Writing Our Song:A Billionaire Romance

Chapter 6


My exams at the end of the school year went much better this time around, gaining me mediocre grades that at least didn’t need creative interpretation to get me a pass. I continued working at Eddie’s diner, though after I had another panic attack while working on the front counter one night, they kept me to cooking and cleaning duties. That was fine by me.

After a lonely birthday and Christmas, I almost felt like I was a robot, just going through the motions of somebody who was actually alive. When I did feel something, it was grief, or anger or confusion and I did my best to shove those emotions back down.

It was like my emotions were dangerous, like if I started crying I might not be able to stop, or if I let myself get too angry I might hurt myself or somebody else. Everything was confusing, and I didn’t quite know how to bottle that one up.

Things had never been great between my mom and I, but every day since the accident felt like a new low. That was a lot of days by now.

One morning I woke up with a burning question in my head and I tried to shake it, forget it. It was stupid, I already knew the answer anyway. For days I wrestled with this voice that wouldn’t shut up, until I conceded and went down to the kitchen where my mom was just about ready for work.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat at the kitchen table pushing the flakes around with my spoon, unsure how to even broach the subject. Why not just spit it out? That voice in my head asked.

That was a difficult question, but the imminence of my mother’s departure pushed my mind into overdrive and I soon had my answer. It was because, even after everything, I still had a tiny kernel of hope.

There was still time for her to remember that I was her daughter, not something to be ashamed of. She could remember the time I made her a mother’s day card with macaroni glued on in the shape of a love-heart. And all the rest.

Before Dad’s accident she had been distant, not so cold like now. I knew she had loved Dad and, as much as she had been able, she had loved me too. That’s why I had to ask the question, I needed to know if she could ever be the person I needed her to be. I needed to talk with the only other person still on the planet who had known my dad as well as, or better than, I did.

That’s also what made the question so scary. I had to reveal a chink in my armor, take at least one brick out of the walls I had erected inside myself. I had to risk being crushed again.


“Mom?”

“Hmm?” she popped her phone into her new handbag and raised her eyebrows at me as she set off towards the front door, if I didn’t stop her she wouldn’t even hear my question.

“Mom!”

“What?” She paused.

“Do you…”

My heart began pounding in my ears and I felt the familiar flush of heat across my neck and face, the shortness of breath and hopeless terror that had reduced me to a shaking wreck on more than one occasion. I had to get it out quickly.

“Do you still… love me?”

The room was deathly quiet between each boom of my heartbeat, my shallow breaths barely audible even to myself as I awaited her response. I couldn’t look at her, instead I stared at my breakfast through half-closed eyes. Would she just come over and give me a hug?

I could almost feel it, the warmth, the sense that I could just close my eyes and be held for a few seconds without having to worry about the past, the future, guilt, grief, anything. A few seconds of peace.

“Don’t be late for school,” she said, and walked out.

For a few moments I sat in silence, gripping the edge of the kitchen table until my knuckles turned white. I wasn’t sure if the panic would bubble over until I screamed or not. In the end, it didn’t. All the terror seemed to melt away and I repaired my armor, replaced that one brick in the wall.

Behind the wall I felt like that struggling little spark of pure-Bea was finally extinguished. In my mind it was replaced with a vial of some inky black poison with a little ‘break in case of emergency’ sticker on it. Like a cold-war-era spy with a fake tooth full of cyanide, I had to carry it inside of me and if I knocked it too hard, if I let anybody past the wall, it would break and that would be the end.

“I won’t be,” I whispered to my long gone mom.

*****

Several weeks later I was glad I had asked that question to my mom and received that response. A girl with a kernel of hope wouldn’t have made it through what happened next. I came home from school to an empty house, not that that was anything new, but something was different.

When I was a little kid I’d had a similar feeling one day as I sat on the couch watching a cartoon after school. Something was different and it distracted me during the entire show so afterwards I could never really remember if the princess had been rescued by the prince.

It turned out that the old reclining chair that used to sit in the corner was gone. It had been there my whole life, so constant that it was just part of the background scenery. Apparently a new chair was being delivered and the old one had become something called landfill.

No biggie, it was just a chair, but the feeling of something missing was there again and I wandered the house trying to figure out what it was. Then I spotted it, the shoe rack next to the front door was nearly empty.

Shoes had always been a weakness of my mom’s, she loved buying shoes that only went with one outfit, or any shoes that caught her eye really. She’d really held back while my dad was around but since those roses started turning up on our mantelpiece the shoe population of the house had certainly grown.

Now the shoe rack looked sort of like a ghost town, with just a pair of my boots sitting there beside the shoes I had kicked off without really looking only a few minutes previous. All my mom’s shoes were gone.

With eyebrow raised I looked around the house some more, spotting several more of my mom’s belongings mysteriously missing. Upstairs in my parents’ room the difference was impossible to miss, the room was almost barren.

In their closet, most of my mom’s things were gone, the only items left had been my dad’s. This was where she had shoved all his things. Behind boxes of clothes and various other things I could see his guitar case and sighed when I remembered how I hadn’t listened to his song before quickly closing the door.

