The Heiress

by Rachel Hawkins

you can put miles and mountains between you and home, but eventually, home will call you back.

Shocking how soon the “too late now” part of your life arrives. When you’re young, there’s nothing but possibility, just an endless line of tomorrows, and then you wake up one day and realize that no, you cannot move to Paris on a whim because so many of those old buildings don’t have elevators and stairs are hell on your knees now.

It was a strange feeling, being caught between two lives.

He wasn’t just handsome, you see. Handsome, I could’ve resisted. So many young men in my circle had those same good cheekbones, the chiseled jaw and straight nose, hair the same burnished gold as an old coin. All of them could wear a suit well and hold a cocktail just so and knew exactly how to light a woman’s cigarette in a way that felt both chivalrous and the tiniest bit predatory.

I had the strangest feeling that I had somehow aged twenty years in two. Everyone seemed so much younger than me, so much freer. I wondered if it was my penance, this malaise,

Instead, we went on as before, like nothing had changed, but everything had, of course. I’d catch him watching me, and the look in those eyes that I loved so much––the very first thing I had noticed about him––became worse than any prison sentence. Worse than a hangman’s noose.

Oh, the arrogance of rich young men. It’s far more fatal than I’ve ever been, if you ask me.