Page 3 of The Heiress
Amonth ago, I hadnever heard of River Valley. I’d been lounging around on the rooftop terrace of my family’s lake view mansion, on a video link with my cousin who was on vacation in Spain, when my parents approached me for a very serious talk. A life changing talk.
Daddy had just arrived back from a business trip and Mom had been working in her office all morning, so there had been nothing extraordinary about the day.
My first thought was that they wanted to discuss my drivers licence—you see, I hadn’t learned to drive yet, even though I was old enough. Driving scared me, not that I had told anyone. Cars were big machines, they had powerful engines and went fast. If you drove, you had to mix in traffic with other cars with powerful engines that went fast. And that terrified me, along with all the buttons and pedals that you had to work, as well as knowing which way to go and which lane to take and the road rules.
Besides, I didn’t need to drive. There was always Mom or Dad, or Mr. Moreno who took care of Dad’s garage of cars, or my cousins, or Hannah, our housekeeper to take me wherever I needed to go.
But with my eighteenth birthday coming up, I wondered if Daddy was going to bribe me to get my drivers licence by offering me a brand new car. Of my choice. Oh, I’d daydreamed about driving a pink Lamborghini or a Porsche or a classic Mustang convertible, but in reality I’d have a panic attack if I had to sit behind the wheel.
Anyway, I couldn’t have been more wrong. About the car, I mean.
Completely out of the blue, my parents had decided that I would be spending my senior year at Covington Prep, a private school in the small town of River Valley, tucked away in an exclusive leafy suburb called Covington Heights. I’d never heard of the place.
The shock had paralyzed me so much that none of their explanations registered. They were rambling on and on about normality, stability, balance, education, independence. As the heiress to the Millar global empire which had stakes in a diverse range of markets from real estate to olive oil, to pharmaceuticals to food manufacturing, my parents were saying that this was my last shot at having a normal childhood, a chance to be a normal teenager. A blatant overuse of the wordnormal.
“For your benefit,” Daddy whispered, heavily berating himself. “I should have done it years ago. Let you have a more rounded life, the chance to be normal.”
“I don’t need to be normal,” I’d cried. Normal kids didn’t fly to Paris for a weekend, get to see Amsterdam in the spring, swim in the beautiful waters of Tahiti, or ski in the mountains of Banff.
“It’s for the best,” Mom had cooed in my ear, trying to placate me. “I want you to experience the ordinary things in life. School, friendships, regular everyday things, school dances, prom, graduation, no pressures, no gimmicks. You can just be you.”
Well, that had been news to me—I thought I’d always been me.
Three or four days had passed in a blur. My voice hoarse from begging and pleading, my eyes raw from crying, my heart heavy with sadness.
By the time I’d been packed up and sent to Covington Prep, I hated both my mother and father.
Well, of course, not really. I wanted to hate them, but at the very least I could pretend to, guilt-trip them in some way.
I had arrived in the small town in the middle of nowhere with virtually a new identity, almost like I was in some witness protection program. To reinforce the normality that they apparently craved for me, I’d been listed at the school under both my parents’ last names so I was now Elisha Sakkari-Millar, and I’d been given a new suitcase of clothes and my hair had been colored. Oh the irony! For the past twelve months, I’d been forbidden to dye my hair, thrown tantrums about it, had screaming matches with my mother, and suddenly Daddy had brought top hair stylist, Roland DeVers to our house, and within hours my boring light brown hair had been highlighted with gorgeous shades of honey blond.
It would have been laughable in any other situation.
Except on my first day in my new dormitory, the only thing I did was cry. Cry, because I’d been separated from my family without any choice, angry that they’d abandoned me.
Mrs. Pritchard, the Dorm Head of Whitney Hall, could not coax me out. Not kindness, or a trip to the mall or chocolate brownies. Not even the lure of the much touted Whittakers ice cream that the town was famous for could tempt me from my room. Hmphh! Whittakers ice cream can’t have been that great—otherwise my father would have bought the company.
For now, student life was to be my only focus, and on our brief farewell, Daddy had reiterated the point that it was temporary, that it was only for a year, that it was forthe best.Though I couldn’t help but think that the speed in which everything had been arranged had been breathtaking, as if this plan had always been in place.
My life had been a privilege, I’d recognized that from an early age as we’d moved from a turn of the century brownstone to a penthouse apartment, then to the mansion on the lake. First it had been two cars, then five, then a garage of twelve. Rides in helicopters, airplanes, traveling the world in a private jet, exotic beaches, fancy restaurants, super yachts, concerts and shopping trips.
But as I’d unpacked the two plain red suitcases, devoid of the Millar insignia—it wasn’t the brand new clothes and shoes that made me uneasy; it was the almost simple task of how to arrange my closet.
My parents sent messages and videos every morning and evening, but my emotions fluctuated like the midwest weather, one minute angry with them, the next my heart breaking from missing them. Mom constantly asked for photos, but in a mood of defiance, I stopped taking my phone out of my dorm room so there was nothing to show her.
I made a new plan to ghost them and to be a ghost. I would keep contact to a minimum, let them get a taste of the cruel abandonment that they’d bestowed on me.
I would keep my distance from others, roam the hallways and dormitory alone and operate as an island, invisible and insignificant until my parents saw sense and brought me back home.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that. Covington Prep residential life did not allow sitting around in one’s room in solitude. Oh no, of course not. Study hours were from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. every night, Sunday through Thursday. It was compulsory to play a sport, join in the weekly dorm challenge and there were always activities to be cajoled into participating in. Like the twilight poetry session in the Wood House Courtyard by the Young Poets Club. My next door dorm neighbor, Beth Van der Wal, had insisted I join her. Beth was the only other senior in Whitney Hall, the smallest of the girls dorms with twelve students. As seniors, we were the only two who had our own rooms. In any other situation, our worlds would never have collided. Beth was the quintessential geek, a girl who didn’t own styling tools for her hair, who wore cozy homemade sweaters and stared at the night sky like she was watching a Broadway show.
Yes, one evening as I’d returned from a few laps of the athletic track, I caught Beth wandering down the pathway, eyes lifted upwards.
“Isn’t it amazing!” she’d said as I’d attempted to overtake her snail’s pace.
“What?” I looked up, perhaps expecting a shooting star.
“The stars. Look at them!” There was a childlike quality to her voice which made me wonder if she was a little crazy.
