Michelle Monkou - The One That I Want

What did bring him there? A need. One that gnawed at his center. Although he suffered no physical pain, he felt a heaviness as the day broke and the hours until his parents’ departure grew closer.

“Thought you might need a hand. No matter how much you plan, there is always something that goes off-script. Decided to pop over, just in case...” He shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it on a chair and joined her with inspecting the higher out-of-reach cabinets.

“We’re fine. Movers will be here within the hour. And I do have one more day before boarding the plane.” She paused and a hint of a frown flittered on her forehead. “You, however, don’t have one more day to face your destiny.”

Dresden stared into the empty space of a cabinet. Not a speck of dirt in sight. However, his mood mirrored the bleak emptiness of the shelves. The void in his soul couldn’t give a glimpse of the future, and it didn’t offer any solutions, either.

The blame for his unsettled feelings sat squarely at one person—Verona, his birth mother—and her family, the Meadowses.

His parents, whom he refused to think of in any other capacity, had never hid the fact that he was adopted. They’d never shared the details, allowing him to choose whether he wanted to know. And he didn’t. Had no desire to unseat his parents from their position in his life.

But when Grace Meadows took his choice away with her revealing letter, the surprise had sucked the breath out of his lungs. She’d forced him to face the truth, to acknowledge that another woman and her family were connected to him. Her entreaty, though polite, had shredded his world, leaving him to question how he should or should not feel.

Then, like an encore performance, Leo Starks, her lawyer, further made inroads with his heartbreaking story about the loss of his family and finding love again with Fiona, Grace’s granddaughter. That same granddaughter, his half sister, had managed to breach his defensive wall with her fresh outlook and honesty, to extend a hand of friendship. One that he’d accepted, but not without conditions. He wanted nothing to do with Verona—the woman who’d given birth to him.

Despite his rules of engagement, because he was a Meadows, with their international news and lifestyle media empire, the media spotlight had turned on him. Why did the Meadowses have the power to whip up a fog of confusion around his life?

Dresden sighed, wishing for more palatable options to materialize for his sake.

“You’ve got to attend Grace Meadows’s birthday party.” Charlotte had a knack for delivering the toughest messages wrapped in soothing tones and gentle smiles. “You’ve already booked your flight for tonight. No procrastinating.”

“I can meet them anytime.”

“It’s your grandmother’s eightieth birthday.”

“Grace.” He couldn’t help the correction. Only in his thoughts did he play with such familiar terms of his birth family. Grandmother. Mother. Sister. But to say those words aloud and attach them to the respective member of the Meadows family—well, he couldn’t stop the constriction that gripped his throat when he envisioned the scenario.

“Go celebrate Grace’s life. She would love seeing you there.”

“How would you know?” He turned his back and busied himself with inspecting another set of cabinets.

“Because I want them to see what a wonderful and respectable man you’ve turned out to be.”

Throughout his childhood, to him, his mother was the average working mom. To his school friends, she had this larger-than-life persona, like a female Indiana Jones, who wasn’t afraid to work in faraway, sometimes dangerous, places.

“Ah...so that’s the true reason you want me to go. For your glory,” he teased.

“Can you blame me? We’d hoped you’d be prepared for this eventuality. That’s why we never hid your adoption from you. Nothing to be ashamed or afraid of by you or by us. Besides, you’re a dashing gentleman. With a forgiving heart...right?”

Dresden’s laughter erupted into a roar that took a few seconds to die down. “You certainly know how to flatter and sway the wind to your favor.”

“That’s how I got your dad.” Charlotte retrieved his jacket, handing it to him. Then she slipped her hand through his arm. “Now, come with me.” She tightened her grip and walked him out of the kitchen and down the hallway. “You shouldn’t waste another minute trying to figure out your next step. You already know.”

“I’m feeling manhandled,” he protested.

“And you’d be absolutely right.” They made it into the foyer. Her hand still wound around his arm.

“Is that you, Dresden? I’m coming right down.” His father’s footsteps crossed the room overhead.

“No need to come down, Patrick,” his mother shouted up the stairs. “He’s heading out now.” She opened the door and, with more muscle than Dresden was prepared for, pushed him outside onto the porch.

“Really, you want me to go hobnob with the Meadowses.” All kidding aside, Dresden couldn’t believe how adamant his mother was on the issue.

“Yep, pretty much. I want you to be kind and make that old woman happy.”

“I agree with your mother. Go and show respect for your elders.” His father popped into view next to his wife.

They were the trifecta of a perfect match, with brains, beauty and marital bliss. Way beyond his talent and abilities. His parents were a unique couple who enjoyed their intense, but sometimes chaotic, lives. To Dresden, they had set the bar on life and love way too high for him to successfully follow.

“Don’t think she’d want to be called old,” Dresden muttered. Suffering under the wintry conditions, his teeth chattered, joining in with the uncontrollable shivering of his body.

“Good. Later you can share with me what other things she doesn’t like.”

“I didn’t say that I’d go.”

“They aren’t the bad guys in your story. Right now, it might feel that way. But, trust me, after a few more decades of life under your belt, you may feel differently.”

“Well, until that time comes—”

His mother interrupted with her palm raised in the universal stop sign. “We’ll see you in the spring. Skype and FaceTime will be our means for chatting. I do love you, son. But you’ve got a birthday party to run off to. Stop dawdling.”

The door closed. Lock turned.

Dresden blew on his frozen fingers, hoping she was kidding. Not until his ears started to suffer from stinging numbness did he declare defeat. Dresden flipped up the collar of his jacket to ward off the frigid temperature. He headed toward his car to retreat from the battle.

* * *

Laxmi Holder’s party days were long over. Now she was staying out of the spotlight, in case any lingering fans recognized her; that had prompted her low profile, especially on social media. Now she was the average citizen, trying to get her daily hustle on from her home base of Brooklyn instead of Los Angeles. From being a singer to managing one, she had switched viewpoints on the same playground.

Returning home meant that she could either reestablish her friendships or make new ones. Her retention rate on that front was abysmal, except for one friend—Fiona Meadows—with whom she really wanted to invest the time to rebuild their bond.

She reread the invitation that Fiona had hand-delivered to her. The Meadowses were celebrating the matriarch’s—Grace’s—birthday. It took a bit of cajoling from Fiona to get her to respond in the affirmative.

The excitement over going to the media mogul’s birthday gave way to a case of dread a few hours before she was due to leave for the party. She wasn’t a celebrity—got close, though. Then her career had suffered a fast-burn to nothing.