Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,20
to scream.
“Charlotte,” he said. “You’ll want to hear this too.”
“Not now, Daddy,” Charlotte said.
But he barreled on, as usual.
“I’ve arranged for you two to have unlimited use of my brother’s house in Southampton for the summer,” he said. “We worked out a good deal. Five bedrooms, on the beach, you can bring all your friends. Now, I know you’re thinking, But how will we get there? The train is such a hassle. Well, girls. Your new Mercedes convertible is parked outside. Who wants to take it for a spin?”
Elisabeth looked up at him. She’d been awake and crying for forty-eight hours. Her eyeballs ached.
“Get out,” she said. “Just go away.”
She was disgusted by him, but by herself as well. It had come to this because she had been so easy to buy off.
When he didn’t move to leave, she said, “Everything you touch gets twisted. You think you can just meddle in other people’s lives whenever you feel like it. Well, I’m done with you.”
The look on his face suggested that they were only negotiating; that he thought this was a game.
“Okay then,” he said. “Char, I guess this is good news for you. You just went from sharing a new car to having it all to yourself. That is, until Elisabeth stops pouting.”
Elisabeth wanted to punch him.
Charlotte was his favorite, and she adored their father. So Elisabeth was shocked when she said, “No, Daddy. You went too far this time. Elisabeth’s right. We’re done.”
He looked stunned. He opened his mouth to speak, but then turned and walked out instead.
After a long pause, Elisabeth met her sister’s eye. The two of them had never been close. They were too different. But in that moment, she felt the kind of sisterly devotion she had always wanted as a kid.
“Thank you,” she said.
“He deserves it,” Charlotte said. “Everything you said is true.”
Charlotte was drinking champagne on rich old guys’ yachts at fifteen. She traveled the world with all kinds of inappropriate men on their father’s dime. He let her do it. Better to have her out of his hair. She seemed to be having fun, but Elisabeth saw then that it had been a performance. Charlotte knew as well as she did what his behavior had done to them.
After their father walked out, neither of them spoke to him for three years. Not until he had a mild heart attack and their mother convinced them he was dying.
To this day, they refused to accept his financial help. Money was power, and their father would have none over them.
Charlotte now lived in a condo on the beach in Turks and Caicos. She taught yoga three days a week at a five-star resort. And she had her Instagram account—she was fond of reminding Elisabeth that she was a verified user, with seventy-five thousand followers.
“There’s no way she lives off that,” Andrew had said, many times. “It’s impossible. Your dad must be sending her money.”
“I know for sure that he isn’t,” Elisabeth said, though she did not elaborate.
For a long time, Charlotte was supported by her fiancé, Matthew, a finance guy who, like their father, made all his money in shady real estate deals. Three years ago, she called off the wedding. She moved to Turks and Caicos, got on Instagram.
“How many bikinis does she have?” Andrew said at the time.
In every picture, Charlotte wore a different bathing suit. She paired the photos with some inspirational nonsense she had written about dreams and destiny and manifesting her truth.
But clearly, Charlotte knew what she was doing. Whenever they spoke to her, she told them about the skin-care companies and high-end sandal brands that sent her free samples, which she promoted in kind. A boutique hotel chain with properties all over the Caribbean sponsored her stays, putting her up in lavish rooms, where she posed half naked in the window, gazing at the ocean through sheer, flowing curtains.
Still, as Andrew often pointed out, it remained unclear how Charlotte paid her bills. Until the day she called Elisabeth in tears and said, “Don’t hate me, but I’ve got to call Daddy. I’m broke. Not just broke, actually. I’m majorly in debt.”
“How much debt?” Elisabeth said.
“Two fifty.”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”
“Getting my business off the ground wasn’t cheap, okay? The camera, the clothes, the flights, the blowouts. But it’s all about to pay off. Soon I’m going to make twice as much as I owe in one lump sum.”