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“What?” Katie sniffed.
“I didn’t do that this year. I hope you didn’t want a vicuña yarn sweater or a handmade acrostic ring with reclaimed rose-cut gems, because I was feeling… well. I wasfeeling,and I got you both gift baskets filled with shit for your cats. That I picked out. Pet stores smell horrible. Like meaty hay. No one told me.”
April barked out a laugh. “You hate my cats!”
“But you love your cats, and I love you, so return whatever you bought me from Gucci and get me something sentimental, bitches.”
To Katie’s surprise, the rest of their conversation was good. Having April in her suite and Madelynn on FaceTime, talking and laughing about Christmas, gave her access to a different way of thinking about her Green Bay life and her Los Angeles life smashing together.
Because LA was home, too. Madelynn and April were home.
That’s what Katie was thinking about in the quiet suite after April explained that she couldn’t stay for Diana’s dinner because she had to make a flight to Chicago that would get her back to Los Angeles overnight.
Then, when Katie didn’t want to be alone petting cats anymore, she made her way to the main part of the house to find her mom and make amends for her rudeness, and she heard Diana talking to someone.
To Wil.
Wil was sitting at the breakfast bar in a white button-down shirt and dark sweater vest, destroyed jeans, hair damp from melted snow, but what Katie noticed more than those details, which her whole entire self was greedy for, was that Wilwasn’tcurling her hands around a cup of coffee, though Katie could smell it in the air. Shedidn’thave a plate of Danish or Christmas cookies or a slice of the banana bread Diana had made that morning.
Normally, even if Wil had demurred when asked if she wanted coffee or a treat, Diana would’ve put those things out just in case. When Diana didn’t, it was because she wanted that person to leave.
“Katie!” Diana’s smile barely touched her face. “I was just telling Wil you had important company, and she was letting me know that she could catch up with you tomorrow.”
Wil, to her credit, didn’t hit Diana with an incredulous “pardon me” for handling her grown-woman self in such an obvious manner. She only turned in Katie’s direction on the stool and directed arealsmile at her that cut a few taut strings in Katie’s neck and made her feel like she could, in fact, handle this situation however she wanted to with Wil’s blessing.
Wil was asking absolutely nothing from her. It was one of the best feelings Katie had ever had.
“April left,” Katie said. “Wil, I’d love it if you wouldn’t mindwaiting for me for a few minutes in my suite, and I’ll be right down.”
Diana grasped her own forearm, closing her body language from her waist in a ladylike, classically Diana way. This same physical movement was one of the tells Katie used with Madelynn’s people to get a reporter or fan to move along. “I think Wil said she had a lot to do?” Diana said. “Your law school applications?” She looked at Wil, smiling, and now, to Diana’s credit, it was a warm smile, which reminded Katie that Dianadidlove Wil, and so Katie would not have to initiate a nuclear sequence in the next ten minutes.
“I’m happy to wait for you, Katie, so I can say hello and good-bye before I head home. Thanks for keeping me company, Diana.” Wil slid off the stool and somehow managed to evaporate into the stairwell with equal amounts of politeness and coolness.
At the last minute, right before she turned the corner to the stairs, she winked at Katie. Which was fortifying.
Once she was gone, Katie noticed the silence first, and then how cold it was in the kitchen. The space around her and her mother felt vast and frozen over. It made Katie so angry—this cold house with its long driveway and its beautiful view, like some kind of grotesque stand-in for the home she used to share with her mom and dad, the childhood she’d lost access to, and the ways that her celebrity was getting in the way of her actuallife.
Katie crossed to sit down on the stool Wil had just vacated. She looked over to the living room, where, against the wall, not at all coordinating with a tasteful array of leather and ivory boucle and light wood furniture, was the curved-back mallard-printed sofa from her childhood home.
She reminded herself that things were not all fucked here. She could be angry. She could talk. She could be sad. This was hermom.
“I think what you and April are doing is very exciting,” Diana said. Her voice was soft. She didn’t want to fight, either.
Then Katie had to deal with a series of unwanted hot tears.
Her mother stepped closer and put her hand flat in the middle of Katie’s back. “Sweetheart, you can try whatever you want to try. That’s what I mean.” She rubbed over Katie’s shoulder blades. “You’re at such a good part of your life for trying things, because if it doesn’t work out, you have years and years of solid work on your brand and building your reputation to fall back on.”
Katie knew what her mom meant. She knew where it came from, even, because Katie spoke Midwesterner.
What Diana meant was that Katie had privilege and money and fame, and so nothing she wanted to do could be truly considered a risk.
Because, after all, she could live the rest of her life as Katie Price, with Katie Price’s money, even if she never did anything. She was, in the consummate Midwestern sense, safe.
That was true. It was. But it was only true if it wasalsotrue that the only things Katie needed to be safe—to be okay—were money and fame.
If she hadn’t had that hot obsession with making stories from the first moment a librarian readMadelinealoud during a story hour using different voices and real French.
If she hadn’t broken her feet in pointe shoes and not told anyone so she could perform in the recital.