Mason helped me of course. "Mom" wasn't around to even see me go. Mason didn't know where she was either. Only later did I find out from our housekeeper—who cried all day as I was moving out—that Lorna had gone to the Hamptons with another Kane Price shareholder.
Of course, you know what she did there?
I don't have to have a very vivid imagination to say that she went out there to seduce him. I'm not being a bitch if I say that. She pretty much told me this herself a few days after I overheard her tell Mason that she wasn't my mother.
That's right, babe. I totally confronted her. I remember. It was a Saturday morning and she was reading the newspaper on her tablet in the sunroom.
"Why do you look so shocked, Becca?" she asked me when I asked her if it was really true. "You got a good deal out of it, didn't you?"
"But that's not the point, Mom," I said, instinctively falling back on the moniker.
"Please, will you fucking stop calling me your mother," Lorna said with obvious disdain. "I could give two shits whether you live or die, to be honest. You're only as good to me as you photograph, if you must know."
I think I gasped or something, you know? Just hearing those words coming from the woman I thought had loved me my whole life.
"Oh, don't look so shocked," she said to me. "You're nothing like me. You're weak, soft, and stupid. You don't have the killer instinct."
"Is that why you didn't like Dad?" I asked her. "Because he didn't have the killer instinct?"
Lorna's face turned into a grimace. "I wish he'd never brought you into the marriage we had," she sneered. "If he'd just thrown you out on the corner, maybe he'd still be alive. I wanted him, not you. But when you came along with him, it sort of ruined the experience for me, you know?"
I remember shaking with fear and shock and loathing. How could one person be so cavalier about the dead? So hating toward the living.
"I cheated on your father every chance I got," she said, smiling as if relishing the fact that she was hurting me. "I made sure he found out about it each and every time. I fucked guys on our bed. I left panties soaked in other men's cum for him to find and see."
She went on and on. A litany of betrayals as I sat in horror.
"And then," she said, without a shade of remorse. "When he couldn't take it anymore, he took his own life."
I couldn't believe it. She laughed at me and said the final piece that made me realize I had to leave. "Just the way I'd planned it."
There was something very psychotically wrong with Lorna Lowell. And I needed to get away as quickly as possible.
Two.
That's how many weeks ago Lorna finally cut me off from everything. I was removed from her will. I lost my bank accounts. Even my cell phone contract was cancelled. I mean, she paid the penalty for early termination just to cut my phone bill and show me who was boss.
I knew what she was trying to do.
She was trying to assert her dominance over me. Trying to get me to realize that I had to come crawling back to her.
Don't worry. That's something that I'll never do.
Luckily, I still had a decently paying job as a Wall Street intern. Annualized, I made about $60,000 a year so I was able to open a bank account on the same day. I basically had the clothes on my back and the cash in my pocket, but with the help of a few friends, I was able to get by till payday. That's when I began saving my money and couch surfing till I finally found a one-bedroom walkup on the Lower East Side that I was able to move into.
"You should just stay with me," Mason immediately offered. But I knew that I didn't want to put him in that situation. I want him to have me over at his place because he wants to. Not because he thinks he's doing me a favor.
Six.
That's how many days out of the seven that I've had my new apartment that I've spent the night at Mason's place in One57. That's right, babe. I moved into a new apartment and my first week I only spent one night.
I mean, it's a pretty different world from what I was accustomed to. It's a walk up. No doorman. No elevator.
The view is of a brick wall. The faucet in the bathroom leaks. It's about the size of Mason's walk-in closet. It's definitely for people who are either starving artists or holdovers from the days of rent control. Nevertheless, I didn't mind staying there.
But there was one thing the apartment, with all it's independence from Lorna, couldn't give me that Mason could.
Sex.