Page 23 of Push & Pull
“I should have guessed that. It’s super gay.”
“I said Sarah McLachlin, not Melissa Etheridge.”
“Your mom was into Lilith Fair, huh?”
“Big time. She left me behind with my dad to go while it was on tour. I was barely old enough to care, though.”
“Next you’ll tell me she was at Woodstock ’99.”
“Yeah, right. Definitely not her speed. It wasnotLilith Fair.”
Petra couldn’t shake this strange image from her mind. She knew next to nothing about Simone’s family, but the woman next to her didn’t seem like someone who came from a family that blasted Sarah McLachlan one minute and, who, DeadMau5 the next?
“Your mom sounds like an interesting lady.”
“She was. I miss her a lot.”
Petra bit her lip. Should she ask?
“She passed away, right?”
“You can say she died. Because she did.” Simone propped her book up in her lap and tapped her finger against the back cover. “Several years ago. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s funny how seemingly having ‘all the money in the world’ still can’t cure one woman’s cancer. They even caught it early, but it kept coming back. Next thing I knew, I was getting ready to go off to college and in between applications and interviews, my mom sat me down to show me where all of her jewelry was. She knew.”
“Sounds like you were really close to her.”
Simone took a moment to respond. “Uh-huh.”
“Your dad still around?”
“No.”
“You got a stepmom, though, right? Sorry if that’s super invasive.”
Petra didn’t sing along to the Pearl Jam song now playing from the radio speakers. Even though shereallywanted to.
“My dad didn’t waste much time remarrying. I was only a couple of years into college when I came home for break and saw this woman young enough to be my sister wandering the halls, acting like she owned the place.”
“Oof. Some men, huh?”
“He was lonely and didn’t know how to handle my mom’s death. He was also dying, too. Except he didn’t tell me until he had already married the new woman and the will updates were signed. It was a mess. The woman became vice president of the family business and got the house I grew up in.”
“Wow.”
“Nowshe’swith a younger woman. Can you believe it? She was gay the whole time.”
Petra’s grip on the steering wheel only grew more intense as she soaked in this salacious rich girl story. “That’s amazing. So, what, she was playing the short game with your dad?”
“More like she was a sex worker he fell in love with. Whatever. Her personal life isn’t any of my business. I merely hate how things ended with my family. Ugh.” Simone rubbed her forehead with a sigh. “Why am I telling you all of this? You don’t want to hear it.”
“I wouldn’t say that… if anything, this explains a lot about you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ah…” Pearl Jam morphed into Red Hot Chili Peppers. “I’m pretty good at reading people. Foster life and working for my uncle develops that in you.” That was putting it mildly. Uncle Michail had merely taken one of his niece’s natural skills and turned it up to eleven.In another life, I should have gone to school and become a psychologist.Or a sociologist. That was probably more her speed.I’d have a sit down with Billy Corgan and Courtney Love. Separately, of course. Oh, God, definitely separately.“Your mom, whom you were close to, dies when you’re still in adolescence. Then your father suddenly marries a much younger woman you’ve never met. Then he dies and your life turns upside down. Is it any wonder you’re friends with the likes of Hailey and the Marseille sisters? I bet you were a hardcore party girl in college. Gotta drug and drink those woes away.”
