“I have to leave town for a few days,” Elizabeth replied, shoving a flashdrive into Lydia’s hands. “My term paper is on this. Can you please get it to Professor Greenfield?”
Lydia blinked at the flashdrive as though she’d never seen one before, the laughter fading from her eyes. “What?”
“My mom’s in trouble.” Maybe. “Can you please turn this in? The school system is down or I’d email it myself and I don’t need to have this hanging over me while I make travel plans.”
Lydia nodded, her expression falling serious in ways Elizabeth hadn’t known it could. And then she experienced a jab of guilt for the mean thought—one that didn’t do much to improve her already crappy mood.
“Is it serious?” Lydia asked, pocketing the flashdrive. “Is there something we can do to help?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know, but thank you. I just…need to go find her.” Elizabeth offered a soft smile. “Thank you, Lydia. I appreciate it.”
“Of course.”
Elizabeth was quiet for a still beat, then found herself propelled forward and into a tackle-hug Lydia clearly hadn’t anticipated, but returned all the same. And dammit if that didn’t make her cry.
“It’s okay,” Lydia said, patting her back awkwardly. “Everything will be okay.”
On the Lyft ride to the airport, Elizabeth sent Jane a series of text messages explaining what had happened and asking her to check in with Lydia over the next couple days to make sure that paper got turned in. She then decided to spare her battery, as she wasn’t sure what the next few hours were going to look like, and the packing frenzy she’d gone into meant her charger could be pretty much anywhere.
At the very least, she decided as she stormed up to the counter of the first airline that she saw, the next few days would give her little reason to think about Will Darcy. And given the state her mind had been in as of late, that was quite the silver lining.
27
Usually Elizabeth could sleep on airplanes just fine, but frustration, worry, and dread were a lethal combination, and could turn anyone into an insomniac. It wasn’t until she was behind the wheel of her rental, Orlando in her rearview mirror and the morning sun crowning over the horizon that the universe decided to throw her a lifeline.
Her mother called.
Elizabeth pulled onto the shoulder of the freeway and answered, doing her best to keep her voice from shaking. “H-hello?”
“Lizzie, how are you?”
“Mom? Are you okay?”
A pause. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
She exhaled a long breath. “Where are you?”
“I’m in bed at the moment. I just discovered I had several missing calls from you and your father. Is everything all right?”
Elizabeth was still for a long moment. Then she laughed. A harsh, ugly laugh that soon devolved into a series of ugly cackles.
“Lizzie, what in the world…?”
Tears were streaming down her cheeks and her body felt about ready to call it a day and crash. Cars zoomed past her on the freeway and she’d managed to rack up several hundred dollars on the credit card she’d been so diligently trying to pay off. And she couldn’t stop laughing.
“Lizzie, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m in Florida.”
“What?”
God, she must be losing it if her mother was the rational one between them. The thought tickled her insides and made her dissolve into laughter all over again.
“I’m in Florida,” she said again once she got a hold of herself, wiping at her eyes and doing her best to keep her voice from trembling. “I flew in last night and I’m on my way to St. Augustine.”
“I’m in St. Augustine!”
“I know. I saw the hotel charge. That’s why I’m on my way.”
“Elizabeth, what in the world has gotten into you?”
“Dad called last night. Said you…you weren’t picking up when he tried to call you.”
She blew a raspberry into the phone. Her mother blew a raspberry. “And just why would I want to talk to that man?”
“Mom, you know what yesterday was, right?”
“Of course I know what yesterday was. And pardon me if I think it’s a bit strange to take a call from your ex-husband on the anniversary of a marriage that no longer exists. Is that the new trendy thing to do these days?”
Elizabeth expelled a deep breath, curling her free hand around the steering wheel, the part of her that had found the situation worth giggling over having run headfirst into annoyance. At least this was an emotion she was familiar with.
“He couldn’t reach you. Then I tried and I couldn’t reach you, either.”
“So naturally, the logical thing to do was hop the first plane to Florida.”
“I was worried. And I saw this was the last place you’d been, so…” She wasn’t sure how to finish that so she didn’t try, because the more she talked, the more her sleep-deprivation kicked in and the less sane her plan sounded. The most she knew about tracking someone down came from crime procedurals and detective movies, and smart money was on the bet that real life was a bit more complicated than that.
“Lizzie?” The concerned-mom tone was back, which only furthered her aggravation.
“What are you doing in Florida?” she asked.
“Well, I thought I’d take a vacation.”
“Without telling anyone.”
“Who was there to tell?”
“Me, for starters. And Dad.”
Her mother scoffed. “I do not need my ex-husband’s permission to go on vacation. And you? Every time I called, you yelled at me.”
“Well, every time you called, it was because you’d flown off the handle!”
“And forgive me if that made me a little gun-shy. I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me at all.”
There it was. Right in the heart—the thing she’d known was coming. The cherry on top of the shit sundae that had become her life. She’d been an absolute moron where Wickham was concerned, a complete asshole where Will was concerned, and a terrible daughter to boot.
Elizabeth blinked, horrified to discover she was near tears.
