said, just needing her to stop berating me. “I’ll give you some money.”
“I need fifty thousand dollars.”
“Oh, hell no!” Grace’s grandmother came thundering back into the living room.
“God, it’s like a shriveled old elephant,” my mother said, making a face.
“At least she’s dressed.”
“My son can give me money if he wants to,” she told Mrs. Fulton.
“You don’t need fifty thousand dollars so you can spend it all on knock-off Birkin bags,” the old woman said derisively.
“This is real!” My mother clutched her purse.
“Ha!” Mrs. Fulton turned to me. “Don’t give her a penny more than five hundred.”
“That’s nothing! A hotel is much more than that a night!”
“You can go to the Super 8 motel on Staten Island,” Mrs. Fulton said.
“Chris!” my mother yelled.
I took out my phone. “I’m transferring five thousand dollars into your account.”
“That’s not enough!” My mother started sobbing.
“Okay, I’m sending you ten.”
“I’ll be homeless in days!”
“Get a job!” Grace’s grandmother told her.
“You don’t love me,” my mother wailed.
“Fifteen,” I said, caving. “And nothing more.”
“Thank you, sweetie!” my mother said, taking the bottle of gin off the wet bar and sticking it in her purse. “We’ll do lunch sometime. I’ll call you.”
Grace’s grandmother shook her head and wandered back to the other side of the penthouse. I’d placed her as far away as I could from me and Grace.
I lay down on the couch. I didn’t have anything scheduled that day. Normally on a Saturday I would have slept until one p.m. after being out all Friday night. Then I would have repeated the whole thing starting Saturday evening.
But I didn’t want to go out. In fact, I couldn’t go out if I was going to keep my inheritance. Besides, I only wanted Grace. I tried to force myself to do work, planning what I was going to do with my new inheritance. Periodically I would text Grace. She never texted me back though.
Had she regretted what we had done?
I finished my planning in the late afternoon. Grace still hadn’t returned.
“She’s busy with the wedding,” I told myself as I poured myself a drink.
The sky had turned dark when her grandmother left for some event. Grace still wasn’t back.
Should I go find her? Had she left for good? I wandered through the penthouse, drink in hand, to her room, willing her to magically disappear.
“Pathetic,” the parrot squawked whenever I walked past his perch in the living room where the old woman had set him up watching trashy reality TV shows.
I checked my watch then poured myself another drink and texted Grace again. It was late. She should be back soon, right?
41
Grace
The penthouse was dark when I arrived toting several bags of catering leftovers. Once Ivy had announced to the guests that regretfully the wedding had been postponed indefinitely, some people stayed for a quick bite but then most people left for the nearby hotel bar to gossip about what had happened.
“Chris?” I called when I walked in and set the leftovers on the counter. I had chosen to ignore the slew of texts from him, figuring he was drunk and horny. I had been too busy dealing with the wedding fallout and trying to make the now ex-bride happy by organizing an impromptu trash-the-dress photoshoot.
However, on the train ride back home, I read through the messages in depth. They had been numerous and increasingly frantic, culminating in a voicemail from Gran telling me I needed to deal with Chris because she was certain he was having a nervous breakdown due to his “trashy fake-titted mother” and was going to do something crazy like buy a football team.
He wasn’t in the living room where the parrot was asleep in front of the TV. He wasn’t out on the terrace, or his study, or in his bedroom.
“Chris?” I called again, starting to become worried. I had dealt with high-powered finance types like him over the years in the wedding-planning trenches. Every so often the stress would finally get to them and they would implode.
“Chris!” I yelled, running through the penthouse.
Did I need to call the police?
“He’s probably out at a club,” I told myself, trying to calm the rising anxiety that something bad could have happened to him. “Just go ask the doorman where he went.”
I grabbed my bags to take them to my bedroom before the parrot, who had woken up, decided that my camera equipment would make a good chew toy.
What if Chris wasn’t at a club? What if he was somewhere…imploding?