The Lucky One

by Caroline Overington

  ‘Why so happy?’ I said.

  ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘I’ve had a little breakthrough.’

  ‘But you don’t want to tell me what it is.’

  ‘Well, I can’t, Eden. I promised your family that I wouldn’t say anything until we got there.’

  ‘Hang on, you mean everyone’s going to be there?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mom, smiling broadly. ‘Your aunt, your cousins, everyone!’

  ‘Okay, well that’s weird,’ I said, because I hadn’t seen any of them for years. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them. I missed them – they were family. But I felt with everything that had happened, maybe I wasn’t welcome? Or else, I’d have been betraying Mom if I reached out to them.

  We continued along the six-lane highway, passing car yards and old motels and a giant Premium Outlet. Three hours in, Mom flipped the indicator, and pulled off to get gas. I got out of the car to have a stretch. With her hand on the bowser and a doubtful look on her face, Mom said: ‘I feel like I could eat something but they won’t have anything fresh, will they?’

  ‘Let me look.’

  We had left Briar Ridge in a bit of a rush – Mom had been keen to arrive at the estate before dark – and I was travelling in what I’d been wearing at school: a white tank with deep armholes; torn shorts with the inside pockets hanging loose; canvas shoes and a knobby beanie, worn way back over my ponytail, because my helix, up high in my right ear, was infected.

  I could sense Mom watching me as I made my way into the gas station. It hadn’t been that long since we’d seen each other – my last vacation, spent at her apartment – but every time we got together, Mom would say: ‘Oh my God, you’ve changed so much’ whereas Mom never changed. At forty-five, she had a few lines around her eyes and none on her forehead, and she could fit into the same clothes she wore at twenty. She put it down to healthy eating and yoga, and I never mentioned the plastic surgery.

  I looked around inside the gas station but it was meagre pickings. They had rows of jerky and Twizzlers, sugared doughnuts in boxes of twelve, and a wall of fridges filled with Gatorade and cola, but hardly anything fresh.

  I emerged with a few supplies, saying: ‘Okay, I found almonds. Also bananas, water and gum.’

  ‘I guess that will have to do,’ said Mom, closing her shiny purse, having paid for the fuel at the pump. ‘Why these places can’t provide more food that isn’t made in a factory is beyond me.’

  ‘People like that stuff,’ I said.

  ‘That’s because they’re brainwashed by advertising.’

  I climbed back into the passenger seat, hoping to make quick use of whatever free WiFi I could find. Messages from my fellow Briar Ridge boarders – Broaders, we called ourselves – came cascading down the screen.

  OMG where are you?????

  NO!!!! Don’t leave and not say goodbye!

  WE MISS YOUUUUUUUU …

  When RU coming back?!

  I replied to the first few, saying, I have no idea what’s going on! Miss U2!, but the service faded as soon as we got back on the road. I put my earbuds back in, and nestled further down into my seat to listen to a bunch of tracks laid down by friends at Briar Ridge. We turned onto Highway 46 – a quieter, gentler road – and I gazed out the window as we began passing strawberry stalls and workers’ huts and a sign saying: ‘Welcome to Wine Country’.

  I took out my earbuds and sat up higher. The Paso I knew as a kid was what people call ‘small-town America’ – it had a Main Street, and an annual Christmas lights show, and an annual Pioneer Day parade – but organic winemakers and foodies had seen promise in the soil, and their arrival had brought changes.

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing out a juice bar with a blackboard out front, saying: ‘Yes, we have KALE.’

  My phone, in the car’s centre console, bleeped.

  ‘And there’s service!’ I said, looking at the screen, but it faded as Mom passed through town and headed west onto the Chimney Rock Road.

  ‘Two bars. One bar. None,’ I said, gloomily.

  ‘It will do you good to have a little digital detox.’

  ‘Why do all parents say that?’

  ‘Because we care about our children,’ said Mom.

  I looked around at the landscape. It had been afternoon when we’d set off from Briar Ridge, but it was a four-hour drive, and dusk was settling over the day.

  ‘Do you remember that game I used to play with Dad?’ I said. ‘First person to spot Alden Castle gets one dollar?’

  ‘It’s there,’ said Mom, pointing up through the windscreen at the old stone turret. ‘Sorry to spoil your fun,’ she added.

