Book Three - A Codependent Love Story (Zelda's World 3)
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New From Paloma Meir
A Girl's Story (Zelda's World Book 1)
Overdone (The Loss of Reason) (Zelda's World Book 2)
Book Three - A Codependent Love Story (Zelda's World 3)
Trashed - A Bipolar Love Story
Vee & Addie
Zelda's World - The Complete Collection: A Girl's Story, Overdone (The Loss of Reason), Book Three, Trashed
Heartbreaker Breaks - A Bittersweet Lottery Love Story: Money, Love and a Much Younger Man... A Darkly Humorous Love Story
Esme and the Money Grab: Money, Love and a Corpse... A Darkly Humorous Love Story
Copyright © 2015 by Paloma Meir
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Edition, 2015
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For my daughter Sophie
Table of Contents
BOOK ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
BOOK TWO
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
BOOK THREE
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
BOOK FOUR
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bonus Preview: Wrecked – A Bipolar Love Story
Book Three
By
Paloma Meir
BOOK ONE
Chapter One
I don't remember much about my life on the Upper Eastside of New York, growing up in the old family hotel built by my great-grandfather. Life was well organized by my grandparents. My father worked as the hotel manager, the only job he would ever hold. My mother spent her days in our penthouse suite, drinking with the friends she had grown up with in the same set of rooms she still lived in.
I’ve never been clear on what happened, but when I was nine years old the hotel was sold. The proceeds were split evenly between my grandparents, my mother, and her five brother and sisters. However much money it was sold for was never enough. They bought a small Spanish house on a canyon road of large Spanish homes high up in the Hollywood Hills.
We were staying in a chain hotel by the beach while looking for our new house. The realtor would take us around to the better sections of Los Angeles. My parents wanted to see all the estates in Bel Air and Beverly Hills. After the first week, it became clear to the real estate agent that my parents were delusional. We would not be moving into a mansion nestled into the hills. She was good, though, figuring out my parents wanted a high-end life but couldn’t afford it. The house she found for us met all of ours needs, a relatively small house in a fashionable area.
The realtor led us into what would become our home about three weeks into the house hunting. The houses grew larger as we drove up the street. I had never seen Spanish homes before. The warmth of the architecture drew me in. I could see living up there. My sister, Carolina, had a book open in her lap and wouldn't look up no matter how many times I poked her and pointed. The wide canyon road curved around a bend and the houses shrunk. It was still great though. It didn’t look like New York but it had an older feeling than the rest of Los Angeles. Elegant, my parents would call it. I wanted to live on this street. I wanted to live in this small house.
Carolina and I, stiff from the long drive, jumped out of the car as it pulled into the driveway. We ran through the sculpted archway, across the overgrown front yard and opened the ornate front door. We continued our run through the house admiring the wrought iron details, the hand painted tiles and alcoves everywhere. It beat the international style of our hotel in New York. The house felt like home.
We found ourselves in the kitchen and looked out the vaulted windows on to the patio and yard bordering the canyon below. A little girl about Carolina’s age, who we would come to know as Zelda, slept on the patchy grass. We must have made too much noise and scared her. She sat up with a wild look in her big eyes and stuffed the books and food that was spread around her into her backpack and ran away around the side of the house. It happened so quickly, I wasn’t sure if I had imagined it.
“Do you think this is her house?” Carolina asked, “She left one of her books.” I followed her out to the yard, and she picked it up. It wasn’t a book for reading but a drawing book. We opened it to see pages and pages of devils. Beautiful devils if that were possible. All of them wearing intricately illustrated dresses. Pretty impressive for a kid I assumed was eight like Carolina.
“I don’t know. She went around the corner. Let’s see if we can find her.” We walked around the side of the house to a gate covered in ivy. It wasn’t going to open without the help of gardening shears to free it from the vines.
“Should we climb over?”
“No, Mom will get mad if you get your dress dirty.” She was always mad at Carolina about something. I didn’t want any problems. I wanted to live in this house. It was easily half the size of the homes down the street and the wide road had narrowed considerably, but I didn’t care. It was perfect. “You can return it when we move in. She must live around here somewhere.”
“Do you think she’ll mind if I add to it?” She flipped through the pages with a look of awe in her eyes. “Why do you think we’re going to live here? We’ve looked at a million houses. She never likes any of them.”
“I’m going to tell her this one is it.” She followed me back into the house to watch my mother magic at work.
