her mother said hotly. “How will this look to people? How can I face my friends?” She crossed her too-thin arms over her narrow chest, but not tightly enough to wrinkle the cream-colored silk blouse she wore tucked into the waistband of linen pants the color of wheat. Margaret’s elegantly styled hair was short and dyed honey-blond every four weeks. Her manicure was perfect, her makeup expertly applied, and her unlined face was a billboard for the best cosmetic surgeons in the city.
“Mother—”
“Don’t speak to me.”
“If we keep the ceremony quiet,” Donald Prentice mused more to himself than anyone else, “it’s possible—”
“What?” Margaret turned on her husband like a cobra. “That no one will notice when Julia’s body begins to swell? People will notice, I assure you. And my friends will never let me forget that I’m a grandmother, for pity’s sake.”
It was as if Julia wasn’t even present. They talked around her, over her, about her, as if she wasn’t their daughter at all, but some annoying distant relative who’d made a claim on them they didn’t care to acknowledge.
This she was used to. She’d grown accustomed to being nothing more than an annoyance to the people who should have loved her the most. Her succession of nannies had given her the only affection she’d known in her childhood, and as she grew older, Julia had realized that her parents had never wanted children in the first place.
At fifteen, she’d actually heard her mother telling a friend one day about “accidentally” getting pregnant and what a horror it had been. Julia glanced around the living room of the home where she’d grown up and realized that she’d never once felt comfortable there. Never once had she felt as though she belonged.
And that still held true. The walls were a glaring white with only a few abstract paintings lending garish splotches of color to the cold room. The floors were white tile and the chairs and couches, upholstered in subtle, differing shades of beige, were designed more for appearance than comfort. Even the smell of the house was sterile, as if the air in the place had long since died and was only being recycled by the people who continued to breathe it.
Rubbing at her temples, Margaret glared at Julia. “Who, may I inquire, is the father of this unfortunate child?”
Julia squirmed in her chair and cupped one hand over her still-flat abdomen as if she could prevent her baby from hearing its grandparents’ dismissal of its very existence. “His name is Max. Max Rolland.”
Margaret frowned, though her too-tight forehead prevented it from showing. “Rolland. Hmm. No, I don’t believe I know any Rollands. Donald?”
Julia waited, knowing that this news would completely wipe away her parents’ fury at hearing about the baby. Discovering that their only child was about to marry a man with no pedigree would put everything else they’d heard into perspective for them.
Strangely enough, Julia was almost looking forward to their reaction.
“Max Rolland …” Her father repeated the name thoughtfully.
“Who are his people?” Margaret demanded.
“His parents have passed away,” Julia told her.
“I didn’t ask where they were,” Margaret reminded her, “I said who are they?”
“I know the name Rolland,” her father said from his chair. “I just can’t place it.”
“Max is from upstate,” Julia told her mother. Then, smiling, she took a breath and added, “His father was, I believe, a truck driver and his mother was a housewife.”
Margaret slapped one hand to her chest and staggered backward as if someone had shoved a sword through her body.
“Rolland!” Donald Prentice shouted the name and pounded one fist against the arm of his chair. “That’s how I know the name. That upstart running roughshod over Wall Street. He’s made something of a name for himself, but—”
“A truck driver?” Margaret moaned softly, dropped back into her chair and lifted one hand to cover her eyes. “Oh, dear God, how did this happen?”
Julia paid no attention to the drama. “Max is very successful,” she said. “He’s a … good man.” That might have been a bit of a stretch, she told herself, but at the same time, she realized that only a good man would have proposed to help her out. Whether he saw it that way or not, if he’d been a different sort of man, he’d have left her to solve her own problem or drown in her own misery.
“A housewife?” Margaret whispered the word as if afraid someone might hear her.
“People say he’s cold and ruthless,” Donald was saying, though his wife wasn’t listening and Julia didn’t want to hear him. “Could be quite a force in the city if he had a family name behind him.”
“He’s doing just fine without a ‘name,’“ Julia argued.
“No doubt,” Donald said with a frown. “But there are limits to what a man like him can accomplish.”
“Because his blood isn’t blue?” Julia stood up and looked at her parents each in turn. “That’s ridiculous. Max Rolland is a good, hardworking man who made his own fortune rather than inherited it.”
“Exactly,” Donald said with a slow shake of his head.
Sunlight streamed through the windows, glancing off the white walls and floors until Julia’s eyes stung with the cold, hard brilliance of it all. Why had she been so concerned with telling her parents about her baby? Why had she been so terrified that she might lose this one slender thread of family?
The truth was, she’d never had a family to lose. She’d always been alone.
Until now, anyway.
Now she had her baby.
And she had Max.
“You can’t possibly be serious about marrying this person.” Her mother posed it as a sentence, not a question.
“I’m more serious about it with every passing second,” Julia assured her, picking up her purse and slipping the slim leather strap over her shoulder.
“Julia, don’t do something you’ll regret,” her father warned.
“I’ve already done that, Father,” Julia told him as she turned to leave. “I came here expecting support. I’m not sure why, exactly, but this visit is definitely something I regret.”
She walked briskly across the room, through the doorway and down the stairs where a maid in uniform waited to open the front door for her. Julia reached the bottom of the steps and turned when her mother called her name sharply.
Margaret Prentice stood at the head of the stairs, looking as cool and unapproachable as a queen. “What is it, Mother?”
“Don’t think for one moment, young woman, that your father and I will acknowledge your marriage to this man. If you do this, you turn your back on your family.”
A