  ‘It’s so pretty,’ I said.

  ‘No, I’m sorry Eden, but I can’t look at that place without feeling angry.’

  I glanced in her direction. Her face had taken on a stony expression and her hands tightened around the wheel. I felt bad. My father had fallen from the roof of Alden Castle when I was thirteen and my mother barely forty, leaving her widowed, and the two of us grieving, our lives turned upside down. Of course she hated the castle. But in truth, she’d hated it long before that.

  We drove on, with the turret ducking in and out of view as we approached the gates to the old estate. Mom pressed the intercom and we waited while the gates eased back. The first building we passed was the timber cottage that had for years been home to our old housekeeper, Penelope.

  ‘Is she there?’ asked Mom.

  I craned my neck.

  ‘There are no lights on,’ I said.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Mom. Brightening, she added: ‘You know I spent my first night on this estate in that old cottage up the hill that your pop calls Horny Corner. Your father smuggled me up there for a bit of fun.’

  ‘Stop it, Mom! You’re being gross.’

  ‘You’re seventeen!’ She laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know the facts of life.’

  ‘Please Mom, you’re so embarrassing! Stop now. Just stop!’

  ‘I’m just saying, we had the best time,’ she said. ‘Your father was scared of Penelope finding out. She would never have approved.’

  We drove on, my heart clenching a bit as we approached Alden Castle, then kept on, up the gravel driveway, towards the house that my mother and father built as our family home. The Glass Pavilion. A seven-bedroom, six-bathroom architectural marvel, constructed almost entirely of steel and glass, every inch of it paid for with borrowed money.

  Night had fallen, and all the lights were on. It stood glowing at the end of the drive.

  ‘Wow,’ said Mom. ‘I can never get over how good it looks.’

  ‘It looks exactly the same as the day we left.’

  Mom killed the engine and we both sat for a moment, with Mom’s manicured fingers still tight around the steering wheel.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, finally. ‘We’re here. Now let’s see how welcome we are.’

  * * *

  Mom took her suitcase out of the trunk and set it down on the white pebble drive. I stayed in the front seat, throwing cords and chargers and devices and gas station bananas into my backpack.

  ‘Is anyone actually here?’ called Mom.

  ‘I’m here.’

  I looked up. The front of the Glass Pavilion was basically a wall of glass bi-fold doors that opened on to a timber deck. Penelope had stepped outside, looking exactly like the last time I’d seen her. She had on her unofficial uniform of cotton trousers with a heavy seam and elasticised waist; a pressed T-shirt; and spectacles on a neon-pink, plastic chain around her neck.

  Mom said: ‘Oh, look. It’s Penelope.’

  Penelope said: ‘Hello, Jesalyn’, and then: ‘And, oh my goodness, I can’t believe it! Look here, it’s Eden!’

  Mom said: ‘I told Fiona I was bringing Eden.’

  Arms wide, Penelope said to me: ‘Come here, Eden, and give me a hug.’

  I got out of the car, skipped up the steps onto the deck and let Penelope take me in her arms, feeling her
spectacles as they got squashed between us. It was no secret – not to me, not to anyone – that Penelope and Mom didn’t get on, but Penelope had always been good to me.

  ‘Let me look at you,’ she said. ‘You’re so grown up.’

  Mom rolled her eyes, saying: ‘It has been four years since you’ve seen her. Of course she’s grown up.’

  Ignoring this, Penelope said: ‘You look so much like your dad.’ She pushed me back to hold me at arm’s length. ‘I’m sorry, Jesalyn, but she does. She looks exactly like Jack. You probably can’t see it.’

  ‘Of course I can see it,’ said Mom.

  ‘You probably can’t, though, can you, Eden? How is Briar Ridge?’

  ‘It’s great,’ I said.

  ‘And do they actually teach you things there?’

  ‘Of course they teach them things,’ said Mom. Questions about Briar Ridge – about whether it was a ‘real school’ or some kind of crazy Californian hippy commune – annoyed her. ‘What do you think, that good families – famous actors – send their children to Briar Ridge and pay thirty thousand dollars a year in tuition but they don’t teach them anything?’

  ‘You might be right,’ said Penelope.

