At the very least, she deserved to hear something to take her mind off the shit she had been reliving, so I told her what I could.
“The house where I grew up would probably be better described as an estate or maybe a palace.” I snorted at the memory. “I don’t know how many acres of land—a couple hundred, I guess. The house has twelve bedrooms in the family wing—not sure about the other side, but probably similar.”
“Twelve?” Tria repeated with incredulity. “Did I hear you right?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “There is a theatre in the house to watch movies, an indoor Olympic-sized pool on the ground level, and another pool outside. You can actually swim from one to the other. There are probably a hundred people employed just to take care of the house and grounds. Outside there is one of those big mazes made out of hedges. You have to go through the maze to get to the stables.”
“Stables?”
“My parents have a bunch of horses, yeah.”
“You know how to ride horses?”
“English and western style, yes.” I eyed her for a minute as she took this information in. At the same time, memories came back to me in quick flashes, followed by floods of events that were once common but were now long forgotten: the pony I rode when I was just learning, getting lost in the maze and crying until Mom found me, and the way the vapor would form at the surface of the outdoor, heated pool when it was cold outside.
Tria’s eyes locked with mine as she waited for me to continue.
“Dad worked a lot,” I said. “His phone rang most every day when he was home, but he always had it turned off between six and eight in the evening because that was family time.”
Not surprisingly, Tria’s eyes widened, and she even moved away a bit in disbelief as I kept talking.
“When I was growing up, those hours were off limits to anything else,” I told her. “Dad said if we couldn’t take two hours out of every day to spend together that nothing he worked for mattered. He meant it, too.”
I could see the confusion in her eyes.
“Not what you thought, huh?” I gave her a wry smile.
“Not at all,” she admitted. “I mean, you never talk about them. I guess I assumed…”
“I know,” I said with a nod. “I guess given where I am today, that would be a logical conclusion, but it wasn’t like that. Aside from our daily family time, Mom and I did a lot of things on a regular schedule, especially when I was young. Thursday nights were always movie nights with popcorn and whatever. The best nights were Tuesdays, though.”
“What was on Tuesdays?”
“Game night,” I said as a smile crossed my face. “There was a game room off the theatre with a pool table and a jukebox. There was another big table for board games and card games
.”
“What did you play?”
“Lots of different things,” I said. “Parcheesi, cribbage, Mastermind…”
“Mastermind?” Tria giggled. “You mean the one with the different colored marbles?”
“Yep,” I replied. “That was one of my favorites. The best ones were backgammon and chess, though. Dad liked backgammon the most, but Mom and I loved chess. She was awesome at it, too. I was sixteen the first time I ever beat her at a game.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, and we started playing when I was five!” I laughed, remembering how Mom would play with nothing but her king, two rooks, and a pawn. I would still lose every time.
“It sounds really…nice…” She let her voice trail off, but I knew what she was thinking.
“They were good parents,” I said. “At least, during my childhood. They could be a little stuffy, and they dragged me to a shitload of boring-ass parties when I was a kid. Sometimes they pissed me off, but for the most part, they were good parents, ya know?”
“Not really,” she said quietly. “But I think I know what you are saying. So, was it the drugs that made them kick you out?”
“No,” I said. “Those came later.”
It would have been so much easier to lie to her. If I had just said yes to her simple question, then we could just blame everything on the drugs and forget the rest.