I was 10 minutes late to my own housewarming party. When I finally walked in, Wren Halley, the 22 year-old college student my boyfriend had been “helping through a difficult time,” was standing in my living room greeting my relatives as though the penthouse belonged to her.
Chapter 1
I was 10 minutes late to my own housewarming party. When I finally walked in, Wren Halley, the 22 year-old college student my boyfriend had been “helping through a difficult time,” was standing in my living room greeting my relatives as though the penthouse belonged to her.
My mother sat at the dining table with the particular stillness she reserved for moments when she was furious but had not yet decided whether someone deserved to know it.
My father looked at his watch.
Austin Blanchard came toward me wearing the easy smile I had once found reassuring.
“There you are. What took so long?”
“A meeting ran over.”
“Well, Wren saved you.” He gestured toward her. “She’s been taking care of everybody.”
Wren gave me a shy smile.
“I hope you don’t mind, Lily. Austin said you’d want the family to feel welcome.”
My family.
In my home.
And somehow she was welcoming them.
Then Wren lifted a hand to brush her hair behind her ear, and the sleeve of her cream sweater slid down.
My grandmother’s emerald bangle gleamed on her wrist.
Everything else in the room disappeared.
Grandma Evelyn had worn that bracelet for forty years. She had given it to me a month before she died, closing my fingers around the cool green stone and saying, “Some things are valuable because they cost money. Others are valuable because they remember for us.”
I kept it in the velvet-lined drawer of my bedroom vanity.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
Wren looked at the bracelet.
Her smile faltered.
“Oh. This?”
Austin stepped in.
“She saw it upstairs.”
I turned to him.
“You took her into my bedroom?”
“Don’t say it like that.” He gave a little laugh. “She wanted to see the view.”
“From my bedroom.”
“Lily.”
Wren’s eyes began to glisten.
“I’m sorry. I’ve never been in a home like this. I saw the bracelet and Austin said it would look pretty with my dress.”
Austin said it would look pretty.
He had given away the only thing my grandmother left me as casually as if it were costume jewelry from a department store.
I held out my hand.
“Take it off.”
Wren froze.
“Lily,” Austin said quietly.
“The bracelet.”
Wren started tugging at it. After a few seconds, she winced dramatically.
“I think it’s stuck.”
She twisted harder.
Her wrist reddened.
“It hurts.”
Austin immediately moved between us.
“Enough.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“She’s hurting herself. Let her keep it on for the party.”
“No.”
“It’s an old bracelet.”
Behind him, my mother slowly stood.
Austin continued, “I’ll buy you another one.”
“Austin.”
“What?”
“Do you even have enough money to buy one?”
His expression tightened.
My mother reached us before he could answer.
“Sweetheart,” she said gently to Wren, “don’t pull so hard.”
Wren blinked.
“Mrs. Ellison?”
Mother took a small tube of hand cream from her purse and rubbed a little around Wren’s wrist.
“Fold your thumb inward.”
Wren obeyed reluctantly.
With one smooth movement, my mother slipped the bangle over her hand.
It had never been stuck.
Mother wiped the bracelet carefully with her silk handkerchief.
“This belonged to Lily’s grandmother.”
Wren lowered her eyes.
“I really am sorry.”
“I’m sure you are.”
Mother’s tone was pleasant.
She looked at Austin.
“If Miss Halley likes jewelry, perhaps you should take her shopping. Family heirlooms are a poor place to practice generosity with other people’s possessions.”
No one spoke.
Austin’s jaw flexed.
I took the bracelet from my mother and slipped it into my purse.
At noon, my father stood for the toast.
That was the moment Austin had been anticipating for weeks.
He had convinced himself this gathering was more than a housewarming. I knew because I had overheard him rehearsing a speech in my old apartment two nights earlier.
He expected my father to announce our engagement.
Worse, he expected the property paperwork to follow.
Austin had recently begun talking about how “married people shouldn’t think in terms of mine and yours.”
Apparently, that philosophy had developed shortly after I purchased an eighty-fourth-floor penthouse overlooking Belmore Bay.
Dad lifted his glass.
“We’re here to celebrate Lily and a milestone she worked very hard to reach.”
Austin straightened his tie.
“This home,” Dad continued, “was purchased entirely with Lily’s own earnings.”
I watched Austin’s smile.