“Lizzie?”
That did it. Elizabeth choked out a sob and slumped on the steering wheel, hard shudders wracking through her body. Fuck, everything hurt. Her arms, her lungs, her feet. Her side was still tender from the kid who had rammed into her while she’d been trekking through the airport and she was going on a full day without sleep. It seemed impossible that she had been in her dorm room just a few hours ago.
“Lizzie! Pull over right now.”
“I…I am pulled over.”
“Good.” It was a tone she hadn’t heard her mother use in the better part of ten years. “Now, calm down. I’m going to have Benito text you our location, all right?”
“B-Benito?”
“My lover, of course.”
Elizabeth froze, then shuddered. There should be a law forbidding one’s parents from using that word.
“Take your time and I’ll see you when you get here,” her mother concluded.
“Okay.”
To her dismay, it took more than a few minutes to get herself under control once the conversation ended. Every time Elizabeth would begin to calm, she’d catch a glimpse of her reflection in the rearview mirror. Eventually, though, the hysterical bubble that had ballooned within her and she was left in the suffocating quiet of her rental car, face hot and wet, body worn out, and heartsick.
The smart thing to do would be turn around and get on a plane. Except the thought made her want to curl into a ball and hibernate for the next six months. And it wasn’t as though she had much of a reason to head back with the semester nearing a close and the winter holidays on the horizon. Very few people would remain on campus over Christmas and suddenly, the thought of being among them—especially with Wickham’s rumors about her still floating around—made her want to heave the contents of her stomach. Which she was pretty sure was
nothing but water and airline peanuts at this point.
Plus, she needed to vet this Benito guy. Make sure he was the real deal before her mother got her heart broken all over again.
And no one fucked with her mother, goddammit.
So Elizabeth waited until her phone dinged with a message from an unknown number, listing the address of a beachside resort in St. Augustine. She asked Google for directions, and the affable robotic voice had her on the road again in seconds.
She vowed to have her shit together by the time she arrived.
* * *
The woman waving at her couldn’t possibly be her mother.
Elizabeth blew out a long breath, staring at a face she hadn’t seen smile in years. Then she cut her gaze quick to the rearview mirror again and almost recoiled in horror. Some girls could bounce back from a hard ugly-cry, but she was not among them. Elizabeth gave her head a shake—not that that helped matters—dragged a hand through the tangled mess that was her hair, and forced her aching muscles to move.
“Lizzie!” Her mother had developed the ability to teleport since they’d been apart, for her feet had barely touched the pavement before she found herself tackled by Lynette Bennet, the Pod Person. “I was so worried about you.”
“I’m okay, Mom,” she said, the words automatic rather than sincere.
“You didn’t sound okay on the phone.”
“Well, I wasn’t okay then, but all’s good now.”
Her mother pulled back, lips pursed into a firm line of disapproval.
“So…” Elizabeth backed up a space and cut her gaze to the massive hotel. “Benito?”
A dopey, lovesick smile stretched across her mother’s face. “Oh, Lizzie, he’s just marvelous. He owns this hotel, you know. And five more in Orlando and Daytona Beach.”
“And you guys…”
“He’s my lover.”
Elizabeth wrinkled her nose and groaned. “Mom, don’t say lover.”
Her mother giggled and clasped her hands together in her best schoolgirl imitation. “Well, what else should I call him? I’m a bit old to have a boyfriend, don’t you think? And male companion just sounds so formal.”
“So how long have you and Benito been…”
“Fornicating?”
“No!” She scrunched up her face and waved her hands as though this would help keep the mental image away. It didn’t, and her imagination’s portrayal of Benito wasn’t exactly flattering. “I was going to say seeing each other.”
An innocent blink. “Naked?”
“Mom!”
The cackle she earned gave her the horrible impression that her mother was doing this on purpose.
“I was on vacation with my dear friend, Yvonne Rogers. You know Yvonne, don’t you?”
“Only since forever. When did you go on vacation with her?”
“Week before last.”
“Over…Thanksgiving?”
“Well…” Her mother sniffed, looking a bit more like the Mom Elizabeth knew. “It wasn’t like my daughter was going to see to me over the holiday, was it?”
“Mom, I told you that there was no point in going home. We weren’t getting a long break and I had a ton of stuff to do to get ready for finals. And I did call. You decided not to pick up.”
“Well, I was on vacation, wasn’t I?” Her mother went back to beaming. “Anyway, there was an incident with one of the slot machines. I demanded to speak with the man in charge—Benito. Well, one thing led to another, and I ended up staying the night with him. I tell you, Lizzie, it was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
Elizabeth felt herself go hot in the face. It was damn hard to remain sex-positive when the sex part involved someone who had given birth to her. “Umm, congrats?”
All she received was a shrug. “I can’t lie. Your father was such a selfish lover. Everything was all about him. With Benito, I have never been so in touch with my body.”
“You realize that you’re paying my therapy bills, right?”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Goodness, Elizabeth. When did you become such a prude?”
“I’m not a prude. I am, however, human, and don’t yet have the mental bandwidth to look at this objectively.”