Back downstairs in the kitchen I saw a plain white envelope on the table with my name written in black pen across the front. I sat down and steeled myself to open it.

Even considering the events of the past year and a half combined with the clues I’d seen in the last few minutes, I never would have guessed what I read in that letter. That’s why I was so thankful I’d been able to emotionally lock myself down after I’d asked my mom that stupid question.

Thanks to that harsh, but bitterly-true, fact, I didn’t break down as my eyes scanned over the hastily-written page. It wasn’t flowery prose by any far stretch of the imagination but, out of everything, there were a few phrases that required special consideration.

‘Gone’ ‘not coming back’ ‘rent paid until the end of the month’ and ‘don’t try to find me’ were the words I kept on rereading over and over again. Finally I put the paper down and stared out of the window for a while.

I allowed myself to just sit there and hate them for a moment. That was a ‘safe’ emotion, that wouldn’t bring down my walls, that wouldn’t make me vulnerable again. I thought back to something my mom had said a lifetime ago, they can only hurt you if you let them. It was so true.

I hated how superficial she had become, I hated how he thought he could just throw his money around and do whatever he wanted. I bet my mom would have come around eventually if it wasn’t for him.

Rich people had taken away my whole family and everything I loved. It was because of them I was like this. When my dad had said you don’t get to be that rich without crushing the dreams of a lot of people on the way up, I had thought he was just talking about the regular old cutthroat world of business.

Now though, I wondered if he knew what they were really like. The wealthy today were just as ruthless as the wealthy people throughout history, throwing the poor to the lions for their own entertainment.

I screwed the letter up and threw it towards the trash, hitting the wall beside my target and scowling at it as it settled on the floor. This news would require a lot of thinking, but not right now. Tomorrow I would need to make plans for myself.

*****

When I used the computers in the library at school the next day I found that what my mom had done amounted to child abandonment according to Washington state law and I toyed with the idea of reporting her. After looking further into the process it didn’t seem like such a great idea though.

Sure, the vague concept of it provided some small measure of satisfaction but what would it accomplish in the end? A fine that her boyfriend could pay with no problems, and then what? I’d be put into some kind of foster care.

With my eighteenth birthday coming up later on in the year it would just be pointless. No, I would just look after myself. But I would have to be careful how I did it.

After the last bell rang I went to the office and asked if there was any paperwork I would need to take home because I was going to be leaving school. Turned out there was.

At home I searched high and low until I found something my mom had signed and spent a couple of hours trying to replicate her signature. When I thought I had it down I did my best to sign and initial in all the right places and then hoped for the best.

I handed the stack of papers back at the office the next morning and felt my heart jump to my throat when I was called to the counsellor’s office just before lunch. Waiting outside, there was almost no doubt in my mind they had found some discrepancy in the signatures and my plans to go it alone were going up in smoke as surely as I was sitting there in his waiting room.


“Beatrice? Come on in.”

For what I hoped was the last time and feared was not, I sat in my usual seat next to my usual box of tissues, surrounded by the usual clocks.

“So talk,” Eli said.

“About what?”

“You know what. I heard you’re leaving us. What’s all that about?”

“Oh. Yeah. We’re moving,” I said.

“Not too far away, I hope? I’d think it would be quite disruptive changing schools. Even if it’s a bit more inconvenient, I’d recommend a bit of a commute to keep coming here.”

“No, we’re going to New York.”

“New York? Why?”

“My mom’s boyfriend is… uh… relocating his company’s head office there.”

“You never mentioned your mom was seeing somebody else.”

“Sorry. Didn’t know how to bring it up.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Fine, just fine,” I said.

“What’s he like?”

“My mom’s boyfriend?”

Eli nodded.

“He’s… a real peach.”

“It’s natural to feel some, a lot, of resentment under the circumstances, Beatrice, but we knew this would probably happen sooner or later. Not the moving part, that’s a bit unexpected.”

“Yeah, I remember we went over it.”

“Mmmm. I think the three of you, your mom, her boyfriend and yourself, should sit down and have a very quick talk about how you’re feeling about the whole situation. Everybody needs to be clear that he isn’t replacing your dad and he shouldn’t try. You can all hopefully move forward with mutual respect.”

Mutual respect. I thought back to my only interaction with Eugene that had come close to a conversation and just managed to suppress a smirk. Not one single time had I ever called him Mr. Mercer, and I never would even if I had the chance.

“We’ll do that,” I said.

“And Friday is your last day? Why did you leave it so late to tell us?”

“Just completely forgot, really. Mind on other things. You know how it is.”

Eli pulled his sleeve up and looked at his watch, though a glance at any of the other timepieces in the room would have sufficed, and then back to me.

“Well, when you get to your new school, I would recommend seeing another counsellor. Maybe see somebody outside of the school.”

“OK.”

“I don’t want to infringe on your lunchtime, Beatrice, so I’ll let you get going. It was nice to meet you, I wish it had been under happier circumstances. Things will get better though, you understand?”

