Page 6 of The Love Thief
CHAPTER FOUR More Lies
I told Barry no.
No, you can’t explain.
No, you can’t come see me.
No, you can’t talk to me (and even if I wanted to talk with my jaw wired shut most of what I could say would be incomprehensible), and most importantly, no fucking way am I going home with you.
Going home!
Now, this was a major dilemma. After three days in the hospital, I was told I was ready to be discharged. But to what home would I go?
Less than four months after we’d met, we had had a very public and very dramatic Fourth of July engagement at Petco Park. Barry had arranged for us to be center field at the end of the Padres game while the fireworks were going off. Then he got down on one knee on the pitcher’s mound.
The entire stadium had watched and, of course, we had been on the jumbotron.
He had chosen Petco Park because his parents owned most of the land upon which the parking lot was built and they had connections.
He had presented me with a stunning five-carat, cushion-cut diamond ring with a pavé diamond-studded double band, in a platinum setting.
I, naturally, had said, “Yes!”
The crowd had roared wildly. We made the Ten O’Clock News on KUSI, which is how my mother heard about it.
When we made it back to his home, Barry had a few more surprises for me: three-dozen red roses on the dining room table, a bottle of chilled champagne, and a small plate of my favorite Teuscher milk chocolate champagne truffles.
Then, as he raised a glass of champagne, he announced that as an engagement present he had arranged for me to have a boob job.
He seemed very pleased and excited as he told me this.
He proceeded to give me the doctor’s credentials listing all the women he knew that had found breast bliss with his handiwork.
We had never discussed plastic surgery and it wasn’t something I had ever seriously considered doing.
Sure, I’d been insecure about my body as a teenager, but by now I was pretty much at peace with my slim athletic swimmer’s body and almost 34B chest.
“A boob job?” I repeated slowly, feeling both a little flattered and deeply insulted by the grandiosity of the gesture. “Are there any other imperfections about me that you’d like to change while you’re at it?”
“Oh, God, no,” he said, grabbing me in a tight embrace.
“I love you the way you are! I just want you to feel more comfortable in your wedding dress.” My body stiffened, not sure how to react.
As if sensing my reluctance, he quickly added, “We’ll just make you one cup size larger.
It is a very special day and I want it to be perfect for you!
” His tone sounded genuine enough. I mean, he really was trying to be generous, right?
“Oh, and think of how you will look then in your bikini on the beaches of Hawaii!” His green eyes glistened. Hawaii? It was his favorite getaway, yet another surprise he had in store for us.
The champagne made me lightheaded. What a night, filled with over-the-top surprises! My lifelong dream of becoming a bride, wife, and mother was finally coming true and then some. Not knowing how to process all of it, I quickly drank two more glasses of champagne.
The day after the engagement, Mom called and invited me to lunch, saying she couldn’t wait to see the ring.
I suspected she had a bigger agenda since she generally had lunch at her desk at Auntie Geeta’s super-busy law practice.
Mom and Auntie Geeta had been friends and a working team for longer than I had been on the planet, and Auntie Geeta had always treated me like one of her own.
It was Geeta, in fact, who had first awakened in me a passion for Indian food.
One of my earliest memories was that of being seated on her lap as she fed me bites of gulab jamun, a yummy, syrupy dessert made from fried dough, sweet cream, and aromatic spices.
Every August, Auntie Geeta and I would go together to the Indian Heritage street fair, where we’d sample all the delicious food, play with the colorful jewelry, and get our hands painted with henna.
She was like a second mother to me, and a sister to my mom.
Mom and I met at our favorite place and ordered our usual Lounge Burgers with gluten-free buns and we split the glutenous half-and-half order of yummy onion rings and fries with extra BBQ sauce.
In our line of thinking, we figured the gluten-free buns canceled out the gluten in the batter-covered onion rings.
She seemed genuinely wowed with the ring and then launched into a long speech about how it might be wise for us to have a very long engagement before the wedding since we’d really only known each other a relatively short time.
“Holly, honey, Dr. Pat always says you can’t really know someone until you’ve spent a year with them,” referencing Dr. Pat Allen, one of Mom’s favorite love experts. “You are about to make the biggest decision of your life. What’s the rush?” she asked before biting into a golden crusty onion ring.
