and sweet and she just wouldn’t know what to do with information like that.

“Gabrielle?”

“I’m fine, really.  No worries.”

“Where did you go?
I wanted to introduce you to Ethan’s cousin, but that obviously never happened.”  She sounded slightly annoyed with me.

“I got…distracted,
and then—then that alarm went off and I had to get out just like everyone else.  Neil saw me and knew I’d made it out safely.  And once we were outside the building there was nothing to do but stand around, so I grabbed the first cab I could and went home. I just wanted a shower and my bed. It was a weird night.”

“You’re
so right about that.”

“Benny called
, too. He saw it on the news and was worried about us. I talked to him for a long time.  Really, Bree, I am fine,” I stressed, hoping she bought my story.

“Okay
…if you say so.”  She didn’t sound very convinced.

“I do want to meet Ethan’s cousin
with the old paintings someday, though. Maybe you can arrange it,” I said by way of a peace offering.

“Yeah, maybe
.  Listen, I gotta go, Gab.  Someone is here. I’ll talk to you later and I’ll see what I can do about sending a pic of the Mallerton. Love ya.”

“Love ya back
.”

I powered off my phone
after I said goodbye to Brynne.  I needed to.

It was time for some serious introspection
of my life.  I couldn’t afford to allow myself to go off on an emotional bender right now.  I had school and work to occupy my time, and as for family, well, there was plenty to focus on there, too.

My
sister Danielle still lived in Santa Barbara and went to school there despite our dad wanting her to come live in London like I had done.  I wished she would, too.  I worried about her there without us because I suspected she wasn’t telling me everything that was going on.  I had nobody I could really reach out to for accurate information, either.  Our mom, Jillian, had lived in Santa Barbara with her husband, a man I refused to acknowledge as my step-father, until her sudden death three years ago.  A man who wanted to get his claws into my sister and me, just as he had done to our mother.  Garrick Chamberlain was no father of mine, and I didn’t trust him further than I could throw him.  Which was not at all.

But he was
the father of my nineteen-year-old brother, Blake.

If I called him to ask about Dani or Blake, he’d just guilt me into a tailspin for leaving and living in London when I should be home in the US where I belonged with my family.  It wasn’t the true reason he wanted me home, but it didn’t matter to me.  I didn’t allow Garrick to influence me, ever.  Or at least I gave it my very best shot not to let him into my orbit.

My mother and father were
married for only three years.  They met at a Peter Gabriel concert when she’d lived in London with her diplomat parents who’d been assigned to the embassy there.  They’d fallen into a passionate romance, which I suspect was something from which neither of them ever fully recovered.  I was born when she was just nineteen, and I’m sure only because she never told her parents she was pregnant until it was too late for an abortion.

My grandparents may not have been able to stop me from being born, but they made sure my mom and dad never got the c
hance to make a life together.  My grandmother swept my mom and me back to Santa Barbara and out of my dad’s influence until the marriage quietly ended.  She was pregnant with my sister when she left England.  Dani and I probably would never have had a chance to really know our dad if my grandparents hadn’t been killed in a car accident when I was six.  My dad started enforcing his visitation after they were gone, and we began spending our school holidays in London with him.  When we were little, his mother, my Granny Anne, helped him with us when we came to England to stay.  I’ve always imagined how remarkable it was for my dad to have gone above and beyond in being a parent to two tiny girls when it must have been so scary for him trying to do it all alone, and while living on another continent to boot. 

The death of my
mother’s parents was the catalyst that changed our lives and set the path, though.  My mother inherited their money, property, everything. That new-found wealth attracted the interest of a small-time Hollywood producer, Garrick Chamberlain.

I felt a stab of pain right in the gut and tried
not to bring up the wretched past again.  I told myself not to give into weakness, and not to allow the mistakes I’d made rule me. 
You’re stronger than that, Gabrielle.  You make your choices and you control your own future now.

Easier said than done.

I sighed instead and reached for the card propped on my nightstand.  I’d received it three years ago, only a week before she passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.  I ran my fingers over the front image of a beach at sunset on the beautiful handmade paper.  My mom had done sweet things like that out of the blue.  Sent me a card just to tell me she was thinking about me and how much she loved me.