  Mom stepped unsteadily across the white pebbles, towards the deck. Then she looked around, as if she suddenly noticed the absence of other cars.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ she said. ‘I told Fiona what time to expect us. She said they’d be here.’

  Penelope paused.

  ‘Well, she was here,’ she said, as she took the tall handle of Mom’s suitcase ‘but then Austin had car trouble in LA and now they’ve been delayed. We won’t see them until tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ echoed Mom. ‘We were supposed to meet here today.’

  ‘It’s bad luck,’ agreed Penelope, as she stepped off the deck, through the bi-fold doors, into the pavilion, ‘and honestly, they were looking forward to seeing you today. But they’ll be here tomorrow, for sure.’

  Mom was upset, but from my point of view, having to wait another day to see my aunt and my cousins was no big deal. I wanted to see Pop! My dad’s dad. So I jumped in, saying: ‘Where’s Pop?’

  Penelope turned.

  ‘Oh, love, your pop’s upstairs,’ she replied, as she manoeuvred Mom’s suitcase across the polished concrete floor towards the kitchen, ‘but I don’t think we’ll see him tonight, either.’

  Mom stopped in her tracks. I remember that clearly. She just stopped dead.

  ‘Owen is upstairs?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ responded Penelope. Her tone had turned breezy, as if she had suddenly realised her mistake and yet there was no going back. ‘He’s in your old room, actually.’

  ‘He’s in my room?’ said Mom. She wasn’t really asking a question. Her tone was indignant.

  ‘Yes,’ said Penelope. ‘He’s only recently moved up there. Now that Fiona’s back she’s decided that he should have the room with the big shower. We have one of those shower chairs for him now. And Fiona’s moved into the bedroom next door.’

  ‘Fiona’s living here?’ said Mom. Her eyebrows – perfectly shaped – shot towards the ceiling. ‘Here in the pavilion?’

  ‘Yes, of course. They moved in about six weeks ago.’ Penelope was nervously opening and closing kitchen drawers, as if in search of something. ‘I thought you knew that.’

  ‘Why would you think I’d know that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know! I thought you’d been emailing them, or talking to them on the phone, even,’ said Penelope. Having found an apron, she began to busy herself, tightening the strings, once, then twice, around her stout waist. ‘You’ve been arranging this visit. I assumed it must have come up.’

  Mom said: ‘It certainly did not come up. I talk to Fiona on her cell. At no point did she tell me that she had moved back here. What happened to her house in San Francisco?’

  ‘She gave that up,’ confirmed Penelope.

  ‘She gave that up,’ Mom repeated. ‘So, let me get this straight. If Fiona’s here, with Owen upstairs, where are you?’

  ‘I’m back in my old cottage,’ said Penelope.

  ‘Is that right?’ said Mom. ‘Well, this is one for the books. I thought Fiona hated this house. She was opposed to the construction, complained the whole time it was going up. And now they live here? How interesting. And where are we supposed to stay while we’re here?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got that sorted,’ said Penelope, brightening. ‘Fiona thought it would be really nice for the two of you to be together. So, Eden, sweetheart, I’ve put you in your old bedroom down here, and I’ve put your mom in that little room next door with just the bathroom in between. Come on and I’ll show you.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to show me,’ said Mom, taking her suitcase by the upright handle. ‘I built this place, remember?’

  * * *

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  I had plopped myself down on the bed in my old room, planning to kick off my shoes and change out of my travelling clothes before heading back to the kitchen for a snack. Mom had other ideas. Having wheeled her suitcase into the bedroom she had been allocated, she’d come through the adjoining bathroom to stand with her hands on her hips.

  ‘Hear what?’ I said.

  ‘Your Aunt Fiona has moved in.’

  ‘Oh. Okay, yes, I heard that,’ I said. I was doing my best to sound bored, in the hope that it might head off one of Mom’s rants about the Glass Pavilion. How she had designed it and built it against the wishes of everyone else in the family, except for Dad, of course, and how she’d been forced out when Dad died because the estate was owned by the Alden-Stowe Family Trust, the rules of which clearly stated that it could not be sold without the permission of all the beneficiaries, and how my dad’s sister – my aunt Fiona – had point-blank refused to sell, saying: ‘This is my father’s estate. I’m not selling it out from under him.’

