Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80652 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80652 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
But I’ve never been good at letting go of the past—or accepting defeat.
“You should get to bed,” I tell Scarlett when she yawns.
“Yeah.” Her eyes grow heavy lidded.
“When are you seeing Elle again?” I ask before I forget.
She begins to respond—until her cell phone rings and her eyes widen.
“What? Who is it?” I ask.
Lifting her phone, she swallows. “It’s Mom.”
I grip the arms of my chair and bite my tongue. In the four months I’ve had custody of Scarlett, Lexi has reached out maybe twice. And the only reason she contacted me the second time was to ask if I’d cover her past-due electric bill, as her power was about to be shut off and it was the middle of winter.
“Hey, Mama,” Scarlett says, picking up on the fourth ring as our eyes lock from across the room. “Been trying to call you, but your phone was shut off . . .”
I don’t have to hear the other half of the conversation to know Lexi’s feeding her daughter a buffet of bullshit excuses, but I withhold a reaction for Scarlett’s sake.
Scarlett’s silence tells me her mother’s asking questions, and she looks to me, eyes growing glassy.
“Oh, you know, it’s . . .” Scarlett’s voice breaks when she tries to speak. “Hang on, Mama. Uncle West, I’m going to my room.”
“Good night, Scarlett.” I watch her disappear into the hallway, swallowed up by the darkness, and then I listen for her door to close.
The thought of Lexi filling her daughter’s head with false hope and empty promises washes my thoughts in tension before drowning them completely. And I know from experience, given that my mother was the same way. She wasn’t addicted to the hard stuff by any means, but she was all talk and no action. I lost track of how many times she’d sworn to me she was coming to my baseball game—her eyes all light and her smile stretching wide—only to pull a no-show. She did the same to my brother too. He was more forgiving, always giving her a million chances.
He and Scarlett are cut from the same cloth in that way.
No matter what Lexi says or does, Scarlett’s going to love her . . . hell, even idolize her. It’s just the way it is. As a child, Scarlett doesn’t have the capacity to know the difference between her mother’s love and her mother’s blatant carelessness. It doesn’t help that it’s easy to like Lexi, despite her flaws. She’s a good-time girl. Always smiling. Forever the life of the party. When she talks to you, she makes you feel like she’s known you a million years.
Despite her numerous fuckups and gross parental negligence, I often have to remind myself Lexi was nothing more than a kid raising a kid. She didn’t have the resources or emotional capacity to give Scarlett everything she needed. I hoped, with time, she would grow into it. But some people are just sort of . . . stuck.
I suspect Lexi will forever be stuck at seventeen in mind and spirit.
In the early years, when Scarlett was a toddler and I was beginning to rake in money from my social media channels, I’d send Lexi cash now and then. And as my income stream billowed with every passing month, I’d send more. Eventually I purchased a small house for the two of them and a reliable and economical car for Lexi, and set up an automatic monthly stipend so she didn’t have to work.
Erroneously, I believed that if I gave Will’s girls everything they needed, they’d be set. Lexi wouldn’t have to work or worry about money, and Scarlett would have a full-time mom dedicated to her every need.
But everything backfired as soon as Scarlett hit kindergarten. Once she was in school full time, Lexi saw an opportunity to reclaim her youth and wash her hands of responsibility, if only for a few hours a day.
A hometown acquaintance of mine kept tabs on them at my request, filling me in on Lexi’s latest activities and comings and goings. At the time, I was still building my empire, putting in eighty-hour weeks and in no condition to so much as think about raising a child. So I continued to write checks and wire money and keep an eye on things from afar. But nothing was improving. If anything, Lexi’s day drinking and partying were growing worse by the minute. By the time Scarlett hit second grade, I’d hired a full-time nanny to help Lexi—a stand-in for myself. A responsible adult to take her to school on time, make her three meals a day, and ensure she had clean laundry and some semblance of a “normal” childhood at all times.
But no one ever stayed more than a few months at a time. I suspect Lexi found Scarlett bonding more with the nanny of the month than with her, and her jealousy was triggered. One by one, she ran them off.