Peyton Church is a city girl by anyone's standards. Born and raised in New York City, she grew up wanting for nothing. She attended the most prestigious preparatory schools, shopped on Fifth Avenue, dined with the rich and famous and was adored by...
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I'D COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN I'd bought my prom dress back in January, until I came home from work this afternoon, and found the dress hanging on the back of my bedroom door.
"Um, Mom?" I call down the stairs, having found the dress after going into my room to change out of my work clothes.
Her face appears at the bottom of the stairs, peering up at me and wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. "Yeah?"
"Why is there a dress hanging in my room?" I point over my shoulder towards the door she can't actually see.
Mom cocks her head to the side. "Your dad called when it got delivered to his apartment last week, asking what to do with it. I asked him to send it here."
Now, I know that's a lie. My dad is still pissed off that I bailed on the Columbia interview and left New York without telling him. He hasn't talked to me since, which leads me to believe Mom had to use some pretty, pretty words to get him to send this dress.
"Why?"
She furrows her brow, looking puzzled by my twenty-questions. "It's your prom dress, Peyton. I assumed you would want to wear it to your prom."
"Mom," I heave a sigh. "I'm not going to prom."
I'm pretty sure my mom has been preparing for her only daughter to go to prom since she found out I was a girl. Even as absent as she was before the divorce, I could always count on her to gush about gowns and shoes and hairstyles. She'd been so excited when I'd been asked to the prom as a junior, and now that my time has come to go to my own celebration, I'm basically crushing her dreams.
"Peyton, honey," she starts, and I know I'm in for it. "I know things have been rough for you lately, and I'm so sorry for that. But you've been waiting for your prom since Junior High. Are you sure you don't want to go? At least for a little bit?"
With a sigh, I walk down a couple of steps and sit on the worn carpet halfway down the staircase. "Mom, it's not your fault things blew up. I played with fire, and I ended up getting burned."
She leans against the wall, her lips twisting into a sad smile. "And you've taken responsibility for that. I'm very proud of you for that, by the way."
Telling my mom the things I had done was possibly the hardest part of this whole situation. When I said my actions had no consequences at the time, I'd thought it was because my parents didn't care what I did, as long as the family name remained intact. But when I'd sat down on the couch with Mom and told her everything, she'd burst into tears.
Turns out, my father's indiscretions ran deeper than just affairs.
I was fully aware my father had swept some of my more colorful misdemeanors and behaviors under the rug over the years. More than a handful of strategic donations to the school had gotten me out of many detentions, usually for truancy or dress-code violations. I'd never been arrested for underage drinking, and not because I'd never gotten caught. No, because my father was friends with the police commissioner, as well as the mayor, and was very supportive of his campaign come election time. What I didn't know was that he'd kept it all from my mom as well. Sure, she knew about me stumbling home drunk on weekends and skipping class once in a while. But she didn't know about the worst of it, not by a long shot.
