The One In My Heart

Since that hadn’t been in the cards for him, he’d turned his hopes of social prominence to a succession of women. But my mother left him early on, and Zelda was far happier working in her studio than entertaining. I had been his last, best chance. The fringes of high society were where some of the most influential hostesses launched from. And if I should turn out to be a girl with my mother’s “it” factor and his polish and ambition…


But from the moment Zelda brought home a block of dry ice for our Halloween party when I was seven years old, it had been the sciences for me, rather than the social register. Pater watched with constipated incredulity as my projects won science fair after science fair, regional, state, national.

He wasn’t reactionary enough to forbid me a life in goggles and lab coats, but he did draw a line in the sand: I had to have a proper debut when I was eighteen. And he set his sights high—the international Bal des Debutantes held at the Hotel Crillon in Paris.

He considered himself an American aristocrat; I harbored no such delusions. Yet to my shock, I was chosen. He, Zelda, and I flew to Paris. And since fashion was the reason the ball came into being in the first place, we went for a fitting as soon as we landed.

I was given a fashion-forward, slightly goth gown with a black net bodice over a sprawling black silk skirt. Pater whipped out a tiara that had been couriered from England, a loan from Mrs. Asquith, and placed it on my head. The designer’s assistant clicked his camera and an unlikely fashion photograph was born, one that had since taken on a life of its own.

The young girl in the image, caught in profile, bore only a tenuous resemblance to me. An ethereal, almost otherworldly creature, she gazed to her right, beyond the edge of the frame. Her raised hand extended in the same direction, as if to beckon a young man toward her.

Except romance had been the last thing on my mind. Instead I’d been reaching toward Zelda, who had been displaying signs of hypomania. I’d been desperately hoping it wasn’t the case, and Zelda had kept reassuring me it was only the excitement of being in Paris again.

But two days later, at the rehearsal, when the young man who had been designated my official escort for the ball failed to show up, Pater and I had to physically restrain her from jumping into the first taxi and rushing to the airport. Zelda, in the grip of mania, was one hundred percent confident that she would be able to drag the boy to my side in time for the ball, never mind that she didn’t know where he had gone to, or even what he looked like.

In the following days we had to restrain her from many other not-entirely-sane impulses. And when she came down from that awful high, she fell into a most brutal depression.

Six months later, she asked Pater for a divorce.

In the long aftermath of those unhappy days, it became my fantasy, my escape, to imagine how things might have been different had my escort arrived exactly on time.

The truth of the matter was that had he been there, nothing would have been any different. Nothing. But that was what fantasies were for, wasn’t it, to be as thoroughly divorced from reality as necessary? And so a faceless, nameless, and entirely ordinary boy became a magical Prince Charming, one whose mere presence was enough to save us from all future anguish and heartbreak.

I loved my Prince Charming, but only as a literary device, so I could tell myself the one story that lulled me to sleep on the longest, darkest nights. In fact, had I not run into Bennett, it was what I would have done when I eventually returned to Collette’s house: rewind time back to that moment almost fourteen years ago and weave an alternate history where Zelda, Pater, and I were still together, a somewhat dysfunctional family, but a family nevertheless.

Next to my “princess” photo was one of the three of us together at my first national science fair, when I was fifteen. I had won the grand prize and Zelda and I had been captured in a tight embrace, Zelda’s expression rapturous with pride. Pater stood a little to the side, looking bemused and resigned, whether at my victory or our closeness I would never know. Perhaps both.

I removed my hand from the frame of the picture, picked up the laundry basket, and carried on with my chores.


BY SUNDAY NIGHT BENNETT STILL hadn’t called or texted.

I was in bed, the lights turned off—and unable to sleep. I missed how I’d felt when I’d been with him—safe and at ease, always on the verge of smiling.

If only…

Zelda suffered from a mental illness, but I was the one who was messed up: My preferred method for dealing with everything that frightened, saddened, or unsettled me was to never speak of or even acknowledge it.

In other words, I was incapable of emotional intimacy. Even with Zelda, as close as we were, I’d never brought myself to admit my fear. The opposite, in fact. In front of her I kept my despair locked down the tightest.

I would have made an awful girlfriend for Bennett.

But he’d given no indication that he wanted a relationship. Sex, that was what he wanted. We could hook up for delicious sex and nothing else.

I picked up my phone from the nightstand, considered it, and set it down again. I liked him too much. If we saw each other only when he felt horny, I would be crushed.