Survival of the Richest

4. Temporary

I wake up gasping for air, a nightmare of being submerged in water pressing against my consciousness. My muscles ache as I stretch in the bunk, looking up at familiar knots in the ceiling. What the hell did I dream about? There’s grit in my eyes as if I spent all evening at a bonfire, drinking cheap beer from a plastic cup and ignoring the frat boys on the beach.

My mind moves slow and careful. I’m not sure I want the memory that happens next, but it comes anyway. Not a nightmare. Not a dream. I fell overboard last night.

And Christopher Bardot saved me.

That would be shocking, but not as shocking as the memory of him naked in the moonlight, climbing into bed, his warm skin flush against mine. He’s gone now, enough that I would think it really could have been a dream. Except for the faint scent of him that remains, something woodsy and male that managed to survive a dip in the Atlantic.

My phone rings from the nightstand, my mother’s picture flashing on the screen. It’s a photo I took when she was laughing at the beach and didn’t think I was watching her. Completely different than the beauty queen smile she uses when looking at a camera. There’s a bittersweet sensation whenever I think about her when I’m with Daddy, a feeling of betrayal I can’t shake for loving him even though he hates her so much.

“Hey, Mom.”

“You didn’t call to say you got there safely,” she says, a small pout in her voice.

“s**t. I’m sorry. I should have texted at least.”

“That’s okay. I’m sure you’re busy there.”

That’s my opening to tell her about Daddy’s new wife. She used to scoop every detail out of me like I was a melon, hollowed out and left dry. “Mostly I’ve been sleeping.”

“Are you still in bed?” she asks, laughing a little. “Me too.”

That makes me smile. “You should be relaxing. You’re a free woman. Stay out late. Go to a party. You don’t have a kid at home to take care of.”

“I don’t think I’ve had to take care of you since you were eight.”

That’s probably true. I was the one who brought her breakfast and her medicine in the morning. I signed my own permission slips and called the driver when my art club meeting ended.

“How is he?” she asks, her voice soft and a little sad.

“He’s good. Same old Daddy.”

“And his… family?”

“I’m not sure. His new wife seems okay. She mostly just ignores me, which is fine. She has a son, though. He’s… older.”

She must sense something in my words, because her tone changes. “How much older? He isn’t being a bully, is he? Or worse?”

“It’s nothing like that,” I promise her, because I wouldn’t put it past her to fly out to Logan International by tonight if I didn’t reassure her.

She felt terrible about the job-website man. He’d needed to get drunk to come into my bedroom, which means his reflexes were slow. I ran out and woke up Mom, who had us out of the mansion and in a motel room by morning.

“Christopher’s nice, actually. Nicer than I expected.”

A pause. “Don’t get too close, Harper. It’s only temporary.”

I can’t blame her for the warning. She knows all too well how temporary being the wife of Graham St. Claire can be. Theirs had been a whirlwind relationship, the kind that every man and woman envied. By all accounts, even their own, they had been in love.

And then something had happened. To this day I still don’t know what.

Now they hate each other. It scares me when I think about it, how two people can go from love to hate so quickly. It scares me enough that I try not to think about it. About the way Daddy could have given her enough money to be set for life, it would have been pennies to him, but he denied her everything that wasn’t court-ordered out of spite. The child support they negotiated was contingent on a third party auditing her bank account to make sure every cent of it goes to my care. If she eats a Snickers bar purchased from his check, he could sue.

If that’s what happens to people in love, I don’t want any part of it.

I find Daddy at the breakfast table, the newspaper propped open like I knew it would be. He’s not content without reading three newspapers every morning, even when we’re on a trip. It comes ferried to us via a speedboat at five a.m., along with fresh supplies because God knows what we would do without catch-of-the-day lobster for dinner every night.

“Morning,” he says without looking up.

I dig in the pile for the Art & Style section, like I always do. Other kids may have read Garfield, but I’ve always been a museum opening kind of girl. “Good morning.”

A chocolate chip pancake appears in front of me, the butter melting in a delicious puddle. I’m a continent away from our apartment in LA, but it might as well be a different planet. I don’t have to use my lunch money to tip the bellman so word doesn’t get back that we’re flat broke. Don’t have to work an evening shift at the deli down the block to pay the bills.

“How’s your mother?” The question comes in that neutral voice, so without inflection that it conveys everything. The way they end up screaming at each other on the phone. The very careful way that Daddy agrees to pay for my prep school tuition and room-and-board fees in a private suite—but nothing else. On that point he stands firm.

I once told my friend in middle school, because she didn’t understand how the daughter of a billionaire couldn’t afford to take the school trip to France. I would be pissed, she said, sounding scandalized. Like he’s trying to control you with money, even though he has so much. It doesn’t make me angry, because I know he has terrible and complicated feelings about money.

Terrible and complicated feelings about money, like my mother.

It’s something we pass down through generations, like a grandfather clock that chimes every time your bank account rises or falls. A legacy and a family curse. I’m not naive enough to think I’ll manage to escape that.

“Good,” I say, because we decided a long time ago, when I was only ten, that it was me and her against the world. If I tell Daddy what it’s like when she’s between husbands, how it feels to be hungry or cold, he’ll take me away from her.

“And how’s school?”

“I’m working on a sculpture for the spring art festival. My teacher said it’s inspired and strange and sinister. That’s a direct quote.”

Daddy gives me a fond look, mixed with the kind of bemusement he’s always given me. It would be so much easier if I loved the stock market or international law. “Christopher told me about last night.”

Panic squeezes my throat. That bastard.

Maybe it’s not fair to get mad at someone who saved my life, but still. He seemed like he was going to be cool about it. I’m two seconds away from saying, He took a drag of the weed too! Before reason prevails. Never give them eight words when two will suffice.

“He did?”

“I had half a mind to wake you up, make sure you get on the East Coast schedule right away. Christopher told me he heard you playing music until late, so we decided to let you sleep in.”

For a second I’m struck by the horror of Daddy walking in on me and Christopher, both naked and tangled beneath the sheets. That’s only superseded by the horror of him knowing that I fell overboard last night. Thank God someone woke up early—and that someone appears at the table, looking annoyingly well rested compared to the bags that must be under my eyes.

“Are you a vampire?” I demand as he pours himself a cup of coffee.

“Don’t mind her,” Daddy warns in a tone that says teenage girls are stupid. I’m hardly the person to disprove that, but it has way more to do with changing prep schools every single year than the fact that I have a v****a. It’s easier to let everyone think I don’t care.

“I have been known to order my steak rare,” Christopher offers.

I nod in satisfaction. “You have that whole old-soul thing going on. No wonder you’re getting straight A’s. You probably wrote the textbook when you were a professor. And now you have to get a new degree as someone else or people will get suspicious.”

“The typo on page seventy-eight haunts me to this day,” he says in a grave voice.

Daddy stares at me like I’m speaking a different language. “I don’t suppose it factors into this conversation that vampires aren’t real?”

“Not with that attitude, they aren’t.”

A slow smile spreads on Christopher’s face, and my breath stutters. It’s the kind of smile so rare and precious it could be sold at Sotheby’s. Quality, the auctioneer would say, standing in front of the well-dressed crowd, in its raw, natural state. The world is going to want that smile. It’s going to polish him into a sharp geometric shape, hard and gleaming. And it will be worth more money than God.