  Mom had said: ‘But you don’t even live here. This was my home, with Eden and Jack. You haven’t lived here since you got married.’

  Fiona had said: ‘But my father lives here, and I want him to be allowed to live here until he dies.’

  ‘Don’t you find it outrageous?’ demanded Mom. She was fiddling with her wedding band, something she always did when she was upset. ‘All the complaining Fiona and Tim did when I built this place. All the crap they gave your father: “You don’t need a new house. Most people would kill to live in Alden Castle.” That horrible, dusty, leaking, falling-down place. You couldn’t live in it, Eden. God knows, we tried. But on and on they went: “How much will it cost to build a new house? You don’t really have the right to build something so expensive.” Blah, blah, blah. And then, ten minutes – less! – after you and I are gone, they move right on in.’

  ‘It hasn’t been ten minutes, Mom. We’ve been gone four years. And I guess they need to be here to keep an eye on Pop, now he’s getting older,’ I said.

  ‘Your pop wasn’t on his own,’ she said. ‘He had Penelope. Where’s she now? Booted back to her old cottage? Oh my God, they are such hypocrites.’

  I slid my shoes under the bed.

  ‘No, Eden, wait. No, please don’t do that.’

  I looked up to see Mom holding her hand up, like a traffic cop. I sighed. What I’d loved about living in the castle was the nooks and crannies, the old bricks, the creaky floors. What Mom loved about the Glass Pavilion was the clean lines, the polished floors, the white ceilings, the lack of clutter and especially the floor-to-ceiling wardrobes that you couldn’t open without pushing because they didn’t even have handles.

  I leant down, picked up my shoes by the heels, and flung them behind a door.

  ‘Do we have to talk about this now?’ I asked. ‘I am so hungry.’

  ‘Don’t throw them,’ said Mom.

  I stretched my arms up towards the recessed lights and gave a big yawn.

  ‘Okay, but don’t you agree with me?’ said Mom. ‘It’s so—’

 
I cut her off. ‘Yes okay, Mom,’ I said firmly. ‘If it makes you happy, I agree with you. Yes, they hated this house when you built it and now they live here. Yes, it’s outrageous. Okay? Fine. Now can I go and get something to eat?’

  I threw an arm around her shoulders and pushed her towards the bedroom door. Mom – still grumpy but resigned – allowed herself to be guided into the kitchen, where we found Penelope already taking cling-wrapped plates out of the fridge.

  ‘Ah, there you are!’ she said. ‘Are you hungry? I prepared a bit of a feast.’

  ‘I’m starving,’ I said, pulling one of eight pony-skin stools out from under the kitchen bench. ‘All I’ve had since we left school is a banana from the gas station.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ protested Mom. ‘You had the almonds.’

  ‘A banana and almonds,’ said Penelope, a note of disapproval in her voice.

  I splayed my hands out over the bench. The kitchen in the Glass Pavilion took up half the ground floor, and it was everything the kitchen in Alden Castle wasn’t: the finishes were clean, the appliances were stainless steel, and it had a granite bench that ran the entire length of the room.

  ‘Well, lucky I cooked. Sit down. I have roast chicken. Potato salad. Fresh bread.’

  ‘We don’t eat meat,’ Mom said.

  ‘It’s chicken …’ Penelope paused in her unwrapping.

  ‘Chicken is meat, Penelope.’ Mom was standing with fists on her narrow hips, her expression indignant. ‘We didn’t eat meat when I lived here, and we don’t eat meat now. Look, it’s fine. Don’t worry. I’m not even hungry.’

  ‘Eden’s hungry,’ said Penelope pointedly.

  ‘I can have the potato salad,’ I said.

  ‘It’s probably got bacon bits,’ said Mom. ‘Has it got bacon bits?’

  ‘It’s fine, Mom. I can dig out the bacon bits,’ I said, although – and I’d never tell Mom this – sometimes I like a bit of bacon.

  ‘Let me make you a sandwich. I have cheese,’ said Penelope, as she turned back to the fridge.

  ‘What kind of cheese?’

  ‘Cheese-cheese,’ said Penelope uncertainly.

  ‘Cheese-cheese,’ said Mom. ‘No, thank you. Do you know what I’d like? I’d like tea.’