“Who’s Edwin?” I whispered. Who could possibly be calling on her so late in the evening?
We could hear the door opening in the foyer as Mrs. Basil E. quietly said to me, “It’s Adwin, not Edwin. He’s originally from Ghana and it was also his father’s, grandfather’s, and great-grandfather’s name.”
“Who is he?”
Adwin arrived in the room before Mrs. Basil E. could answer, but he needed no further explanation. He wore a butler’s uniform and carted in a bottle of champagne on ice, along with champagne glasses, and a tray of chocolate-covered strawberries.
He bowed to Mrs. Basil E. “Madam,” he said formally.
“Thank you, Adwin. Would you care to join us for an après?”
“Thank you kindly, madam. But my children are expecting Christmas presents, which means—”
“You’d better get started on your last-minute shopping?” Mrs. Basil E. asked him.
“Yes. Will you require anything further?”
“No, thank you. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. And good luck with your shopping. I hear that Harry Potter is popular with the young ones.”
“How old are your children?” I asked him.
“Twins. Age four,” Adwin said.
“Too young for HP,” I said. Then, as if I were Dash, the best of anyone I know at book recommendations, I added, “Captain Underpants is your man.”
Adwin bowed to us again. “I’ll take that under advisement. Goodnight.” And he left the Grand Piano Suite.
Seriously, Lily, I said to myself. You just said “Captain Underpants” to a fancy-pants Ghanaian-British butler. You are the definition of uncouth American!
Aloud, I said to Mrs. Basil E., “Seriously … your room came with a butler?!”
“Isn’t he charming? He speaks five languages, he’s a fabulous pinochle player, and he makes the perfect martini. His husband’s a lucky man.” She stepped over to the silver cart with the champagne and strawberries on it. “I thought we should have some champagne.”
“Because you’re toasting my engagement or elopement or … WHAT WERE YOU THINKING EVEN SUGGESTING THAT TO ME AND DASH?”
“Don’t raise your voice at me, young lady. I’m not toasting you. I’m disappointed in you. I thought this difficult conversation would go down better with some quality bubbly.”
I gulped. My heart dropped. But she opened the champagne bottle with a New Year’s Eve flourish and poured us each a glass.
“Why disappointed?” I asked, feeling very, very small. I took a sip of the champagne. It felt crisp in my mouth, with sturdy bubbles that tasted like happy, subtle fireworks going down my throat. It was actually a lovely precursor to being chewed out, as I suspected was about to happen.
“Deciding not to go to college and announcing that by email to someone other than your family is not the way to handle such an important decision.”
“I know,” I mumbled. “Sorry.”
“Which brings us to the second disappointment. You should be apologizing to your mother, not to me. More importantly, your refusal to answer her calls and texts is cowardly, at best. Mean, at worst. You know better.”
“I know,” I repeated. “Sorry.”
“You’ve upset my favorite niece and I don’t appreciate it.”
Hey, wait a minute. “I thought I was your favorite niece.”
Mrs. Basil E. took a sip of her champagne, then said, “Your mother was my first favorite. Here, have a strawberry.”
I’d kind of lost my appetite from being called out, but the strawberry was so perfectly red and so perfectly formed, and the chocolate so looked like it had been melted on by perfect Adwin himself, that it felt rude to decline. I took a bite. I was right. It would have been rude to decline.
“So what should I do?” I asked her.
“You know what to do. Apologize. Take responsibility for your actions. Because otherwise you know what is happening?” I shook my head. “They blame Dash.”
“He had nothing to do with my decision!”
“But they don’t know that, because you haven’t explained it to them. In the absence of your honesty, and clarity, with your parents, the impression you’ve left by darting off to London at Christmas and then suddenly announcing you’re not going to Barnard, is that your boyfriend is your only real priority. They don’t want you to blindly follow Dash.”
“That’s insulting.”
“You have to understand they’re operating from a place of fear, like Fox News viewers. Your parents married young—too young. They’ve done fine, had their ups and downs like any other couple, but they’re at an age where they’re taking stock of their regrets and they’re fearful of you repeating their mistakes. They worry you’re holding yourself back by limiting yourself to one person, so soon. They feel—and so do Grandpa and I—that you’re too young to be in a serious relationship.”
Had she already been drunk when we had afternoon tea earlier that day? “You’re the one who suggested Dash and I get married!”
“I was trying to smoke you out. Gauge your true intentions toward Dash.”
“So Dash was right!”
“He’s too smart for his own good. But yes, he was right. So tell me, Lily. What are your intentions toward Dash? Do you intend to marry him?”
“How would I know? I mean, maybe, in the wayyyyy distant future. I have a lot of things I’d like to accomplish before then. Choosing not to go Barnard has nothing to do with Dash and everything to do with me.”
She nodded. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“I’d like it if Dash and I lived closer. But it’s not going to determine what I do or don’t do in my immediate future.” I took another sip of champagne. This stuff was good! And emboldening. “And another thing! I’m so sick of hearing how I’m too young to be in a serious relationship. If anything, you should be congratulating me for choosing someone like Dash, someone so smart, and kind—”
She waved her hand at me. “Enough of the Dash platitudes. We are all aware of his good qualities. But you’re the baby of the family. We would have liked to see you experience more of the world independently, come into your own on your own. Perhaps you were ready. We weren’t.”
I thought of what my life might have been like in the last two years if I hadn’t been involved with Dash, and I saw a life that might have been just as rewarding, certainly more overprotected … but so much less sweet. It wasn’t that he’d filled some void in my life. He’d enriched it.
I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. “I can’t help loving him. What do you want me to do?”
“Be compassionate. I know you don’t want to be the family baby and of course you shouldn’t have to be. I am saying, be kinder to your parents and grandfather as you become more independent from them. Letting go is harder than you can imagine.”
I could imagine. I let go of my boyfriend so he could follow his dream to Oxford and it had hurt like hell. But it was the right thing to do.
“I’ll try,” I said.
“They think you don’t want to go to Barnard because you don’t want the responsibility of helping care for Grandpa.”