Saina remembered, suddenly, the day Ama told her that her mother was dead. A cold, sunny February afternoon. Slamming the door of her friend Hilly’s mom’s car, looking up and seeing Ama in the driveway, and knowing that something was over.
“So what happens now?”
“It may be that nothing will change. We essentially have to wait and see. If, after all of your father’s assets are sold, nothing remains owing, you’ll be able to hold on to everything in your accounts.”
She’d stood there, close enough to Hilly’s mom’s car that she couldn’t drive off, and thought about getting back in. They had invited her out for dinner. They were going to get Hunan Palace, and she could pretend that she changed her mind and was in the mood for gloppy kung pao chicken after all, but in the end, she’d stepped away, Hilly’s mom had zoomed off, and Ama had reached out and picked her up, even though she was taller and no matter how hard Ama squeezed and lifted, Saina’s Keds still swept the driveway.
“So I can’t draw from it now?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Two minutes ago she was sitting on a bench with her boyfriend and his best friend, and nothing in the world was wrong. Nothing in her world, at least. She looked over at them. Leo was listening to Graham, who was doing an imitation of Sloppy-Joe Man, one of his favorite daily customers who ran a goat farm and never ate a vegetable.
“Saina?”
“Yes? Sorry, it’s just a lot to take in.”
“I know. It, well, it gets a little worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your investment account is tied up with your trust, so all of those assets are frozen as well. But look, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that everything that you brought in is treated separately.”
By the time she finished the conversation, Leo and Graham were looking up at her, quiet. She put the phone back in her pocket as Leo stood and gripped her arms.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Sometimes Saina wished that she had more friends with trust funds. It would just make things easier. Life wouldn’t be as hard to explain. She could complain about losing millions of dollars she’d never earned in the first place without feeling like she didn’t deserve to be upset about it.
“Nothing, it’s okay, let’s go.”
He held on to her. “Hey. Tell me.”
“You’re going to think it’s crazy.”
“I’m okay with crazy.”
“It wasn’t Grayson or anything.”
“I know that. I’m not worried about that.”
And she saw that he wasn’t. She was wrong. He had more faith in her sureness than she did. He was just worried because she was worried. It was a novel thing. A nice thing. A good thing.
“It was my accountant.” She glanced over at Graham.
“Is this a private couple talk?”
“No. It’s just, stuff . . . that I don’t know if I want to be unprivate about.” She had seen people change around her when they found out the selling price of her work or the contents of her bank account. She had seen Grayson change, and in her starry-eyed lust she had just decided that it was him, falling more in love with her. It felt like that sometimes—people would get brighter, louder, quicker to laugh, and more eager—as if the very existence of those dollars were an electric conduit.
Saina shrugged. What did it matter? The money was all gone anyway. She was sure of it. She should be devastated, but instead she just felt numb.
She looked at Leo. “You know how my dad’s going through the bankruptcy?” He nodded. She turned to Graham. “Did Leo tell you?”
Graham swatted the air in front of him. “No way. You think this guy would ever tell me about anything that you might want to keep to yourself? Unh-unh. He’s like a vault.”
“Well, basically, it turns out that my accounts are still completely tied up with my dad’s company, so everything’s frozen right now. And I might lose it all.” Saying it out loud made her heart bottom out a bit.
“So, give us a little context here,” said Graham. “Just how shitty is this? If my accounts were frozen, it would probably be a good thing because then they’d have to stop charging me for dropping under two thousand dollars.”
“It’s a little more than that.”
They waited.
“More like a few million.”
Graham fell off the seat. Leo let go of her arms.
“You ate here when you were a millionaire and you never demanded my best bottle? Not once? What’s the point of rich friends if they don’t buy out your wine list?”
Underneath Graham’s antic tirade, Leo said, “You never told me that.”
“I sort of told you.”
Leo shook his head.
“I told you about my dad, and how the business went under, and how he was losing the house.”
“But you didn’t tell me about you.”
“I guess I just thought that you assumed.”
“That you had a trust fund?”
“Well, yeah.”
“What did you mean by accounts, plural?”
“I had a career, Leo. Have. I have a career. I did well.”