A Lamentation of Swans by Valerie Bronwen

Author:Valerie Bronwen [Bronwen, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626398290
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2017-06-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

I’d grown up in a world as far divorced from Sea Oats and New York City as possible. I was the only child of two parents who’d never left Kansas before I was born, and considered big cities dangerous and scary places. The suburban town in Kansas where I’d spent almost my entire childhood waiting to escape was the kind of place most politicians, trying to drum up populist support, called the real America—even though they spent as little time there as they could, rousing the rabble until their votes were secured, disappearing again until the votes were needed again. Neither of my parents had gone to college, and didn’t think I needed to go; what I needed was to find the right man to marry and father my children. My going away to school in New York and deciding to settle there was as alien to them as my coming out to them and when I’d married Charlotte.

I hadn’t spoken to either of them in years. There wasn’t any point. They believed I was going through a phase I’d wake up from one day, find a nice man, and be a good little housewife with a house full of grandchildren for them. There was nothing I could say that would convince them otherwise.

They’d die waiting, apparently.

My mother might not have a college education, and might have been mired in her religious belief that people like me were going straight to hell when we died, but she could be wise about some things. She’d always told me that facing my fears, for example, was better than just worrying about them. The reality is never as bad as you can imagine it, she always said to me, whether it was apologizing to a friend I’d wronged or breaking up with whatever boy I was going steady with, or talking to a teacher about a failed assignment.

So when I heard the roar of a car in the driveway and looked out to see the little red convertible MG parked out in front and Sebastian climbing out, I knew I had to go down and face him.

Facing him couldn’t be any worse than facing his sister had been.

Sebastian Swann, like his sister, had always been a handsome man; when he was a child he was so breathtakingly pretty he could have modeled. From the pictures I’d seen, he’d never had an awkward phase, either, when his face was covered in pimples or his arms and legs had grown crazily out of proportion to the rest of him, or had to wear braces to straighten his teeth. No, Sebastian had been blessed by Mother Nature from birth, and he also had an older sister and an older cousin to baby and spoil him, make much of him, make him feel like he was special and the rules didn’t apply to him.

And people had always treated him better because of his looks.

Everything had come easily to him because he was so exceptionally good looking, and having money didn’t hurt, either.

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