“It wasn’t like that.” I stood up, my temper flaring through my panic. “I never once used Wesley. I didn’t ask him about Cash, and we didn’t talk about Cash. I was there to spend time with him. That’s it.”
Cash snorted, then reached up and unclipped the microphone from the back of his shirt. Fishing the cord out, he undid the sound pack and dropped it on the center of the table. “Wesley.” He held out his hand to his younger brother. “Come on. Let’s get you back to the Ranch.”
“Ice cream first,” Wesley said, heaving to his feet. “Dad promised.”
"Okay," Cash said softly…
This couldn't be happening. Not here. Not in front of my parents, and his parents, and the crew and cameras. I went to follow him, and he held up a hand, stopping me.
"Stay here unless you want me to file charges against you for inappropriate behavior with a minor."
"I'm not sure that we shouldn't be doing that anyw—" His mom rose halfway out of the couch.
"Don't." He threatened her with a glare. She fell back into the seat.
I watched him walk out, his hand on Wesley's shoulder, his head tilted toward him as the teenager spoke. A sob clogged my throat, and I wasn't sure if it was over losing Cash or his brother.
We'd only had four days together. It wasn't fair for this to crash already.
The room fell silent. Jocelyn looked toward me, and I hovered in place, torn between running after him and sinking through the floor. “I was just volunteering,” I said weakly. “That was it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with helping others out.” My mom pushed to her feet and came to stand beside me, briskly rubbing her free hand up and down my arms while she took a sip of wine. Someone had refilled her glass. “You did nothing wrong, Emma.”
“She slept with my son!” Jocelyn sputtered.
"I didn't sleep with Wesley. You don't know what you're talking about."
"Well, we'll see about that." Jocelyn reached for her coat and stood, folding the thick garment over one arm. She smoothed a hand over the top of her perfect blond coif. The gesture was so familiar that my mind stumbled, struggling to pair her threats with my memories of Adel. "I'm sure the security tapes at the Ranch will provide our attorneys with everything they need."
"Now, wait just a minute," my dad said sharply. "My family might have one impression from your show, but I've read the articles about you. You ditched your disabled son off at a place for strangers to care for him, and now you're accusing my daughter of improper behavior based on something he said?"
"He has Down's Syndrome, he's not a liar," Jocelyn said haughtily.
"He's not lying,” I spoke up. “I was hiding from the reality show cameras in his room one night. But go ahead and pull the tapes. You'll see me leaving his room around 2 A.M.. But I would never behave inappropriately to Wesley. We played cards, and video games, and split some food. Nothing else."
No one was listening to me. Certainly not the cameras, which had already swung back to Jocelyn. Had someone already called the press? Where was Michelle? How many crew members had their phones out, recording this?
This was the end of everything. My relationship. My career. The love of my followers. No one supported the seduction of a boy with disabilities.
I don't know what Jocelyn said, I missed it in my despair, but whatever it was caused my mother to toss her wine glass forward. I watched in slow motion as the red liquid sloshed out of the wide neck of the cup and splattered over Jocelyn's cream top and lips.
Jocelyn gawked, her chin dropping as she surveyed the damage, then let out a blood-curdling scream and rushed forward, claws extended, toward my mother.
At that point, the threats of a lawsuit got lost. Dad stood, Mr. Mitchell stood, and the cameras caught everything as food, wine, and fists began to fly.
As it turns out, trailer park and Beverly Hills parents aren't that different. Add in alcohol and insults, and hell breaks loose.
“Gosh, that fight. It was beautiful. All of the elements you want. I mean, this was Jerry Springer stuff. We had the screaming and hair pulling, and coming from Jocelyn Mitchell. Jocelyn Mitchell! It was the most glorious footage I ever filmed, and we got it at 60 frames per second, which allowed us to slow it down later without losing quality. Unfortunately, it was only forty-seven seconds of gold before the women were out of breath, and the men were pulling them apart, but that was all I needed. Those forty-seven seconds allowed me to sell that entire season—and I did. Six languages and forty-two countries.
We tried to get the couples back into formation and talking like civilized individuals, but they weren't having any of that. Jocelyn and Rob Mitchell swept out of that living room with threats to sue us into oblivion, while Tonya and Ted Ripplestine starting cleaning up the mess they had made. That footage helped Emma. Her trailer-trash mom with that horrible hairdo, on her knees, picking up pieces of finger sandwiches. It would have been better if Emma had been there beside her, but we lost her during the fight. Five cameras and twenty crew, and we somehow missed her exit."
Dana Diench, Producer, House of Fame
72
#brothers
CASH
I drove my car, with Wesley buckled into the passenger side. He fiddled with the controls, lifting the seat until it was so high he had to turn his head to one side.
"Ca, look!"
I glanced at him. “Funny, bud. You like that?”
“It’s tickling my butt.” He giggled.
“Those are the seat massagers. Lower your seat a little, you’re going to hurt your neck.”
“It’s fine.” His seat reclined back a little, and I switched the visual display to show the seat controls. Tapping the screen, I lowered his seat until his head righted into its normal position.
“Awww.” He frowned.
“Think about it. You can’t eat ice cream sitting like that.”
He nodded. “Yes. Smart.”
He bobbed his head to the music and looked out the window. “Which ice cream are we going to?”
“Your choice.”
“Jeremiah’s,” he said with finality.
“Okay.” I moved into the left lane.
“I haven’t had Jeremiah’s in twenty years.”
I smiled despite the circumstances. “It hasn’t been that long.”
“Fifty years,” he corrected.
"Maybe two years." I thought of the last time I took him out of the Ranch. It had been his birthday, and I'd taken him to the beach. He couldn't swim, but we'd built a sandcastle and gotten a snow cone. He'd returned to the Ranch with a slight sunburn and a new Lakers jersey, one he vowed to wear every day for the rest of his life.
"We should get ice cream for Miss E." He smoothed down the front of his shorts. "She likes strawberry with chocolate."
My hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Wes, why didn’t you tell me about Emma—Miss E?”
He laughed. “I have told you about her.” And yes, he had, but he hadn’t told me enough, not enough for me to understand that Missy was Miss E was Emma.