She took a deep breath. “No, Mr. Preston, I’m not kidding you. They found traces of contaminants in the soil. Not exactly ideal for a retirement community.”
“I disagree,” I snapped. “It’s not like it’s a school. These retirement people are on their way out, anyway.”
Molly paused for a beat. “Mr. Preston, what would you like me to do?”
“Deal with it and buy me some time. Hire some independent analysts and get them out there. Today.”
I hung up as we pulled up to my parents’ townhouse. I found myself in serious need of another drink. I needed to be home, managing this land deal that was derailing. Business deals gone wrong were easy for me.
Families gone wrong were an entirely different matter.
“Wait for me here,” I told Kai. My father would be at work, so it would just be me and Mom. Even though I hadn’t seen her in over six months, I hoped I could make a hasty exit.
I braced myself and hit the buzzer.
“James,” my mother said to me, warmly, as I went into their stuffy townhouse. There was floral wallpaper covering the entire entryway, a white background with dark-green jungle-like vines. Looking at it made me feel short of breath, as if the vines were wrapping around my neck.
But then, I always felt like that when I saw my mom.
“Mom, the eighties called—they want their wallpaper back,” I said, hugging her stiffly.
“Wallpaper happens to be very stylish right now,” she said with a sniff, and pulled back to take a look at me. At least I knew I looked good. I had on an expertly tailored Armani suit, Hermes tie, and my plain-old ruggedly handsome James Preston face.
“You look good,” she said. She sounded slightly surprised. She probably thought I’d be drunk already, like at Thanksgiving.
“I always look good, Mother. Just like you.”
My mother did always look good. She’d been a knockout when we were younger—naturally blond, thin, smiling a large, fake smile. She currently maintained a regimen of just the right amount of plastic surgery, Botox, and tennis to keep her looking refreshed.
“Honestly, Mom. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Yes, you do,” she said tightly. “It’s all the boards I chair. Keeps me on my feet and dressing up.”
I snorted. “You know that’s not it,” I said.
“It is if I say so,” she said. That was a classic Celia Preston statement if I’d ever heard one.
I decided to pace myself and not give my mother and all her charitable activities a hard time right away. She’d run around for decades for her boards, pretending to be a saint, while one Guatemalan nanny after another had raised us.
Oh, the irony of my mother’s charities. The Boston Public Library Children’s Room. All that crap she’d done for the importance of healthy meals and fresh vegetables for kids. The woman had never even cooked me a processed chicken nugget. The nanny was the one who taught me the words to Goodnight Moon.
“So,” said my mother, clapping her hands together and breaking my brief reverie. “I’d ask you how your flight was, but I couldn’t care less. Tell me about your new girlfriend!” She slipped her arm through mine and led me to the formal sitting room. In typical Preston fashion, she poured a before-lunch bourbon for me and a larger one for herself.
I gripped it as if it was one of the few life preservers left on the Titanic.
“Tell you what?” I asked.
“To start with, I’d like to at least know her name,” my mother said. “So that we can let Todd and Evie know.”
I winced at the mention of Evie—she was Todd’s fiancée. She was just like my mother. Thin as a rail, all collarbones and wrists, with a perfect outfit for every occasion. I was not looking forward to seeing her.
I took a sip of my bourbon. Oh fuck, I realized, I don’t even have the escort’s name. “You get to meet my girlfriend tonight. All secrets will be revealed then,” I said.
“James, don’t be ridiculous. Tell me about her. We’re all going to be spending the next two weeks together. I’d at least like to be prepared. And since you neither call your family nor return your family’s phone calls,” she sniffed, “this is the one opportunity I’ve got. So stay right there. Don’t look like you’re going to feign an important phone call and run out of here.”
Shit, I thought, and took my hand off the phone in my pocket.
“She’s young, and very pretty,” I said, making an educated guess that both of these things were true. “She’s…in school, still,” I said, trying to remember the story that Elena had come up with. “Grad school.”