“Sure. Thanks,” I said and shook his extended hand.

When his office door closed behind me I took a deep breath and felt my cheeks puff out as I released the air. It was like getting through the Spanish inquisition with a surprise pardon.

After that I really phoned it in for the rest of the day. There didn’t seem to be much point in putting any effort in. I told my teachers and most of them didn’t set any homework for me. I ignored those who did. I would have said today was my last day but thought a weekend move was more plausible.

When I went to work that night I asked about increasing my hours to full time, which was a hard sell since they didn’t trust me on the front counter and my usefulness was hence somewhat limited. Thankfully another part-timer had just handed in their notice and my manager let me take over their hours.

It didn’t work out to a regular full time job, but it cracked thirty hours a week and there would probably be opportunities for more here and there. It saved them the hassle of interviewing people and training a new person, which offset my own shortcomings.

My increased hours started in two weeks time, which left me with not very long to sort out one of the most pressing issues. I knew the rent on the house was far beyond what a single person’s part-time fast-food wage could pay, so I had to find somewhere to live.

If I let myself think about it too much I knew it would hurt to leave behind the only home I had ever known but there was no time for thinking about anything but what I needed to survive. The way my mom had extinguished my hope had at least left me with that gift. I felt cold and calculating, which was exactly what I needed to get through this latest crisis.

Over the next few days I used the internet as much as possible at lunchtime, requesting viewings of various apartments starting from the weekend. Sadly, there wasn’t a lot in my price range, so I didn’t have anywhere near as many options as I would have liked.

Even sadder still was when I went to view them and the landlords confirmed how old I was, nobody would let me sign up. My two weeks were almost over, my hours would be increasing at the diner soon and I didn’t have much time left before the rent ran out at the house, when I met with a landlady who seemed to take pity on me.

She wouldn’t let me have the apartment I’d applied for online but said she had something I could have ‘under the table, cash only’ if I wanted. It was truly awful, dirty, dingy, small and in disrepair. I looked around without much enthusiasm but with bucket-loads of resignation.

The landlady told me, with what I thought was highly misplaced cheerfulness, that she had once seen a cockroach here that could carry away an infant, as if that was some kind of selling point for the apartment. On the bright side it was even cheaper than anything I had been able to find online, so I accepted it on the condition that she changed and upgraded the locks on the front door.

I didn’t know exactly what to do with the furniture at the house. I hated to leave anything behind, but I simply didn’t have enough room for it all. I ended up bringing everything that could be put into boxes, the couch (stain still on the underside of the cushion), my bed, the fridge, the TV and the coffee table.

I didn’t know whether my mom had expected me to take everything or nothing and it didn’t really matter to me. Under the circumstances there was no way she’d have a legal leg to stand on if she came after me for theft, and my name was obviously nowhere on the lease so if the landlord was upset about so many things being left behind it was not my problem.

When the movers had taken away everything I asked them to, I did one last sweep of every room to make sure I hadn’t left behind anything I needed. It was rough, everywhere I went I saw the ghosts of happier times, but I forced myself through as quickly as possible before leaving my keys just inside the front door and walking out. It was official, I had a place to live but I didn’t have a home anymore.

My things were being delivered the next day, so I caught a bus and went to visit my dad before going to my new apartment. The cemetery was as abandoned as ever, silent except for the swishing of wind through the trees.

By this time, my dad’s grave was long-covered in grass and indistinguishable from those all around it except the headstone still looked relatively new. I sat down and leaned my head against the smooth surface and sighed, hardly knowing where to start.

“I’m sorry I haven’t visited in a couple of weeks, I had to find somewhere else to live.”

The stone was so hard, I brought my hand up and then rested my forehead on that instead before continuing.

“I… I know you loved her, Dad, so did I. But she’s gone. As gone as you are but in a different way. It’s just me now. I don’t even know how to tell you what she did but I promise you, I promise, I’ll never be like her.”


I told him about leaving school, my job, and my new apartment before I left, catching a bus that took a long time to get to my stop due to the rush hour traffic. When I arrived there I realized I should have stayed in the house for one more night because now I’d be sleeping on the floor.

When it was fully dark and I tried to get myself to sleep, I tried to think about what the future held for me and all I could come up with was a big blank. All I could see was going to work, coming back to this apartment and then doing the same again.

Part of me wanted to curl up and die, like I had brought all this upon myself and deserved it. Another part, an angry one, yelled back No! and chastised me for thinking it. Maybe my mom was right, maybe I was a selfish bitch, but I was still just a kid, dammit, and I did not deserve this.

Although I still couldn’t envision it, I vowed that I would show them all. All alone? Fine. I would fight though this all by myself and try to have as normal a life as I could. I didn’t need anybody, the only one I could rely on was myself.

I would work hard, I would get a better job, and I would get out of this crap-hole apartment somehow. I might even date, but I would never let anybody take away my independence, take any credit for my continued survival. I would to it all myself.

Most of all, I would never let anybody past that wall, never let them near that vial of poison inside me. It was just too dangerous.