“If she hates the cold, she’s going to love it in Palm Beach,” I say as the driver wheels my luggage over. I hand him a twenty and thank him before following Blythe inside the house that always gives me an intense sensation of claustrophobia.
There isn’t a single wall in this twelve-thousand square foot monstrosity that isn’t paneled in mahogany or wallpapered to the ends of the earth. Antiques adorn every square inch of shelf or tablespace and there’s enough seating in every room to host a diplomatic meeting. And the pictures—there are so many oil paintings and family portraits, a person could easily mistake this place for an art museum.
My home in Palm Beach is … simpler.
Modern.
Cleaner.
Brighter.
Designed for both work and play.
“Campbell? Cedric?” Blythe calls out for her daughter and husband before taking my coat. “Slade’s here.”
The buttery, savory scent of beef Wellington fills the air and the sound of shuffling feet trails from one of the many recesses of the home.
“Hope you brought your appetite,” she says while we wait in the foyer. “I’ll have someone take your bag to your room while we eat. Dinner’s almost ready.”
“Perfect timing.” Cedric makes his way through the tiled foyer, his right hand outstretched as if we’re about to make a business deal—which is essentially what this arranged marriage is: two powerful American dynasties becoming one.
“Mr. Wakemont, good to see you.” I meet his handshake.
Cedric squeezes my hand hard before covering it with his left—the same power move my father does … a little trick they learned back in their Yale days.
While it tends to make them come off like assholes, a person could argue that no one ever closed a multi-million-dollar business deal by being a nice guy.
“Oh, my. Campbell’s taking her sweet time, isn’t she?” Blythe toys at the strand of pearls affixed around her elegant neck, making zero effort to hide her annoyance. “Let me run and find her … why don’t you two go on ahead and meet us in the dining room?”
I follow Cedric to the old school country-club-esque dining room, where an elaborate setup is waiting for us. Crystal goblets, polished silver, ornate china plates with coordinating saucers, and more mahogany than should be allowed in one area at the same time.
“How’s old Tupper doing these days?” Cedric asks about my father, a gleam in his eye as he uses an old nickname from their college years and some insufferable story involving a Tupperware container and God only knows what else. As such, my father loathes being called Tupper, but if anything, that only motivates Cedric to call him that even more. The two of them are like brothers who bicker like an old married couple but have each other’s backs at the end of the day. “I’m sorry—it’s only funny when he’s here. How’s Victor? Recovering from that shoulder surgery still?”
“He’s anxious to get back on the golf course.” I take the seat to his left. “Doctor hasn’t cleared him yet.”
Cedric offers a sympathetic wince. “That’s what he gets for trying to best me at Pelican Bay last year. Serves him right. And your mother? The incomparable Delia Delacorte? Still tearing up the tennis courts at the Polo Palms Club?”
“When she can.”
Cedric acts like we didn’t just have this exact same conversation four weeks ago … and four weeks before that … and four weeks before that. For a while, I was worried there might be something going on with him neurologically, but I’ve recently deduced that he simply doesn’t know how to talk to me because we have nothing in common other than my father and his daughter, and what can be said about either of them that hasn’t already been said? That isn’t already known?
Still, I humor him by engaging in this brain-numbing small talk while we wait for my future wife to make her fashionably late appearance. But it isn’t long before our conversation reaches its inevitable lull.
I’ve never been a fan of silence.
It gives a person too much time to think, and too much of anything (with the exception of money) is never a good thing.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. The urge to check it is overwhelming, but I push through it.
I’d rather be working.
I’d rather be in Florida.
I’d rather be anywhere but here, pretending I don’t hate every waking moment of this dog and pony show.
I’ll never forget the day my parents told me about this absurd arrangement. I’d finished second grade with top marks, so as a reward, my parents took me out for ice cream at this place on the pier. A few doors down, there was a bridal party taking photos. I watched them, my nose scrunched in disgust as the woman in white kissed the man in black. My mother laughed and nudged my father, who also seemed amused by my reaction.
“That’s going to be you someday, son,” he said.
“Never,” I told him between licks of Rocky Road. “Girls are disgusting.”
“You won’t always feel that way,” my mom chimed in.
The two of them exchanged looks before my father cleared his throat.
“What would you say if we told you we knew who you were going to marry?” he asked.
At the time, I didn’t understand what he was asking. It didn’t make sense. I thought everyone got to choose their partner—which meant they could also choose not to have one at all.
“There’s a girl,” my mother said, “and her name is Campbell.”
“Like the soup?” I laughed.
Mom smiled a soft smile. “Yes, I suppose. But it’s a family name.”
“Campbell Wakemont,” my father said. “She’s the daughter of an old friend of mine. Her father has promised her hand to you.”
“I don’t want to hold her hand,” I said, studying my cone to optimize my next bite. The more the conversation continued, the closer I was getting to the sugar cone—the best part.
“Hand in marriage, my love,” my mother clarified. “It means the two of you are promised to each other. She’ll be your future wife and you’ll be her future husband.”
My parents had done some weird stuff before—like the time my father hired someone to dress like Santa and sneak into our house Christmas Eve because he thought I still believed.
But this didn’t feel like that.
“You’re going to meet her this summer,” my mother said, studying me. “We’re going to Maine to visit the Wakemonts. I’m sure the two of you will hit it off. You might actually become good friends. The best marriages are built on a foundation of friendship.”
I’d never had a girl friend before.
I sure as hell didn’t want one either.
“We thought maybe the two of you could start exchanging letters?” my mom continued. “To get to know each other better?”
“Like pen pals?” I asked before crunching into my cone.
“Exactly,” my father said. “And we know how much you love to write.”
It wasn’t that I loved to write—it was simply that I was insanely good at it. The English language had come early and easily to me as a child. By the time I was one, I was speaking in complete sentences. Short but complete. By two, I was writing my name. By three, I was reading at a kindergarten level. By first and second grade, I was devouring middle grade chapter books.