Writing Our Song:A Billionaire Romance

Chapter 5


I didn’t do too well in my exams at the end of the year but the school, or whoever can pull these kinds of strings, took pity on me and bumped up my grades where needed based on my achievements from… before. Over the summer I applied for a job in the exciting field of fast food. In the beginning I’d be cleaning up the lobby area where customers ate but if I worked hard and played my cards right I was promised I could one day also flip burgers and work on the tills at the front counter.

It was mindless work, but it did keep me out of the house. After that night in my room I avoided my mom as much as possible, it was safer that way.

When the weather, my shifts at work and daylight hours permitted it, I would go to the cemetery to visit my dad. Even after such a short time, the fresh dirt over his grave was already growing grass and would be indistinguishable from the area around it soon.

Usually I sat just to the side of his grave marker, if the ground was dry enough, and leaned my forehead against it. The stone was so cold, whereas the person had been so warm, but it was the closest I could get.

I almost always spoke to him, and I almost always began with an apology rather than a greeting. There was never any forgiveness, but that didn’t stop me. It was also the only place I consciously let myself lose control of my emotions, rather than when they steamrolled over the walls I was building inside myself.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m trying to do better. I’m not living in a dream world anymore, I’ve quit the band.”

Tears squeezed out of my eyes and dripped off the tip of my nose.

“Hey, speaking of which, I saw Blair, Drew and Darrin today in the restaurant. I don’t think they saw me, probably because I hid when I spotted them. Anyway, looks like they’ve got a new singer, Helena Tyson from Blair’s year. Can you believe that? I… I hope they do well.”

I talked for the best part of an hour and when I looked up I saw the cemetery was entirely deserted except for me. That was hardly unusual though, I rarely saw anybody else there except for the times when somebody was actually getting buried. How quickly people seemed to forget. It was almost like letting their loved ones die twice.

“I won’t forget you, Dad. I love you. I miss you.”

I kissed the tombstone and stood up, hoping I could get home and into my room without running into my mom.

*****

When school started again I was still nervous about being in that crowded environment, facing questions and expectations, but it seemed I’d managed to push everybody away by the way I acted at the end of the previous year and my summer-of-silence. I sat by myself at lunch, I kept to myself in class. I just didn’t care.

It wasn’t long into the year before I heard that Blair was dating Helena Tyson. We had never ‘officially’ split up, but I guessed by this point I’d essentially dropped off all contact for longer than we had been together in the first place.

I tried to think back to how I had felt that night of our big show, when he had first asked me out on a date but I couldn’t do it. I knew the word ‘happy’ but it might as well have been gibberish for all the meaning it held.

That didn’t help when I passed them in the hallways between classes, or when they performed in front of the school assembly. I saw myself for what I was. Easily replaced.

I had regular meetings with the school counsellor and I was doing my best to put on a brave face during them. What I really wanted was for him to just give me the ‘all-clear’ and be done with it. It felt like as long as I was still required to see him, there was still something ‘wrong’ with me and I couldn’t move on.

“Come on in, Beatrice,” he said from just inside his office.

I stood from where I had been sitting in his little waiting room, or holding cell if that was a better term, and walked inside. As usual I went to the seat in the corner, next to the box of tissues. Not that that was the defining quality of the spot, pretty much everywhere I could have chosen to sit had easy access to tissues.

“So how are you?” he asked.

“Fine. I’m absolutely fine,” I said, and even offered what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

“That’s good to hear. Your teachers tell me that your quality of work is definitely improving. Are you finding it easier to concentrate in class now?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, good. And how are things at home?”

“Normal, I guess.”

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged, “Just… I don’t know. One day at a time, chores get done, food gets eaten, rinse and repeat. Normal.”

“You’re looking a lot better, speaking of food getting eaten. I did think you were starting to look like you were missing some meals.”

“I got a job at Eddie’s Diner over the summer, I guess the staff discount is fattening me up a bit.”

