Debrah Morris - Tutoring Tucker

The houses she’d grown up in had never been homes. They’d been cold and empty, decorated by professionals, managed by housekeepers and cleaned by maids in gray uniforms. Her mother had floated through the artfully arranged rooms like an amorphous spirit, beautiful and not quite real.

Always untouchable.

“What about my apartment?” Dorian voiced her concern.

“Pru was explicit. You’re to continue living there.”

Relieved, she blinked back another sting of tears. This time they were tears of gratitude—even rarer for her than those of sadness or self-pity.

“But I have no money?” She would have figured her chances of uttering that particular combination of words in her lifetime were considerably less than, ‘I’m catching the red-eye to Mars.”

“Not until your next trust deposit.”

“Which is in September.

“Right.”

“This is June.”

Malcolm consulted his fancy desk calendar. “Correct.”

“I don’t believe this. What am I supposed to do until then? Did Granny Pru leave any words of wisdom before going incommunicado?”

“She said she was confident you could solve this problem on your own. You do come from strong stock, you know.”

“Please, spare me the salt-of-the-earth story. I know all about how great-grandfather Portis started out with nothing but a hundred dollars and a wildcatter’s dream. How he pulled himself up by his bootstraps to build one of the biggest, richest oil companies in Texas.” She pushed out of the chair and paced in front of the desk, her blond bob swinging.

As heir to the Chaco Oil fortune, currently controlled by her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother, she was well acquainted with family propaganda. “What the hell are bootstraps anyway?”

He shuffled papers in an attempt to hide his smile.

“I’m glad you think this is funny, Malcolm. Because I don’t.”

“I think your grandmother hoped you would look at the next ninety days as a learning experience.”

“Right.” Uncertainty coursed through Dorian, an unfamiliar emotion for someone who’d always been sure of her place in the world. Now that world was threatened. How could she manage without her grandmother’s love and support? Her father was dead. Her mother barely deserved the title. Granny Pru was the only person she could depend on. “Does she hate me?”

“You know better,” Malcolm said. “She loves you. Always has.”

“Is she trying to punish me?” Other than being born into the right family, Dorian had done nothing to deserve the advantages handed her on an heirloom silver platter. She had always stuffed the feelings of unworthiness down in the place where she stored all unacceptable emotions.

“I’m sure that’s not the case.”

“Oh, my God.” She stopped pacing and whirled to face him. “Has Granny Pru gone senile? Please tell me she hasn’t lost her mind.”

“No, of course not.” Malcolm dismissed the idea as absurd. “Prudence Channing Burrell is the sharpest, most savvy and sensible woman I know.”

“Then I give up. Did she mention why she feels compelled to turn her only grandchild’s life into a waking nightmare?”

“Actually, she said if you asked, I was to give you a one-word answer.”

“Which would be?”

“Cassandra.” He leaned back in his chair, apparently pleased with his cryptic response.

What did her self-absorbed mother have to do with anything? Pru and Cassandra had engaged in a bitter mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law battle for over two decades. Since John Burrell’s death thirteen years ago, his merry widow had maintained a palatial home in Dallas, but spent most of the year jetting around the country with her snooty, old-money friends. The last Dorian heard she was summering at Hyannis Port, still trying to worm her way into the Kennedy enclave.

Cassandra Burrell hired out unpleasant tasks. She had gardeners to clip hedges, chauffeurs to drive cars, cooks to prepare food and maids to clean up. She would have rented a womb if she hadn’t accidentally gotten pregnant first. Since she found motherhood an especially odious chore, she’d brought in a succession of nannies to perform the duties she found distasteful.

Early on, Dorian had learned to torment and manipulate the poor women paid to care for her. All in the foolish hope that if she could drive them away Cassandra would become a sweet, loving mother who gave hugs and kisses and cuddles. Dorian’s childhood tantrums were legend. If she wanted a bed-time story, she ordered the nanny to read. If she wanted a cookie at five in the morning, she sent the nanny to fetch one. If she flung her expensive clothes from drawers and closets, she waited for the nanny to put them away.

The one thing Dorian had not been able to order was the thing she had longed for most of all. Her mother’s love. She’d given up that dream years ago. “Since when has my mother helped anyone? Especially me.”

“I don’t think Pru meant for you to seek Cassandra’s assistance, Dorian. I believe your mother is meant to be an object lesson for you.”

“A what?”

“Think about it.”

She was thinking, but not about her narcissistic, emotionally distant mother. “Wait. I know! I’ll liquefy something.”

“I assume you mean liquidate.”

Dorian waved her hand. “Whatever. I’ll sell the Mercedes and buy something cheaper, like a Lexus.”

“I don’t think the leasing company would approve of you disposing of their property.”

“Oh. Right.” She flipped a strand of chin-length hair behind her ear. “Tell me again why I lease?”

“Because you like to drive a new vehicle every few months.”

She knew there had to be a reason. “Then I’ll just take out a loan that I can repay in September.”

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear.” Malcolm leaned forward. “Your grandmother has pulled the plug, so to speak, on your finances. All your credit cards have been suspended, including your retail charge accounts. Even if you qualified for a loan, which you don’t since you have no credit history, you could not get one.”

“Why not? I’m a responsible adult.” Legally, at twenty-six she was an adult. But responsible? Dorian tried to recall the name of a girl she’d met in college. She’d worn discount-center clothes and ridden a rusty old bike, but she’d had goals. Purpose. She’d been a responsible adult at seventeen.

Mallory Peterson. Dorian hadn’t thought about the quiet, mousy honor student in years. They’d only spoken once, in the library, when Dorian had asked for help locating a book.

The girl had seemed eager to cultivate Dorian’s interest. Her mother waited tables, her father drove a truck. And yet she wanted to be a doctor, the first in her nowhere, west Texas town. Every month she received a small stipend, donated by townspeople, so she could stay in school and realize her dream. When she earned her medical degree she planned to return to take care of them.

Having earned a full scholarship, Mallory had received her good-faith money because people believed in her. Dorian, on the other hand, had done nothing to deserve the generous allowance her family deemed her due. She was in school because of her grandmother’s influence.

The earnest premed student had made Dorian feel so ashamed she had retreated to her shallow sorority sisters, spurning what might have become a real friendship with a person who could have taught her something about responsibility. Regret weighed like a stone on her mind as she refocused on what Malcolm was saying.

“I think you can forget about a loan, dear. Prudence Burrell’s influence is far-reaching. There’s not a lending institution, pawnshop or loan shark named Guido in the Dallas-Fort Worth area who’d risk giving you a nickel now.”