To be a Wildflower

Chapter 9

Elizabeth knew she was going to be occupied, but not exactly the way fate withheld her to be. On the third day of her stay at the Ritz, Elizabeth received a surprising message on her phone stating that her "special fund" had been officially frozen. All hairs on her body stood on their ends at the sight of this discovery. There was no reason for the bank to freeze her account because Elizabeth knew she was the last person in all of Manhattan to be suspected of illegal transactions after the entire Hartley lineage.

Without saving space for further suspicions and panic attacks in her mind, she called the bank and what she heard on the other end made her lips tremble, and the tips of her fingers tingle with fury. Her eyes filling up with raging tears, she scrolled down her phone and pressed the call button.

A few rings passed before the other end answered.

"Why would you this?" Elizabeth croaked into the phone, trying her best not to raise her voice.

"Elizabeth, you left me no choice- running away so you would never realise what you're losing? I thought we agreed last time was it." Lorraine said in a low stern tone.

"You can't keep worrying about me like this mom and you froze dad's special fund—the one he left for me so I could learn to figure out how to make my own decisions."

"I'm still your mother Elizabeth," she said painstakingly, "and you really think your father would rest okay, seeing you waste your life away?"

"No, don't you dare bring him into our conversations, you know that's not fair," Elizabeth said furiously, and scoffed, " now that I  think about it, you haven't bought him up for the past eight years- he never came up during all those Christmas dinners we had by ourselves or when I graduated or when I needed him to teach me how to dance for prom- and you didn't even mention him to assure me that it was okay to remember him. And NOW you do, only to tell me that I'm wasting away something he left by, like I'm incapable of doing anything., Elizabeth didn't feel the tears dampen her cheeks as memories tumbled after like a gush of untamed waters.

"Liz-

"Don't, please mom, for once," she sighed too weary and hurt to raise her voice, "I don't know how clear I could be when I say I decide who I want to be, the way I want to be, but if my intentions are still smoke and mirrors in your eyes, then do as you please."

Elizabeth hung up in her high strung fury and sat on the edge of her bed as she waited for her fury to fade away, but instead she curled up on the edge of her bed and let the gasping sobs kill her insides for the hundredth time that she had duelled with her mother.

Elizabeth's eyes kept glancing towards her phone as she had never been enraged enough to hung up on her mother, but the screen remained a stagnant empty void. closing her eyes shut as the pain ebbed into her chest, she pulled the comforter around her helplessly.

Hoping she could have booked the rest of her stay at the Ritz when she visited Chelseaville, Elizabeth had only paid up for four nights and without her father's fund to back her up, Elizabeth only had a few old hundred dollars from her Starbucks shifts. She had no choice but to search for new grounds, hence the following day Elizabeth bid Linda goodbye, even though she had offered to weasel her way into the hotel manager's softer sides, Elizabeth refused, because a part of her didn't want to fight back.

Rolling her luggage behind her on the gravely streets, Elizabeth headed towards Bitsy's, the only place she had felt remotely familiar with, for a throat and soul dissolving cup of leathery coffee that would numb her insides.

It took this particular morning in Chelseaville for Elizabeth to realise that stilettos were not  preferred foot wear on a gritty secret pathway under the fiercest heat she had encountered-the  Main Street was laid out smooth, but it was longer and Elizabeth was down to a few hundred dollars in her own account which meant she had to cut out every form of comfort for a while. The only comfort she had was the return ticket packed away in her luggage safely, but the possibility of living off the streets for two whole weeks made the last fancy breakfast from the Ritz leap up to her throat.