Betrayal (Infidelity Book 1) - Aleatha Romig Page 0,3
once did she use the tone I’d come to expect and admonish the disarray. Instead, she gracefully sat on the edge of my bed and asked if she could help.
Though years of secrets and regrets momentarily swirled about us, as I listened to her sincerity they disappeared. For one evening we were more than mother and daughter. We were friends. Time passed as we packed, laughed, and cried. She told me that she was proud that I was going to Stanford. It wasn’t only that I’d been accepted—which was an accomplishment—but she was also proud that I was moving away. She confessed that her parents didn’t want her to move away. After all, she was the last Montague. Even though she wasn’t a male, continuing the bloodline was her responsibility. The way my grandparents saw it, her only purpose in higher education was to find a man worthy of fulfilling that role of husband. Of course that meant a man who understood the heritage.
That night, in my room, she did what she always did and spoke favorably of my father. She said he was a good man, a revered businessman, and a man of whom my grandfather approved. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I realized she never mentioned the word love. Not in relation to her affection for my father or for Alton. The only time she mentioned love was to remind me that my father, Russell Collins, loved me.
For the first time I could recall, she admitted to wanting a different life. She confessed that when she was my age she wanted to leave Georgia and find a life away from Montague Manor. Holding tightly to my hands, with tears in her blue eyes, she told me to do what she couldn’t. She told me to go and discover life beyond Savannah.
My entire life, I’d been told that even though the Montague assets were now handled under the name of my stepfather, Alton Fitzgerald, and my name was Collins, one day I would be expected to take my rightful place. It was what my grandmother, grandfather, and mother had told me since I was old enough to remember—I was the heir to a prestigious name. Since my father was killed in a car crash while out of town when I was only three, I couldn’t remember him ever telling me about my future.
On a late August afternoon, when I stepped off the airplane in San Francisco, I chose to do what my mother never could: discover life—not Alexandria’s, but Alex’s. The blue sky was my encouragement. For the first time in my life, it seemed as though the clouds that loomed around Montague Manor couldn’t reach me. On the West Coast I could breathe.
As if being reborn at nearly nineteen years old, I put Alexandria behind me and became Alex Collins. Since my tuition was paid by my trust fund, neither the name Montague nor Fitzgerald was associated with the new me. I suppose if someone dug into the fine print my past could be found, but no one needed to do that. My grandparents’ law firm handled all my monetary needs. Even now, ascending the heights of the Del Mar Club and Spa in the glass elevator, it was only the law firm of Hamilton and Porter who knew my whereabouts. They’d been the ones to wire me the money for our excursion, not my mother or her husband.
For four years I was able to live a life free of anyone’s expectations but my own. I created the perfect persona with real personal edges. I put away the ghosts from the past and discovered what life had to offer. Though Alex was different than Alexandria, I sometimes wondered if either one was really me.
Who am I?
Maybe for one week, I could live without the pressures of my old or new life. Maybe I could experience life as others did—as Chelsea did—completely untethered from the monsters of my past or the aspirations of my future. Alexandria Charles Montague Collins had a perfect façade to maintain. Alex Collins had a future and a career to build. For one week, Charli—no last name—wanted to see what life could be like without a past or a future.
“LOOK… NO, DON’T,” Chelsea whispered as she covered her lips with the edge of a fashion magazine. Her sunglass-covered eyes scanned the deck around the large pool.
“How can I look and not look?” I asked playfully between sips of my strawberry-mango slushy.