just want you to know that even though I’m supposed to get everything when they die, I’m going to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“Uh, thanks.” It was such a weird statement, a bizarre thought. Their parents were neither old nor infirm. Aside from her mom’s excessive drinking, they were both perfectly fit, and there was absolutely no reason to believe they both wouldn’t live for another thirty years or more. The idea that Persey would be worried about her well-being thirty years from now was laughable. The day after she graduated from high school, she’d be completely on her own.
“I’m sure you think it’s unfair,” he continued, still on script, “that Dad’s been so lenient on me. Especially since I’m not in school right now either.”
The thought had crossed her mind. “It’s not your fault.”
He laughed. “Oh, I know that.”
Man, his ego.
“Dad’s being irrational. But I want you to know that it’s not just with you.”
Persey sat up straighter. Not just with me? Could it be that their father, who had been hero-worshipping his BMOC son since the day he was born, could possibly be at a breaking point with his antics?
“Yeah,” her brother laughed dryly. “I know. Hell freezes over, right? Dad’s cut me off until I go back to school.”
BOOM. The reason he’d called Persey in the first place.
“He says he has a lot tied up in the new business, but I think he just wants to make sure I get that college degree he’s always rambling about.”
It all made sense now. He’d only called because he needed something from her.
“I don’t know what you’ve got lying around in your account,” he continued shamelessly. “But if you could just Venmo me like a couple grand…”
“A couple grand?” Persey blurted out. Was he serious? Her allowance was supposed to be twenty bucks a week, but as “punishment” for mediocre grades and perceived laziness, her dad hadn’t paid her since she started at West Valley. Her spending money, such as it was, came from her mom, who remembered to slip twenty bucks into her sock drawer on Monday mornings while her dad was on his weekly conference call with the London office. Usually. There were some weeks when the money just wouldn’t appear. Some weeks when it was only a ten.
Thankfully, Persey didn’t have anything to spend it on. The housekeeper put her lunch together every day, so other than buying a bottle of water at the school vending machine, she didn’t need to worry about food. She had her brother’s hand-me-down MacBook, which, though a little slow, worked just fine, and her dad begrudgingly paid for her cell phone every month, if for no other reason than that she needed it to call the company car for a ride home. She had no friends, only saw movies when they made it to cable, and spent the bare minimum on clothes and personal items. Her spartan lifestyle had enabled her to save five hundred and twenty-five dollars over the last few years. Money she was, apparently, going to need to live on very soon.
But a couple thousand? She’d never had that much in her life. And it made her wonder about how much of an allowance her brother had been getting all these years.
The look of surprise on her face confused her brother. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I…I don’t have that kind of money. I only get twenty bucks a week.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” His surprise quickly morphed into disappointment.
She didn’t even know why she was apologizing. It just came so naturally. And she hated herself for it.
“Is there anything you could sell?” he pressed. “I’ll pay you back, I swear.”
Persey shook her head slowly. She literally didn’t own a thing of value, and she was pretty sure her brother had already stripped the house of everything else that would turn a decent profit.
His eyes shifted off-screen again, this time in the opposite direction, down and to the left. He stared hard at something or nothing, his mouth chewing around behind closed lips as if he were having a conversation with himself.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. He was immediately energized. “Okay. No worries. I knew it was a long shot.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, secretly hating herself.
He flashed that über-confident smile. If he’d had a moment of self-doubt or indecisiveness during that call, it was gone. “Don’t you worry, little sis. I’m going to take care of it, okay? It’s going to be fine.”