“You’re not fat, Beatrice, just make sure you eat healthy, keep your energy up. Drink lots of water too.”

Eat food, drink water, great advice. I looked to the side for a moment at one of the many clocks he had in the room, unable to maintain eye contact through a sudden flare of anger. As always, I was amazed at how many time-pieces he had in the room.

What was the point of all that? With all his fancy psychology qualifications I felt like I always had to be on my guard with him. Like everything he said was an elaborate trap, a way to verbally paint me into a corner and make me confront something I didn’t want to confront.

Were the clocks part of some mind-game he was playing? Next to the box of tissues was a digital clock with built in thermometer and barometer, on the wall was a regular clock with roman numerals for numbers, on the book shelf was another digital clock, on his wrist was a watch, on the table next to him was his phone, which also had a clock displayed whenever he wasn’t using it, the computer screen on the desk in the corner had its own clock.

I could even see a clock tower out of his window. How unpunctual would a man have to be to require so many reminders of what time it was? There must have been something to it, but I couldn’t figure it out.

“What was that?” he asked.

“What was what?”

“You zoned out for a minute there.”

“Sorry, just a bit tired I guess.”

“How are you sleeping lately?”

I wanted to bite my tongue off, I knew as soon as the words were out of my mouth that I had opened a can of worms. At a previous meeting I had admitted that I was having nightmares and then had to talk for almost the whole hour about them.

“Sleeping OK,” I lied.

“And the nightmares?”

“Nope,” I said.

Eli put his pen and pad down on the table next to his phone and interlaced his fingers over his stomach. After an awkward pause he spoke again.

“So, same nightmare then?”

I cast my eyes down, feeling like there was no point in denying it. Elias Rothenberg with his uncanny psychology voodoo would see through it.


Truth be told, I was having multiple nightmares. Most of them were about my dad, and those didn’t take any kind of expert to decipher. One was different though.

In that one I was going to Blair’s house for band practice, back when I did such things, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. When I arrived I saw Blair and Drew there waiting for me, having already done whatever warm-up exercises they utilized for their guitar and bass, but the stool behind Darrin’s drum kit was empty.

“You’re late,” Blair would say, “you ready to start?”

“What about Darrin?” I would respond.

“What are you talking about? You know Darrin’s dead, stop being such a stupid bitch.”

I’d turn to Drew, with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

“Drew, what about Darrin, he’s your friend!”

“Who?” he’d say.

Then we’d just practice a few songs, the others not seeming to care about Darrin in the slightest, forging ahead with their practice like nothing was wrong. I sang terribly, forgot all the words and just couldn’t do anything properly. Then I would wake up and hope it was morning so I wouldn’t have to try to go back to sleep.

“You know,” Eli said, “there is a school of thought that, when we have dreams about people, each person in the dream represents an aspect of ourselves. What do you think that might mean for you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try.”

“Um. Like, something has died?”

“What?”

“A… a part of… me.”

“What part might that be?”

I thought about that for a moment. About the way my mom treated me now, how cold she was. About how I’d lost my friends, my place in the band, my place in the world, my boyfriend. Then it hit me. If a part of me had died I had a suspicion as to what it was.

“The… the… lovable part.”

I covered my face with my hands as the tears poured from my eyes. Damn him, he’d got me again.

*****

My birthday came and went without anybody noticing. Even I missed it until the day after when I was sitting at my desk doing homework and spotted the date on my phone.

“Yay. Sweet sixteen plus one day,” I said without enthusiasm.

The same went for Christmas. Just another day at our house. Last year had been different. I’d leapt out of bed at seven o’clock in the morning as excited as if I was still five years old, we’d had a tree, presents, laughter and everything good. This year I didn’t get out of bed until around noon.

The school year flew by for months with no particular break from the tedium. I didn’t know if I was getting better or just getting better at my act, but my sessions with Eli never seemed to end in tears anymore.