“Mom, come look at this.” She turned towards us, my father silently behind her. I stood in front of a dark wood paneled room that had floor to ceiling bookshelves and a movable ladder to reach the top ledge. “A place for your books. We’ll put a recliner here, and you’re all set up.”
“Serge, you’re such a clever boy,” she laughed. In my life only my mother and Zelda found me to be a sparkling wit. I could be funny, but not on the level they saw in me. She turned to the real estate agent and said, “We’ll put an offer in, but they must clean up the yard before we move in.”
…
A little over a month later, we pulled up behind the moving truck that held our furnishings from New York. Across the street on the curb sat the little blonde devil worshipper. Carolina was beyond excited, popping up and down in her seat, dying to get out of the car and meet the author of the book she had taken to writing in back at our hotel room.
Carolina jumped out of the car and ran across the street much to the displeasure of our mother who muttered something unkind. I didn’t hear what she said because I was also interested in the strange child who sat with her legs stretched out into the road.
“Hi! I’m Ca
rolina. I have your drawing book. I didn’t know if I would see you again, so I wrote a story under the pictures. I hope that’s okay.” I walked up behind her, and the little girl stood up.
“My name is Zelda. That’s okay. I forgot about my book. I’m building a tree house all by myself on the very top of the tree in my backyard. It’s going to be heart-shaped and have a TV room,” Zelda said in her tiny little voice. Her first words to us, a big lie, not that Carolina saw that. She believed the story of this whiff of a girl building a heart-shaped tree house all by herself. I worried Zelda was a pathological liar. She wasn’t. She could keep quiet about things but lying wasn’t her style.
“Wow. I want to see it. Do you need help? Serge has a toolkit in one of the boxes.” She pointed to the movers unloading the truck. Zelda eyes widened as if she knew what she had said was beyond stupid, which it was of course.
“Hi Zelda. I’m Serge. I’ll help you with your tree house up in the stars. You’ll have to help with the bending of the wood though. How do we get it to be heart-shaped?” Her face broke out into a big smile.
“Are you named after Serge Gainsborough? My Dad loves him. My Dad is French, so I guess I am too. I’m going to live in Paris when I grow up.” Her voice wasn’t above a whisper but there was enthusiasm behind it. I assumed she was lying about her father.
“What’s your last name?" I thought it would be Smith or Jones or anything not French.
“Moreau." Okay, I would give her a chance. I didn’t think she was quick enough to figure out I was trying to catch her in another lie. “Do you guys want to come over to my house? We could swim. I’m teaching my brother Anthony. He’s really good at it. He’s my best friend.”
“I would like to, but all my clothes are in boxes, and Serge’s too. Your book is in my bag in the car. I’ll get it. I want you to see it. You’re a really good artist.”
“Thank you. I have a lot of clothes. My dad buys me stuff all the time. You can have some of my bathing suits. I don’t know what Serge could wear. Maybe he could swim in his underwear? Anthony’s stuff would be too small, and my Dad’s stuff too big.” I could see from her expression she was struggling for a solution to what had become an insurmountable obstacle in her head. She was funny that way, always organizing and problem solving.
“The boxes are marked Carolina. I’ll run into the truck and find my clothes. Let’s go ask Mom. Actually, let’s ask Dad.” I knew our mother would scare the shy kid. “Use your best manners Zelda, or he won’t let us come over. They’re weird about that kind of thing.” That was an understatement. She followed us over to our father.
“Hello, kind Sir. I am Zelda. Perchance could Carolina and Serge come to my house for a swim?” She said in a big exhalation of breath followed by a curtsy. I would have to give her better instructions in the future. It worked though. My father laughed.
“Well, that was a mouthful. Hello, Zelda, I am Bernard Richmond, Carolina and Serge’s father,” He bowed to her. “I would be honored to have my children go to your house today.”
“Thank you, kind Sir.” She bowed back to him. I ran into the truck, found my swim trunks, resealed the box neatly for the sake of the movers, and we headed down to the fair maiden Zelda’s house.
…
Her home was one of the larger ones maintained with an obsessive detail to the original bones of the house. It was a showplace decorated more for style than comfort, with a museum feel to it. She led us to her room off the kitchen. Her bedroom was the size of our new living room. The floors were a dark mahogany wood and all of her furniture and curtains were white. The room had a romantic feel, better suited for an adult than a child. She started taking off her clothes to put on her bathing suit. Carolina stopped her.
“Shouldn’t we change in the bathroom?” She looked at her with curiosity finally understanding that her new little friend had an oddness about her, no more strange than herself really but a different quirk than she possessed. I could see Zelda didn’t have any other friends. She lacked the social skills she would have acquired from sleepovers and other gatherings. She was a lonely little kid.
