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I took the box and turned toward the waiting car. We had to get the Maybach out to Sagaponack, anyway, where Tony would be moving into the staff quarters. The mover rolled down the truck door and slapped it as he headed toward the passenger seat.
When Neil got in beside me, I avoided eye contact. I just held the stupid, incriminating box in my lap.
“Shall I put that in the trunk, with the rest of valuables?” he asked, and I burst into tears.
“I am so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was in the store, and that weird neighbor put me on the spot, and the sales people were so snotty and it was like I was living in that scene in that old movie—”
“Dear god, tell me you aren’t referring to Pretty Woman as ‘that old movie,’” he said, seemingly more concerned with that aspect of the whole fiasco than with my transgression.
I couldn’t stop my shame from rolling out in a wave of incrimination. “I didn’t really want the bag, but I did, and it’s so pretty and my mom is still living in a trailer and I’m about to move into this enormous house and I bought a hundred-thousand-dollar purse, Neil! A fucking purse! I don’t even know who I am anymore!”
“Sophie, I don’t care about the purse.” He reached for my hand. “Truly, I don’t care.”
I raised my head and met his gaze through watery eyes. “But you’ve been so stressed out lately about money—”
“I’ve been stressed because my only daughter is getting married,” he admitted patiently. “And yes, it is costing me a small fortune. But we’re in no danger of becoming impoverished. My companies are doing well, I pay tax, and I have a very diverse portfolio. Unless something truly catastrophic happens to the world infrastructure, we’ll always have more money than we can spend. And your book is doing so well, it isn’t as though you couldn’t afford that bag on your own.”
He had a point there. I’m Just The Girlfriend had earned out its advance in a month, and when India had given me a projected royalty figure, I’d almost passed out.
Still, it seemed so wasteful, especially when I considered the long hours my mother worked just to keep her head above water. We’d spent my entire childhood one paycheck away from disaster at all times.
“I’m just… I’m really ashamed.” I shrugged. “I can’t get used to all of this. Coming from the way I lived, the way my family still lives… It feels wrong.”
Neil sat silently for a moment, before suggesting, with all the gentleness of a man handling a live grenade, “Do you think perhaps you might simply be reacting to the stress of this move? You’ve never owned property before, and this isn’t exactly a starter home. It’s perfectly natural that you would be nervous.”
“It’s not that, it’s…” I waved my hand. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m stressed. I can’t even finish a complete sentence.”
“Can I at least see the bag?” Neil asked with a crooked smile. “It must be awfully special.”
I lifted the top off the box. Inside, nestled in crisp, carefully folded tissue paper, a drawstring linen bag with the Hermés logo held the purse itself. I was almost afraid to look at it; I hadn’t seen it since it had been boxed up.
Neil took an audible breath at the sight of the pale alligator leather. “Oh, that is… Well, I can see why it would cost so much.”
Of course he would. The man knew leather, owing to his ridiculous shoe fetish. He reached out with two fingers—I swear his hand trembled—and stroked the glossy alligator as though he were petting a baby duck.
“Oh, Sophie. This is exquisite, really.” He shook his head. “If you don’t want it, I’ll carry it. I would not give a single fuck, to borrow one of your phrases.”
Why was it that he could always say just the right thing to turn my mood around? “You’re really not mad?”
“I’ll admit, I was a bit upset when I got the statement and saw that you’d spent so much without mentioning it to me. But you’d never been comfortable buying even a pack of gum without some kind of tearful admission after the fact. I thought perhaps it was a particularly expensive form of personal growth.”
I couldn’t help my tearful laugh. “I am really sorry, though.”
“I don’t mind if you spend our money, just tell me about large purchases. I may have more money than God, but I do need to keep my books balanced.”
The ride out to the new house was long and gave me a good idea of how hellish a commute by car would be. I couldn’t imagine a two-hour drive into the city every day, but Neil seemed positively invigorated by the idea.
“You know, I have the Ferrari out of storage,” he said, almost bouncing in his seat. “This drive would be nothing at all in the Ferrari.”
“No!” I knew what “nothing at all” meant. It meant he was having visions of blasting down the highway at insane speeds.
He frowned at me. “Sophie, I’m retired. I have to make my own fun.”
“Your own fun should never include super cars and speeding tickets.”
“Then we have vastly different ideas about what constitutes ‘fun’,” he grumbled.
Since we’d flown in to see the property before, I’d never gotten a look at the driveway and front gate. And there really was a gate. A towering black wrought iron gate set into an intimidating, twelve-foot high, native-stone wall. We stopped at the security box while Tony entered the code, and the gates swung inward. We drove through, and they closed behind us. On the other side of the wall was a guardhouse, with a uniformed security guard sitting inside.