Around April my mom got herself a job as a secretary in the city, which was fine by me. It meant that I could, on evenings that I wasn’t working, have a few hours after school in the house by myself where I could make some food, and have some complete peace and quiet. I made sure to be in my room by the time she came back though.

One afternoon in early June I had the evening off so came straight home from school. I walked in the front door and past the entrance to the living room and then did a double-take.

Taking two steps backwards I looked in and saw a big bunch of red roses in a vase on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. I took a few tentative steps into the room, looking around in case my mom had come home early.

I saw no sign of her, I guessed she must have put the flowers up there the previous night or early this morning before she went to work and I had just not seen them when I went to school. The roses were not only red but so rich in color they seemed to almost shine with their own light. I reached up and flipped open the little card attached to the side.

‘To Kate, You get more beautiful every day, Eugene’

What the hell was this? Flowers from some guy for my mom? My dad hadn’t even been dead for a year and she was accepting flowers? How could she have forgotten so soon? Anger, hot and bright, flared up inside me and I almost took the vase outside to heave it as far away from our house as I could but I managed to stop myself.

It’s OK, Beatrice, they’re just flowers. She didn’t want to be rude, that’s all. They’re probably from somebody at work and she didn’t want to make a scene. That’s it, it’s OK.

But it wasn’t OK. That bunch was replaced with another, and another. Sometimes there was a bunch on the kitchen table too, if the ones on the mantelpiece hadn’t wilted yet.

Red. All of them red, just like the first bunch. They would have been beautiful if it wasn’t for what they represented. As it was, I hated them. They truly made me sick to my stomach.

My mom started changing too. On the odd occasions where I saw her at home, she was putting a lot more effort into her make-up, and buying new clothes. Worst of all was when she started wearing a new necklace in place of the one my dad had bought her for one of their anniversaries.

I felt invisible at home but after a brief debate I decided it was better than bearing the brunt of my mom’s hatred, though only marginally. She started staying out in the evenings, I would sometimes go for days without knowing if she had even come home at all.

*****

Ferrari. That’s what it said on the side of the car I was looking at. I looked left and right up and down the street and compared it to the other vehicles I could see. It really stuck out like a sore thumb.

I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen a car like this before outside of television or the internet. I certainly had never seen one of them in torrential rain like I was currently standing in. Cars like this are always shown in bright sunshine like God himself wouldn’t dare get it wet and ruin the red paintjob.

So what was it doing parked outside my house? I looked to the right again and considered the station-wagon that belonged to the Jones family next door. Baby seat in the middle of the back, and the rear area littered with various toys that kept their shaggy dog busy on any car rides they went on.

Years ago I had sometimes gotten rides to school with them, back when they had two kids instead of the three they had now. Tommy, their oldest boy, was only a few years younger than me, so we used to go to the same elementary school.

One time Tommy had sprained his ankle in the school playground just after school had finished and I had helped him get home. From then on, our respective families had been reasonably close, but had kind of drifted apart after I went to middle-school.

Being next door neighbors we had, of course, kept in touch. Sometimes our two families would have each other over for dinner, real neighborly and all. Even though I hadn’t been in their car since Tommy and I stopped going to the same school, I knew without a shred of doubt that it would still smell like wet dog in there.

To my left was a beat up old gray van that said ‘Shannon Contractors’ on the side, it belonged to our other neighbor, Toby Shannon. I didn’t know him as well as the Jones family, but I’d lived next door to him long enough to know that he was a builder with what seemed like an entire workshop inside that van.

One time he had helped my dad fix the lawnmower and I remember my dad had been amazed that Toby just so happened to have the exact right part for the exact model of lawnmower we owned. He was usually up early and back late, so it was unusual for him to be home at this time of day. The fact that his van was parked out on the street rather than in his garage probably indicated that he was going to be heading out again, I supposed.


If I had to choose one word to describe the Jones-mobile, it would be ‘family’. If I had to choose one for the Shannon-van, it would be ‘work’. I’d never met a person that drove something like this Ferrari but I had a feeling I was about to. The fact that it had two seats didn’t really scream ‘family’, so I could probably rule that one out straight away.