“As her father, I’m proud of the woman she has become—independent, disciplined and fully capable of building a life on her own.”
Then Dad raised his glass.
“To Lily. Single, self-sufficient, and sole owner of a beautiful home.”
Single.
Austin’s smile froze.
Around the table, several relatives suddenly became deeply interested in their wineglasses.
Wren, who had missed the warning entirely, stood.
“Mr. Ellison?”
Dad looked toward her.
“Austin is so busy with work, so I’ll be happy to come over sometimes and help Lily manage things.”
Silence.
Wren continued bravely.
“I’m very organized.”
Dad turned to my uncle.
“Frank, this Bordeaux is excellent. Take two bottles home.”
Wren remained standing with her glass raised.
Her face slowly reddened.
In her embarrassment, she reached for my mother’s empty wineglass and knocked Mother’s purse from the chair.
The clasp opened.
Lipstick, keys, a handkerchief and several papers spilled across the carpet.
One document slid to Austin’s shoes.
Wren bent to retrieve it.
Then she stopped.
“Austin Blanchard,” she read.
Her eyes widened.
“Is this an application to add you as co-owner of the penthouse?”
Austin looked down.
Then he noticed the black Porsche key fob lying beside the paper.
Relief crossed his face.
Of course.
He thought my parents had planned a surprise.
He turned toward me with a patient smile.
“Lily, come on. Your parents obviously prepared everything.”
I said nothing.
He poured water into my glass.
“Are you still upset because Wren tried on the bracelet? She’s young. She got excited.”
“I’m thirty-one, Austin. She’s twenty-two. That doesn’t make her a toddler.”
“You know what I mean.”
He lowered his voice.
“You need to stop treating her like competition.”
Competition.
I picked up the property form.
Austin smiled.
“It’s just paperwork.”
I folded it in half.
Then tore it.
His smile weakened.
I tore it again and dropped the pieces onto an empty plate.
Wren stared.
Austin chuckled, but there was strain beneath it.
“You’re being dramatic. It’s only a copy. We can print another tomorrow.”
My mother picked up the Porsche key and returned it to her purse.
“Hm,” she said.
Austin glanced at the key, still certain everything would eventually fall into place.
“Let’s get some air.”
He walked toward the balcony without waiting for me.
I followed.
Outside, the autumn wind swept across the terrace.
Austin shut the glass door behind us.
“Lily, we’re going to be married.”
“That hasn’t happened yet.”
“You know what I mean.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Wren is like a little sister to me. I helped her get through college because she had nobody.”
“You pay her tuition.”
“I help with expenses.”
“You bought her a car.”
“She needed transportation.”
“And apparently she needs my jewelry too.”
He sighed.
“You’re proving my point.”
“What point?”
“That you don’t know how to be generous without making people feel small.”
I almost laughed.
He continued calmly, sincerely.
“When we go inside, smile at her. Let this go. You’re going to be the woman of this house. You don’t need to feel threatened by a kid.”
There it was.
Not an apology.
An instruction.
Smile.
Be gracious.
Make his guest comfortable in my home after she had walked through my bedroom and put on my grandmother’s bracelet.
For three years, I had mistaken Austin’s certainty for maturity.
Now I wondered how many times his calmness had simply been entitlement wearing a good suit.
I opened my mouth.
A crash exploded from the living room.
Then someone screamed.
We rushed inside.
The custom-framed family portrait my mother had placed on the display cabinet lay shattered on the floor.
Broken glass crossed my parents’ faces.
Wren stood nearby, hands over her mouth.
“I was only trying to dust the vase.”
Austin rushed past me.
Straight to her.
“Are you hurt?”
He took both her hands, checking for cuts.
Wren shook her head.
“I’m sorry. Is Lily going to be mad?”
Austin glanced at the ruined portrait.
“It’s only a photograph. We’ll print another.”
Only a photograph.
My mother’s face was beneath a triangle of broken glass.
My father’s image had been cut across the eyes.
Something inside me became completely still.
Austin looked at me.
“Don’t start, Lily. It was an accident.”
I bent to pick up the damaged picture.
He reached for me.
“I said I’ll replace it tomorrow.”
My father placed a hand on my shoulder.
“No need.”
Austin frowned.
Dad looked at the broken frame.
“Some things, once broken, are better discarded.”
He wasn’t talking about the photograph.
And for the first time that afternoon, neither was I.
