Rags to Riches Baby

“Can I ask you something?” Lucy said once the waiter disappeared from their table. Her bravery where food was concerned was starting to wane, so she opted for a distracting discussion instead.

“Sure.” Oliver picked up his glass of wine and awaited her question.

“I lived in that apartment with Alice for over five years. Harper was the only family member I ever saw visit, and in part, she was there to see me. I don’t understand it. Why didn’t you ever visit your aunt?”

Oliver nodded and focused for a moment on the wood grain of their table. There was an intensity about his expression when he was thinking that Lucy found intriguing, even when he was antagonizing her. He had the same look on his face when he was studying her. She didn’t know what he saw or what he expected to see when he looked at her so closely. It made her uncomfortable, especially after those kisses on the patio, but she still liked watching the wheels turn in his mind.

“Aunt Alice didn’t like having guests. You wouldn’t know it if you went by, she’d treat you like royalty, but inside, she hated it. I missed her, and I wanted to see her, but I knew that it made her anxious, just like leaving her apartment made her anxious. So I gave her a computer, got her all set up and we emailed every day.”

Lucy perked up at the last part. “You spoke to her every day?” How could she not know that? And why didn’t she realize company made Alice uncomfortable? She’d never said a word about it to her.

Oliver nodded. “Aunt Alice was a complicated woman, although few knew it. Since you asked me a question, I’ll ask you one. How much do you really know about my aunt?”

Lucy opened her mouth to answer, but when she thought about it, she realized she didn’t have that much to say. “We shared a common love of art. She liked Chinese takeout from the place a few blocks away. She only drank hot tea with cream and one lump of sugar.” There, she stopped. Most of the things she could think of were inconsequential, like being an early riser and watching Jeopardy! every weeknight.

“Now that I’m thinking of it, I guess she never really shared that much about herself. Not really. She never talked about her family or her childhood. I don’t know if she ever worked or married or anything else. When I told you I didn’t know anything about her will or how much money she had, it was true. We never talked about things like that.”

“Aunt Alice never married,” he began. “My father told me once, a long time ago, that she’d been in love with a young man in the forties. Unfortunately, he got shipped off to World War II right after they got engaged and never came home. She never dated anyone else, to my great-grandfather’s dismay. He constantly thrust well-to-do men in front of her, hoping to secure business deals or strengthen ties, but you know her. She had none of it. I guess she never got over losing her first love.”

Lucy sat back in her seat and frowned. “That’s horrible. There’s an old black-and-white photograph of a soldier in a frame beside her bed. That must be his picture.”

Oliver nodded. “She got used to being alone, I think, and when everything else happened, she just decided it was better to be alone.”

“What do you mean by ‘when everything else happened’?”

“The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It affected every New Yorker differently, but the whole thing really shook her up. She was supposed to go downtown to meet with a financial advisor later that morning. Then she turned on the news and realized what was happening. If her appointment had been an hour or two earlier, she would’ve been in the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. It scared the hell out of her. She never set foot out of her apartment again.”

Lucy’s jaw dropped as Oliver spoke. All this time, she’d been pointing fingers at him and his family for not visiting or even knowing Alice at all, when in truth, Lucy didn’t know her either. Of course, she’d wondered why Alice never left the apartment, but it seemed rude to ask, so she never did. Some people developed agoraphobia without any particular incident at onset.

“What was she like before that?” she asked, suddenly curious about the friend and employer she knew so little about.

Oliver smiled, the sharp features of his face softening. “She was fun. After my mother died, sometimes my father would leave Harper and me with her for an afternoon while he worked. She would take us to the park or the zoo. The art museums, of course. She never worried about getting dirty or eating too much junk. As kids, we thought she was the greatest aunt in the world. It wasn’t until we got older that we realized she was going out less and less. She was getting older, too, but I think she was feeling less comfortable out in the city. The attacks were the last nail in the coffin for her, I think. She decided it was safer to stay inside. And in time, she wanted less and less company, until she was almost completely closed off from the world.”