“Oh, okay.” She looked to me and understood boys and girls didn’t change clothes together. I couldn’t help but laugh. She was growing on me.
Dressed for a swim, we went upstairs to get her brother Anthony who looked to be about three or four years old. I had hoped he would be older, someone for me to play with because Carolina and Zelda were getting wrapped up in the dream world they would create. All fantasy, all the time with the two of them.
They swam to the deep end and stayed under the water doing what looked like flips. I stayed in the shallow end with Anthony teaching him to swim. He was already pretty good. I wouldn’t leave him alone, but he was more than competent for his age. The kid talked and talked. Anything that popped into his head, came out of his mouth. I wasn’t bored, but I would rather have been flopping around in the deep end with my sister and her new friend.
We had been in the pool for a couple of hours when Zelda declared it lunchtime. She led us into the kitchen and took out a platter of pungent cheeses from the refrigerator, sliced up a baguette with a knife as big as her arm and handed us all individual glass bottles of apple juice. We sat down at the table with her to eat this very unkid-like meal. Carolina and I exchanged questioning glances. We were used to more child friendly snacks like chicken tenders or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Anthony looked like this was a regular meal for them so we didn’t comment.
When lunch was over, she brought us four bowls and filled them to the top with chocolate covered malt balls. I had no idea what she expected us to do with the toxic amount of sugar she had placed in front of us.
“Thanks Zelda, but are these for a game or are we supposed to eat them?” She laughed because almost everything I would ever say to her would be perceived as funny.
“It’s for the movie Serge. Follow me.” She said in a voice more like Carolina’s, suddenly more clear than what hers had been only a few hours before. We followed her with the overfilled bowls of candy in our hands to the living room.
“Shouldn’t we clean up the mess we left in the kitchen?” Carolina asked.
“My dad doesn’t like me to do that. He said that’s why he hired Maria. I do it anyway sometimes. I don’t like messes.”
I wondered if all the kids in our new city were instructed not to clean up after themselves. It hadn’t been that way in New York.
She took all the pillows and blankets from around the living room and placed them in front of the television and made sure Anthony had a perfect little nest for his naptime. Zelda had done a good job. We sunk into the poufy pile she had created.
She put on The Sound of Music, one of Carolina’s favorites. They bonded over that as Anthony fell asleep on my knee. I had seen the movie many times and wasn’t looking forward to it at all but the whole set up of her home intrigued me, so I stayed to watch the film instead of going home.
Zelda and my sister sang all the songs together. They were surprised they both knew the words even though it was a classic film most people would be familiar with. They were sweet together. Carolina had a few friends when we lived in New York but not many, and she was never close with any of them.
Carolina tried to keep up with Zelda and the bowl of candy. At one point I thought she might throw up. Zelda finished hers off and promptly fell asleep on my other knee. I assumed from a sugar coma. Then Carolina fell asleep. I sat there for an hour trapped by sleeping people watching a movie I had never particularly liked before going with the flow and falling asleep myself.
I woke to a face that would be Zelda’s in twenty years. It was quite disconcerting with all the recent changes in my life. Sitting up, I knew Zelda hadn’t grown old during our spontaneous naptime, and the woman could only be her mother. Most people didn’t like Mrs. Moreau, but I always did because she was insanely beautiful. My mother would refer to her as a trophy wife when Zelda wasn’t around. I wondered what ga
me you had to play to get one like her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m Mrs. Moreau. Where did all of you come from?” She smiled at me, and I smiled back as she picked up Anthony.
“Hello, Mrs. Moreau. My name is Serge, and that’s my sister Carolina asleep on Zelda’s back. We moved in up the street today, and Zelda invited us over for a swim. You have a beautiful home.”
“Well, you have very nice manners. Welcome to the neighborhood.” She looked over at the awakening Zelda and Carolina. Zelda didn’t say anything to her, instead she ran to the entryway where her father stood and jumped into his arms. As light as Zelda and her mother were, her father was dark and old, maybe not old but much older than her mother. I would end up seeing a lot of that age difference in Los Angeles, but this was my first exposure.
“These are my new friends, my best friends Carolina and Serge. Can they sleepover? They just moved in up the street.” I guess she was my new best friend.
“Of course, my beautiful girl. Anything you like.” He wasn’t kidding. I don’t think he ever said no to her ever, and she was always beautiful. Carolina and I were brought up to appreciate different qualities like intelligence. This was by far the weirdest family I had met at this point in my life.