Page 113 of The Carrie Diaries (The Carrie Diaries 1)

“I will not take it easy. And I will not listen to you, or anybody else. Because you know what? Everyone thinks they know so goddamned much about everything and no one knows fuck all about anything.”

“Sorry,” he says, his mouth drawn into a prim line of disapproval. “I was only trying to help.”

I take a breath. Sebastian would have laughed at me. His laughter would have briefly pissed me off, but then I’d have found it funny too. George, on the other hand, is so damn serious.

He’s right, though. He is only trying to help. And Sebastian is gone. He dumped me, just like George said he would.

I should be grateful. George, at least, has had the decency not to say I told you so.

“Remember when I told you I’d introduce you to my great-aunt?” he asks now.

“The one who’s a writer?” I say, still slightly miffed.

“That’s right. Do you want to meet her?”

“Oh, George.” Now I feel guilty.

“I’m going to arrange it for next week. I think it will cheer you up.”

I could kick myself. George really is the best. If only I could fall in love with him.

We pass through Hartford and turn onto a wide street lined with maples. The houses are set back from the road—large, white, practically mansions—with columns and decorative tiny paned windows. This is West Hartford, where the wealthy old families live, where, I imagine, they have gardeners to tend to their roses and swimming pools and red-clay tennis courts. It doesn’t surprise me that George is taking me here. George’s family is rich, after all—he never talks about it, but he must be, living in a four-bedroom apartme

nt on Fifth Avenue with a father who works on Wall Street and a mother who spends her summers in Southampton, wherever that is. We pull into a gravel driveway edged with hedges and park in front of a carriage house with a cupola on top.

“Your great-aunt lives here?”

“I told you she was successful,” George says with a mysterious smile.

I experience a jab of panic. It’s one thing to imagine someone has money, but quite another to be confronted with the spoils of their loot. A flagstone path leads around the side of the house to a glassed-in conservatory, filled with plants and elaborately wrought garden furniture. George knocks on the door, and then opens it, releasing a cloud of warm, steamy air. “Bunny?” he calls out.

Bunny?

A red-haired middle-aged woman in a gray uniform crosses the room. “Mr. George,” she exclaims. “You startled me.”

“Hello, Gwyneth. This is my friend Carrie Bradshaw. Is Bunny home?”

“She’s expecting you.”

We follow Gwyneth down a long hall, past a dining room and a library, and into an enormous living room. There’s a fireplace at one end with a marble mantelpiece, above which hangs a painting of a young woman in a pink tulle dress. Her eyes are wide, brown, and authoritative—eyes, I’m sure, I’ve seen before. But where?

George walks to a brass cart and holds up a bottle of sherry. “Drink?” he asks.

“Should we?” I whisper, still gazing up at the painting.

“Of course. Bunny always likes a bit of sherry. And she gets very angry when people won’t drink with her.”

“So this—er—Bunny. She’s not cute and fluffy?”

“Hardly.” George’s eyes widen in amusement as he hands me a crystal glass filled with amber fluid. “Some people say she’s a monster.”

“Who says that?” a booming voice declares. If I didn’t know Bunny was a woman, I might have guessed the voice belonged to a man.

“Hello, old thing,” George says, moving across the room to greet her.

“And what have we here?” she asks, indicating me. “Who have you dragged to meet me this time?”

The insult is lost on George. He must be used to her nasty sense of humor. “Carrie,” he says proudly, “this is my aunt Bunny.”