Say the Word(88)
I lifted a hand to trace my still-tingling lips with my fingertips, staring at my closed door with disbelief. I simply couldn’t believe it — my mind refused to process that whatever had just happened was real. Because if it was…
Bash knew. Maybe not everything, but certainly enough to send him digging into our past.
Shit.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Then
“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked in a soft voice, praying Greta spoke English.
The quiet Swedish maid kept mostly to herself, speaking infrequently and making eye contact only when she received a direct order from Mrs. Covington — or “Judith” as she’d told me to call her when I’d arrived, donning her arctic smile and studiously ignoring my presence from that moment on.
Thankfully, Greta smiled and pointed down the hall off the kitchen. “On the left,” she whispered, turning back to the island countertop where she was artfully arranging a spread of hors d’oeuvres on several large silver platters. It was enough food to feed four times the number of guests milling about the mansion — most of it would likely be thrown out with tomorrow’s trash. For a moment I hesitated, looking down at the mini vegetable quiches and bacon-wrapped scallops until I felt my stomach rumble beneath the pale white lace of my dress. But when images of my own empty refrigerator and Jamie’s painfully thin face flashed in my mind, a bitter taste filled my mouth and I forced myself to look away.
“Thanks, Greta.” I nodded at her, then wandered down the hallway to find the bathroom. I’d purposely sought this one out, knowing most guests would use the main bathroom off the front hall and that I’d be less likely to bump into anyone in this part of the house. I needed a moment alone to collect myself before heading back into the lion’s den of well-moneyed socialites, acquaintances, and associates that “Judith” and the senator had deemed appropriate company at Sebastian’s eighteenth birthday party. Personally, I didn’t care how wealthy or well-bred they were — all I knew was, they were no fun at all.
One of the senator’s friends had just engaged me in a condescending conversation about the difference between our Congress and the British Parliament. When he’d expounded for nearly five minutes without coming up for air, I decided to excuse myself rather than risk falling into an irreversible coma in the middle of the Covington’s foyer. Beelining for the bathroom, I spotted Bash across the room by the door. He was flanked on either side by his parents, greeting guests as they arrived with a glazed look in his typically animated eyes.
Considering the invitees, I couldn’t blame him.
These people were cold. Dead inside.
For all their fashionable clothing and sophisticated mannerisms, they were lacking that vital spark of life possessed by the truly vivacious. They seemed to walk around half alive, bored to death by the utterly predictable prosperity that defined their ostentatious existence. I watched them gliding through the mansion like elegant zombies, their empty eyes dulled by a lackluster life of overindulgence — perhaps weary of their own wealth, but too afraid to ever let it go.
There’s a kind of freedom in poverty, I suppose — in the total lack of posturing or pretension. It’s easy to think of the rich as the only ones who are truly free in this life, but it seemed to me that most of the genuinely affluent were held down by more shackles and obligations than I’d ever been, for all my lack of fortune. Money may’ve lent the illusion of freedom, but ultimately it seemed to bind its possessor in enough chains of expectation and apprehension to render spontaneity and self-fulfillment impossible.
It was hard to bear witness to such extreme indulgence, when my family didn’t even have enough to pay for Jamie’s treatments or keep up with the mortgage. We’d gotten a medical hardship extension from the bank, which would keep us out of foreclosure for another few months, but it was just a temporary fix. I knew it was only a matter of time until they took the house — yet that remained the least of my worries.
Weakened by his most recent round of treatments, Jamie was back in the hospital with a severe bout of pneumonia. And, with Christmas a few short weeks away, he’d be there for the remainder of the holidays. Over the past few months, he’d been through more chemotherapy and radiation, with minimal results, and the doctors had ruled against another bone-graft. They were scheduled to amputate his leg as soon as he’d recovered enough strength to endure the operation.
Merry Freaking Christmas.
When I reached the bathroom, I headed for the sink and splashed cool water on my face, careful not to do irreversible damage to my makeup. I contemplated hiding in here for the rest of the night, but knew my disappearance would eventually be noted — if not by the pompous party guests, then certainly by my boyfriend. Bash knew how nervous I’d been to come tonight. He was fully aware that I’d feel out of my element — the impoverished, ugly duckling in the company of swans.
Plus, I was faced with the uncomfortable reality of meeting his father for the first time. I’d managed to avoid him for this long because he spent most of his time in the nation’s capital, flying home only a few days a month to visit his family. But, around the holidays, he made a point to return to Georgia for several weeks, in celebration of his only son’s birth as well as Christmas and New Year’s. If the senator was anything like his wife, I feared I’d have a hard time keeping my polite smile in place when I finally did merit an introduction.