Wilhelmina Price’s office is a traditional, old-monied, oversized space with hardwood floors and bookcase, and a dominating mahogany desk.
My mother sits on one of the light gray sofas that make up the sitting area; my dad has one arm reassuringly wrapped around her shoulders as she sniffles and dabs a tissue to her puffy, red eyes.
Wilhelmina sits behind her desk with an irritatingly concerned expression while Tristan and Philips stand guard on the wall opposite my parents.
The whole situation screams intervention and reminds me of the night I returned from Dartmouth; my irritation flares instantly.
I try to remember Jackson’s words about remaining calm…
That might be difficult.
“Thank you, Miss. Lauren,” says Wilhelmina, dismissing Dee.
“Dee stays,” I say firmly, staring her down. “I don’t like the five on one odds; it gives the impression you’re going to try and railroad me. And given that you all need to answer to me for your behavior and not the other way around, Dee stays.”
I’m as calm as I can be without giving them an inch. I glance at Dee and her eyes are steel and her face as cold as stone, but she gives me a small nod of encouragement. Don’t back down.
After an awkward silence, in which my mother shifts uncomfortably on the sofa and twists the tissue between her fingers, my father is the first to speak.
“Tristan tells us that you will no longer have him as your bodyguard?”
He sounds like he might be in a reasonable mood; Tristan, on the other hand, crosses his arms across his chest and stares me down. He forgets that I know him well enough to see the flash of hurt clouding his eyes. Well, that makes two of us.
“Do you remember the conversation we had the day I got back from Dartmouth? The one where I said you shouldn’t have kept things from me and that if you had anything else to share, now would be the time because I wouldn’t be a doormat? Well, I guess none of you were listening to me when I said that because I definitely should have been informed about how much you intended to spy on me. I agreed to a certain level of security to put your minds at ease, but you have gone way beyond what I gave consent for and your intrusive behavior is a gross abuse of my trust. As I’m not a minor either, your stalker-like activities are illegal. Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”
“You’re our baby,” sobs my mother, pleading with her ‘innocent’ doe-eyed expression that I’m coming to resent. It’s the look that makes everyone cut her slack and indulge her whims. She’s a smart woman; this whole situation is beneath her. I always thought of her as strong, worthy of looking up to, a role model that I was proud of…where has all this neuroticism come from?
“Mom, I love you but I am not a baby and I hate that this compulsion you have over my safety is harming the way I look up at you. I used to admire your strength, your understanding, your compassion…your ability to be a rock for others. But now all I see is a woman who’s figured out how to get whatever she wants from people by acting like an emotionally broken, fragile waif who resolutely refuses to see the consequences of her unreasonableness. And dad, you let her…why is that?”
My mother just blinks at me, shell-shocked.
“You died,” my dad says simply.
Jackson was right; loss makes you do crazy things – even if I did die many years before they were even born. I guess knowing about the supernatural world is one thing, but learning the implications and accepting that existence is quite another.
“You might be surprised to hear that Jackson tried to explain that point of view to me last night. He asked me to bear it in mind today when I saw you. It might surprise you more to learn that his words came after Tristan and Wilhelmina insisted he leave. Perhaps holding a gun at point-blank range to his face now seems a little excessive?” I say the last bit to Tristan and can tell by the shameful expression on his face that he hadn’t shared that piece of information.
“Your death was a result of your relationship with him,” Tristan retorts.
“Over a hundred years ago! It’s fair to say that times have changed, Matthews.”
“You weren’t immortal, that’s why you died. Had you matured and reached your prime then you probably would’ve healed faster than you bled,” says my mother.
That’s always been the suspicion, but they throw this argument around like its fact.
“We did some digging after you told us about your previous life and we were able to confirm that you hadn’t reached your prime,” my dad says.
“Which is why you didn’t survive the attack,” says Wilhelmina.
“You knew as well?” I ask Wilhelmina and she nods.
“And none of you thought this was relevant information that I should, no wait, that I’m entitled to know about myself? Can’t you all see how twisted and damaging these lies are?” I’m losing my grip on calm.
“We have never lied to you,” my mother wails in a desperate justification.
“A lie by omission is still a lie; you have all wilfully kept things from me – twice – and manipulated my love and trust in you so that you could spy on me and keep an alarming level of oversight on my life. It is my prerogative to live my life how I choose and it should be my choice to decide what information I share with you when I see fit. I will not have you dropping into my life unannounced and uninvited, dictating who I can and cannot spend my time with. You do not need to stage some dramatic intervention because I slept with a man I happen to very much like.”
“This isn’t just about you and that boy; there was the incident at his club involving Sophia as well,” says Wilhelmina, while my parents sit disturbingly still and quiet.
“That’s a weak excuse for their presence and you know it. If anyone’s parents should be here because of that, it should be Sophia’s not Emilia’s,” Dee shuts down Wilhelmina’s feeble argument with such chilling authority that even the toughest ice queen would be envious. “Sophia’s parents are probably more stifling than Emilia’s, but I don’t see them descending on campus with bodyguards. I have to wonder if you’ve even bothered to tell them their only child was drugged and nearly molested?”
Wilhelmina’s wide eyes tell me all I need to know. “That’s despicable! You couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone and call them so that Sophia could have their support, but you run off telling tales on me to mine? I’m beyond disappointed in all of you.”
“If Sophia wants her parents then I’ll call them for her,” Wilhelmina’s voice rises with her pathetic attempt to justify herself.
“So, Sophia can have the choice about whether to tell her parents, but me, a twenty-two-year-old woman, I get no say? How can you think that’s right? Do you think it’s healthy for me to have my parents suffocating me like this and for you to be helping them?”
“As a casual observer, I’d say the only people in this room who don’t need a therapeutic intervention are Emilia and I. Were my parents behaving like this and conspiring with my bodyguard and Matron to know my every move, I would probably cut all ties with them for several years until they learned their lesson,” barks Dee.
I love her so much at this moment, as her comment seems to strike home more than anything I’ve said; people are finally starting to look suitably ashamed.