Unexpected Arrivals(33)
“Yeah, sure, James.”
I heard the hurt in her voice, even though she didn’t verbalize it. Just before she hung up, I stopped her. “Hey, Cora?”
“Yeah?” I hated the sadness that lingered in that one word.
“I miss you, too.”
“Goodbye, James.”
***
After another long day, I packed up my office and headed to Sideways Shots. I needed the distraction, and home was a lonely place these days. My phone buzzed in my pocket, pulling me away before I sat at the bar. I rolled my eyes and groaned at the sight of my mom’s face appearing on the screen, her name flashing like a warning sign. As I answered the call, I turned around and walked out to the sidewalk to hear her better.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Son, that’s hardly any greeting for your mother. You could pretend to be a little enthusiastic.”
No one was around to see the finger gun I’d put to my temple and motioned pulling the trigger. It was melodramatic and probably insensitive to some group out there, but she grated on my nerves. And this pacified my desire to be disrespectful to her.
“What’s up?” I ignored her need for me to stroke her already inflated ego.
“Your father’s fiftieth birthday party is just a few weeks away, son. You’re planning to come home, right?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“This is a big one, so you should be here. We’re having a whole weekend of activities. I expect you to attend.”
“Mom, you act like I don’t have a business to run and a life of my own that is nowhere near Geneva Key.”
“That may be true, but you have plenty of time to make arrangements. Neil can watch your little shop while you’re gone for a couple days.”
And she wondered why she never heard from me.
“Plus, your father has some business he’d like to discuss with you. So you really should plan a couple days before or after to spend some time with him.”
Amazing. The woman hadn’t so much as even sent me a text on my birthday, yet she expected me to drop what I was doing to come racing home to celebrate with her and my dad. As usual, she didn’t give me time to object or even say no.
“I’ll email you all the details. Have your secretary contact Sheila to make arrangements on your father’s calendar for the other. I don’t get involved in that sort of thing.”
No, she just used my dad’s assistant as her own personal slave. I hoped to God my dad paid Sheila well; she was a saint for having stayed with him so long.
“Kiss, kiss, son. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
“Bye.” She’d already disconnected, so my word fell on a dead screen.
That woman had the ability to send me to the depths of hell just by the sound of her voice. She never cared about anything I was doing the way she did my dad—they were two little selfish peas in a narcissistic pod.
She’d managed to thoroughly ruin my evening. I hated playing her games almost as much as I hated being her puppet. Neither she nor my dad gave a shit about seeing me, considering they hadn’t once come to New York since I’d moved here three years ago—at least, not to visit me. The invitation was for appearances only, and my attendance was expected. Their friends and business associates would have a lot to say about the heir to the Carpenter throne not showing up, even though not one of them gave a damn about me.
This was who I was, what I’d been born into. I could say no, I could refuse to go, but in the long run, it wouldn’t prove anything, and it wouldn’t solve any problems. It would only serve to create more that my parents refused to see. They believed they were top notch. I’d been successful, gone to a good college, played basketball for an elite team, now owned my own financial business in New York—and they took credit for all of it because they’d funded my childhood. It was the same gift every parent gave their offspring, yet somehow, it equated to their success where I was concerned. It didn’t matter that I could count on one hand the number of weeks per year they’d been home while I was in high school, and on the other, the number of days I’d seen them since I’d graduated.
I hoped to God that never was my measure of success in anyone’s life—much less my son’s.
***
“So you’re really going back to Geneva?” Neil was dumbfounded I hadn’t found a way to get out of my dad’s birthday week.
“I don’t have a choice. It’s just a few days. Plus, he wants to talk business. I have no idea what that means, but if there’s even a remote chance that benefits us, then it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
He scoffed. “Right. Like your dad is going to serve you help on a silver platter.”
“Yeah, that was about how it grabbed me. If I have to go, I can hope something positive will come out of it, right?”
“Sure. Just don’t get disappointed, and keep your guard up. He’s cutthroat and won’t hesitate to slit your wrists.”
“Jesus, Neil. Glad to hear you think so highly of my old man.” I chuckled at the visual.
“He and my dad are cut from the same cloth. I don’t have a use for either one.”
Neil had never recovered from the shit his parents had pulled our senior year in high school. Their relationship was never the same—in fact, it basically didn’t exist. And Natalie had deserted him when she hadn’t been able to dictate his path. He even now had a niece he’d never met because she refused to see him. He only found out about the little girl from Facebook. However, his situation had been slightly different than mine. My parents hadn’t screwed me over or cut me off—they’d just been absent the way most parents in Geneva Key were. Au pairs, nannies, and house staff raised children, not mothers and fathers.