Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 67675 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 271(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67675 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 271(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
For us.
For the first time, it occurred to me that it wasn’t just my family losing everything. It was me, too. I was living in one of my mother’s houses in Oahu. The screen I was watching her through belonged to the Lavigne estate. It hung in the coastal Italian-style mansion that was hers–and by extension, no longer hers. With a sense of mounting wonder, I wandered to the bay window that looked out on 145 feet of sandy beach frontage. If I went up the grand spiral staircase, into the master suite that I had called my own, and out through the motorized sliding glass doors, I would have a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean stretching out as far as the eye could see. A thirty-million-dollar view that I’d woken up to every morning for the last four years. A view that had never really been mine, and now wasn’t at all.
My heart beat faster as my concern for my parents turned inward. It was still triple timing in my chest when my mother called. I didn’t have to look at my phone to know it was her. The familiar notes of L'elisir D'amore told me.
I swallowed hard and pressed the heel of my hand into my breastbone before I answered, trying to steady my heart and voice. I wanted my voice to sound calm, nonchalant if I could manage it. But when I finally picked up, her ragged breathing on the other end crumbled my composure.
“Don’t cry, Mama,” I said, slipping back into my childhood name for her. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Okay?” Elyna repeated, her heaving sobs bumping the word out several syllables longer than necessary. “Ma fille, nothing is ever going to be okay again.”
Even though I knew she only spoke French when she was being overdramatic, my heart squeezed with fright. Was there more? Were they going to prison? If so, for how long? A year? Two? A decade? Robert wasn’t in the best of health…
As if my stepfather could see the spiral my thoughts had formed, I heard a rustle of the phone being pulled out of my mother’s hand. Her indignant protest, then Robert’s grave but reassuring voice. “Cami, your mother is overwrought. We didn’t expect this. But I don’t want you to worry.”
No surprise there. Robert never wanted me to worry. He’d swooped into my life when I was seven years old and perpetually anxious. My mother was brilliant but erratic, and even as a child, I’d felt pressure to counterbalance her wildly swinging moods. To be very calm when she was manically madcap or feign excitement when she fell into one of her deep, abiding darknesses. Robert had seen all this and taken it on himself, freeing me to be a child. He stood sentry between me and her moods, filtered out her darkness and showered me with light. Despite the narrative that my mother built the company entirely on her own, Robert had actually helped turn Lavigne into what it had become, though now I didn’t know if that was for better or for worse.
All I knew was that when I’d needed him most, he’d been there without question or condemnation, and so had she.
I would do the same for them now.
“I’m sure that you’ll win on appeal,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “In the meantime, don’t worry about me.”
Robert started to speak, then suddenly there was a scuffing sound. He’d put his hand over the receiver, but despite his efforts, I heard my mother.
“Don’t tell her not to worry,” she wailed brokenly. “It’s all gone. Everything. If ever there was a time to worry, it is now.”
The old feeling suddenly welled up in me. I was seven years old, and Robert wasn’t in our life yet. It was up to me to protect my mother, to be her counterweight. She was distraught, so I would be calm. She thought our life was ruined, so I had to be the one who proved it wasn’t.
After I got off the phone with Robert, I stared out at the golden, sandy beach to where it met the blue-green water. White-tipped currents were pulling the tide in. I had to think, to take stock of my life, but my thoughts were as amorphous as the water.
Come on, Cami, I thought brutally, you’re not a child anymore. It’s time to focus.
I squeezed my eyes shut and stared into the darkness until my thoughts cleared. I had no idea what money or property I had left to my name, but I had to assume it wasn’t enough to live on. Not for long anyway. Beyond that, I had a high school diploma from Flintridge Prep and an undergraduate degree from University of California where I’d majored in Nutrition. I’d halfheartedly joined the ranks of young, fame-adjacent social media influencers in college, sharing the tips and tricks I was learning in school. I had been popular, so not all of my money was inherited, but I’d stopped when I started receiving death threats.