Beauty and the Billionaire

“Yes, dear,” mom answers as if it’s a perfectly rational thing.

“Student loans,” I repeat.

Mom says, “Ashley, are you feeling quite—”

“How about you don’t call me Ashley and I don’t call you mom?” I interrupt. “Ash and mother, can you live with that?”

“Fine, dear,” she says. “I know you’re upset, but we only did this with your best interests in—”

“How is implicating me in your crimes by forging my signature and getting student loans I never applied for, much less saw any of, in my best interest?” I interrupt again.

She’s covering her mouth with her hand as if it’s my behavior that’s shocking. “We were going to surprise you by paying off your college with our profits off of the houses,” she tells me.

“I can’t believe this,” I tell her. “I really can’t believe this. I mean, I know you and dad have done some idiotic things in the past, but—”

“Now hold your tongue,” mom chastises. “I have told you before that I will not be spoken to in this manner, and I will have you know I am quite tempted to show myself out the door right this minute!”

“You’re going to make a public statement,” I tell her. “You’re going to tell everyone I wasn’t involved.”

“Of course, dear,” she says.

Thank goodness for that, at least.

“None of our family was involved in wrongdoing,” she says, looking past me with a glazed expression on her face. I think she actually believes her own lies.

“Even if you get away with the rest of it,” I tell her, “you’re still going down for the student loans. The only way out of that is throwing me under the bus.”

“There are other ways,” mom says. I get a chill that lasts until she follows the daunting statement with a more characteristic, almost naïve, though no less jarring one, “If you can produce the money that we took out in loans, less reasonable amounts to account for tuition, books, and housing, it won’t even be an issue at trial. As for the rest of it, John has assured us that all we’re looking at is the usual witch hunt—you know, for as much as the people of this country love the rich, they seem to enjoy our misery to a disproportionate degree.”

“I don’t know where you think I’m going to come up with that kind of—how much exactly did you get in my student loans?” I ask.

She looks down and away from me, almost shielding her eyes with her hand. “It was a substantial amount,” she answers.

“How much?” I ask. “You’re trying to get me to cover for you with what I’m assuming would be some sort of a money laundering scheme—which, by the way, we are not doing—and I want to know how much you got using my name? In real student loans, I’ve gotten a grand total of about twenty thousand dollars so far. I actually had to write and sign a paper stating that I was completely financially independent and use that to appeal the initial decision to reject any financial aid due to all the cash the two of you have raked in over however long. How did you even get approved?”

“Oh, it’s not difficult when you have the proper paperwork and know what a bank is looking for in an application,” she says. Ironically, it may be the most forthright thing I’ve ever heard come out of her mouth.

“How much did you get?” I ask.

“I don’t have the exact figure,” mom says, looking away again. “Your father would know. He always knows that sort of thing. I’ve never been good with numbers the way your father has. You know, your father is really very sick over how this is going to affect you.”

“I know what you’re doing, mom,” I tell her. “Stop trying to pawn this all off on dad and just tell me.”

She says the number and I ask her to leave.

On her way out the door, mom says, “I know you’ll do the right thing, dear.”

She’s asking me to take the fall for them; maybe not on everything, but on a lot of it. If I hadn’t immediately kicked her out of my apartment, I’m sure she would have gone on to tell me how she and dad were going to make sure that I was taken care of with a good lawyer.

They’ve had close brushes with the law before, and this isn’t the first time one of them has come to me with a similar request. That kind of stuff is why I don’t talk to my parents if I can avoid it as it is.

Now, one way or another, this is coming out and she’s put me in the position where any choice I make is going to be a bad one. Either I can snitch on my parents and definitely send two people to prison who would never make it past the first meal, or I do what my mom wants and probably end up in prison myself.

It was an easy enough choice to make. She says she knows I’ll make the right decision, meaning her decision, but I’ve already made it. They did this to themselves and I’m not going to go down for it.

How stupid do they think I am?

I don’t even want to think about that number.