“Well, get with the program. I had Benito reserve a room for you. The penthouse, actually.” She beamed. “That was his idea. I think he’s trying to impress me, the silly man. Why don’t you take your things to your room and have a nice, hot shower. When you’re ready, let me know and we can talk.”
Any other time, the prospect of talking to Mom would have required a preemptive Advil and perhaps a Xanax. But this was not any other time—this was a bizarre parallel dimension in which Lynette Bennet was the calm voice of reason and Elizabeth was the one teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she was too damn tired to argue and a shower sounded like heaven. So she nodded, collected her duffle bag, and followed her mother into the hotel.
* * *
After her shower, Elizabeth thought it best to take a catnap before facing her mother. Running on fumes had never been a good look on her, and if her car breakdown was any indication, she needed to take a timeout from her head.
The catnap turned into an all day affair. When she awoke for good, the sun had dipped and cast the room into shadows. It took a few moments for Elizabeth’s brain to come back online. She sat in the foggy confusion that inevitably followed a hard sleep, trying to remember where she was and why. And when the dots connected again, she immediately wished they hadn’t.
Ugh. This was such a mess. She sighed and rolled her head, then decided to bite the bullet and see how many voicemails her mother had left over the last few hours, demanding where she was.
Zero.
That was…weird. And again filled her with the sense that she’d entered the Twilight Zone. She even checked that her phone was connected—it was. She had a message from Lydia confirming that the final paper had been successfully submitted to the professor, and another from Jane expressing her concern and wishing her a good holiday.
The world had indeed continued to spin. She was the only anomaly here.
Elizabeth fought to her feet, her limbs weighted with a different kind of exhaustion now as she forced herself to dress and run a brush through her hair. A glimpse in the mirror revealed she looked mostly human.
When she returned to her phone, she had a new text message from her mother.
You alive in there?
She shook her head and typed out a quick response. Just woke up.
The three dots indicating the other person was typing ballooned up almost immediately.
Mom: Good. I assumed you’d pass out for a while. Want to grab dinner?
Elizabeth: Do I get to meet Benito?
Mom: Sadly no. He is entertaining some business friends tonight. Plus, I thought it would be best if it was just you and me.
“Who are you?” she muttered to the screen, but gratitude blossomed in her gut and some part of her relaxed. She definitely wasn’t up to meeting new people just yet.
Elizabeth: Have anything in particular in mind?
Mom: Meet me at the hotel restaurant in 10.
The thought of food had Elizabeth’s stomach immediately excited. She hadn’t eaten since the plane and she was pretty sure that didn’t count. Time to refuel.
Her mother was waiting for her when she arrived, smiling patiently. “You look so much better,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”
The comment—like pretty much everything else that had happened in the last day—caught Elizabeth off guard. She wasn’t wearing makeup and had thrown on a baggy long-sleeved tee and a pair of leggings. The Lynette Bennet of old would have refused to be seen with her in public.
But since these incidents were coming faster, she decided it was better to adapt than overanalyze. Otherwise she’d be a blinking idiot all night.
“Umm, yes,” she replied at length. “Hard, at least. I have a nap hangover.”
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Mom laughed and waved to the seating hostess.
The expediency of service and the way the staffers kept deferring and cooing over her mother forced Elizabeth to accept that this Benito guy likely wasn’t a hallucination, though she hadn’t ruled out the possibility that she was languishing in a psych ward after having had a mental breakdown.
As though sensing her thoughts, her mother turned to her with a smile that highlighted the reasons her father had married her in the first place. Lynette Bennet had been a beautiful woman in her youth. She was beautiful still, Elizabeth realized a little belatedly, once the mom-goggles were forced aside.
“Would you stop that?” Mom asked, smiling still.
“What?”
“Looking at me like I’m an alien.”
“Are you?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I feel like it. The past few days have been marvelous in ways I didn’t think possible anymore.”
“Because of…Benito.”
“Well, yes. He’s a big part of it. A huge part of it, if you catch my meaning.”
Elizabeth groaned and dropped her face into her hands. “I wish you’d stop saying things like that.”
“I’m a woman in her prime, Lizzie, and I haven’t had decent sex since before you were born. I think I’m entitled to brag a little.” Her mother arranged her napkin in her lap. “Let me put one mystery to bed. Right after you started school, maybe the second or third week, your aunt and uncle convinced me to change doctors.”
Elizabeth blinked. “They did?”
“Yes. Dr. Henderson was…well, an ass. He didn’t listen to me, just threw whatever medication was most convenient for the symptoms I described and showed me out.” She pursed her lips. “For years I thought it was me. That the medication wasn’t working because of something I did. I took it and I felt bad. I didn’t take it and I felt bad. And every time I had an issue I wanted to discuss, Dr. Henderson waved me off and increased my dosage.”
Guilt clenched her stomach. Dr. Henderson had been her decision—granted, a decision based on a quick internet search and cemented on the fact that, unlike others in the area, he’d been taking new patients at the time. Elizabeth swallowed. “I’m sorry—”
A Higher Education Page 30