“Well, Dr. Pat never dealt with eggs that are about to take their last breath and I know in every cell of my being that Barry is the One . Besides, aren’t you a little interested in finally becoming a grandmother?” I asked a bit too deviously.
Mom smiled and laughed, “Please don’t ever call me Grandma. I want to be called Gigi.”
“Huh? What’s the matter with Grandma ?”
“I’m much too young and hot. Besides, Gigi stands for gorgeous grandmother, which is much more fitting.”
Thinking this was the end of the conversation, I dug into an onion ring with a big dollop of BBQ sauce. She then asked if I wanted her to give me a tarot reading, but I declined.
Seconds later she offered up an astrology compatibility reading with her friend Carol, but on my oxytocin, dopamine, adrenaline, being-in-love drug high, I assured her I was 100 percent certain that Barry was my one.
I explained that we planned to have a spring wedding on the grounds of the Tavers Estate in Rancho Santa Fe, a good six months from now, so technically we would have known each other a full year by the wedding day.
I thought somehow this would assuage her concern.
What I didn’t yet know was that Mom had already consulted the tarot many times on my behalf since Barry first showed up in my life.
She was freaked out because each time she read the cards, the dreaded Tower card appeared, signifying potential disaster and imminent disruption.
Barry decided it was only logical that once we were engaged, we would move in together to share his recently completed “dream home.” The twins would be leaving for college in six weeks, and he saw it as an opportunity for me to do some bonding with them and to get our new life together up and running.
He also dropped a bomb. He told me that his parents would insist on a prenuptial agreement because of his role as executor of their massive estate, the family trusts, and so on, and they wanted to make sure the family was protected.
As a justification, he said to me, “I will make sure we will never, ever need to use the prenuptial agreement and it will be more than fair. One thing we can do right now, as an act of faith on both our parts, is for you to invest your retirement account into the house, and then I will put you on the deed. We will co-own the house, which is valued at over $2.5 million. Isn’t that fair? ” he asked.
At the time, in my naiveté, it sounded more than fair.
How generous to be able to buy into a multimillion dollar home for a mere $100,000, even though it was the entirety of the inheritance my grandfather had left me plus my retirement account.
I didn’t bother to consult my paralegal mother or my auntie who was an attorney, or even Carly. I simply agreed to it.
At that moment, it felt right to use the inheritance money from my grandfather who had built me a dollhouse to buy a life-sized one.
Besides, Barry reminded me that he was an Ivy-league-trained attorney and could easily handle all the paperwork.
Within weeks, I had moved in with him, given him my money, and signed a bunch of legal documents with little plastic adhesive tabs with arrows that said, “Sign Here.”
I vividly remember the day I signed the papers, because we went to lunch at a beautiful ocean-view restaurant.
He wanted to celebrate and so ordered a bottle of champagne.
It was a gorgeous day, warm and sunny, with a very gentle breeze.
I could hear the seagulls squawking as they were diving for fish in the surf.
The champagne was delicious and matched the bubbly, loving feeling I had running through my veins, plus it gave me quite a buzz before our whole grilled sea bass arrived.
After lunch, we walked the two blocks to his office where a quiet, dowdy, grandmother type in sensible shoes notarized the papers as soon as I signed them.
And yes, I did have the thought, Perhaps I should read these documents or at least have them reviewed? and then moved on to thoughts about what I wanted for dinner.
Now I had to figure out where I was going to live during my recovery and when I could get Barry to return my life savings.
Mom came to the rescue and insisted that I move into her home, and she would oversee my care for however long I needed her. She also offered to go to “our” house to pick up whatever I needed. I didn’t know how or when I would be up for confessing to her my financial predicament.
A few hours before I was discharged from the hospital, an aide walked in with a large orchid plant, and he handed me an envelope that contained a note from Carly:
Dear Holly ,
You have been my best friend and sister for more than twenty years, and I can’t tell you how much I love and adore you. I am so grateful you survived the accident and to know that you will have a full recovery.
I am beyond sorry for the pain I have caused you. I never meant to hurt you.