Keep calm, Beatrice, I thought to myself. I knew something like this would happen one day, hadn’t Eli spent an entire session trying to coach me through this very scenario? I just hadn’t expected it this quickly.

I turned and walked towards the house, absolutely dreading what I would find in there. Despite Eli’s advice, I didn’t feel ready for this, not in the slightest. When he had spoken to me about my mom moving on, I had been able to reluctantly envision some time in the future when I wasn’t living at home anymore, where I wouldn’t have to actually see them together.

Not now though. Not just one short year after my dad’s death. I could still feel him in the house. Given how far my relationship with my mother had deteriorated, that feeling was the only thing that still made this house a home.

I could still remember how the two of them looked at each other when they weren’t thinking about money or any of the million other things that irritates the average person. Couldn’t she?

Standing under shelter near the front door, I shook off my umbrella and folded it down before stepping inside. Immediately I could hear voices coming from the living room, my mom and a man.

Ordinarily my mom wasn’t home when I arrived after school, but if she had been then I would have just quietly walked up to my room trying to not be noticed. Not this time though. Something forced me to walk into the living room, to see the horrible truth for myself.

And there he was, standing in the living room like he owned the place, laughing with my mom like he belonged there. On the coffee table was an open bottle of wine, maybe champagne, and they were each holding a glass as if there was something in the world worth celebrating.

The smile dropped from my mom’s mouth when she saw me and she glanced to the man, Eugene I supposed, as if to gauge his reaction. When he spotted me I saw a flash of disdain cross his face before he replaced it with a resigned smile.

“Beatrice, I thought you were working today,” said my mom.

“Wednesday. I don’t work Wednesdays,” I said.

“Oh, right. Well… um… this is Eugene. Eugene owns Mercercorp. Eugene, this is Beatrice. My daughter.”

I almost cringed at the way she said ‘my daughter’, as if the admission of my existence was as pleasant for her as confessing to some heinous crime.

“Ah, Beatrice,” Eugene said, “Kate mentioned she had a daughter. Nice to meet you.”

“Hi.”

“Never had time to have any rug-rats of my own, always so much work to be done.”

“Eugene’s just negotiated a big deal for Mercercorp so he’s taking me out to celebrate,” said my mom.

“Oh.”

“Don’t be rude, Beatrice. Eugene is a very important man.”

I scowled. “Good job, Eugene.”

“Call me old fashioned but I believe that children should show their elders respect. You can call me Mr. Mercer.”

My anger, barely held in check since I saw that first bunch of roses, threatened to explode and send little pieces of me all over the room. I felt my hands bunched up into fists at my sides and heat radiating from my face and at the same time realized my eyes were watering.

I couldn’t let them see me cry, I’d never show them how much they’d gotten to me. I stormed out of the living room, up the stairs and closed my bedroom door behind me before the first sob escaped my lips. I sank down to the ground with my back to the door.

Furiously, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands, not letting the tears fall. Several times I felt another whimper or sob welling up from deep in my chest, but I clamped my teeth together and forced it back down again.

I clenched so hard I thought my teeth were going to crack. My lips pulled back in a fanatical grimace of effort and every muscle bunched up until each wave of grief and anger became smaller and less frequent and I was back under control again. Downstairs the front door opened and closed.

I hated him, everything about him. His expensive car, his expensive suit, his condescending attitude, how he thought he could replace my dad. How could my mom go from dad to him?

Thinking back to all the times my parents had argued about money I wondered if my mom had basically been bought. Not in the sense of being paid directly… just won over by the promise of all the money that Eugene had, and the lifestyle that came with it. Damned if I’d ever call him Mr. Mercer.

Compared to the support, the love, my dad had been full of, money seemed like a shallow consolation prize. Right there on the floor of my room, I made a promise to myself. I would have cut the palm of my hand and sealed it in blood if I had a knife.

I’ll never let a rich man buy me like that.