Daddy Dearest

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Alex

When I was fifteen years old, my grandmother gave me the promise ring my grandfather had given her, which was passed down from my great grandmother. Grandma gave it directly to me because she doesn’t like my mother and thinks I’ll make a better choice in a bride than my “foolish” father.

I gave it to Melody because it’s a promise that I’ll always be around for her and take care of her, love her for the rest of my life, and ask her to marry me when the time comes.

I don’t know if she realizes that it’s what the ring means to me, but the fact that we’ve seen the movie “The Last of the Mohicans” about twenty times together and I’ve gone all Hawkeye on her and yelled, “You be strong, you survive! You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you.”

Then Nancy would come into the den and say, “Jesus, are you guys doing 'Last of the Mohicans’ again? I’m getting a little sick of it. Alex, your Hawkeye needs work. Once more, with feeling.”

Janice thinks we’re adorable, but I’ve overheard Ken telling Nancy once while they were doing the dishes together that he thought I spend too much time at the Plum house. Nancy told him to hush because I am good for Melody. I really don't trust that bloke.

And my mother doesn’t trust Melody.

On the day I bought the dress for Mel, I was with my mother because we were looking for a present for my half-sister. My mother is my father’s second wife, and he had two daughters with his first wife, who died of breast cancer last year, so my two half-sisters have been around a lot more because they’re trying to rebuild a relationship with my dad.

That’s why I’m happy I have my own flat and my own source of income.

I told my mother I was just going to say hello to some school friends as soon as I saw Mrs. D and Charlotte across the way, but I had no idea Melody was with them. She said she’d already bought a Homecoming dress with Nancy the week before.

So when she walked out of the dressing room in that red gown, my heart leapt out of my throat. She looked fantastic, but I knew from the expression on her face that she was not going to buy the dress.

Melody Plum may be worth eighty million dollars, but Nancy was very tight with the purse strings. I didn’t hesitate to take out my Centurion card, which I received on my eighteenth birthday. For me, what Melody wants, Melody gets.

I can afford it. I stand to inherit half a billion dollars upon my grandmother’s death. She likes me a lot.

Apparently, my mother witnessed me paying for Melody's dress and assumed the worst. I had to explain to her that Melody isn’t a gold-digger and is the daughter of literary legend Harry Plum. She told me it's time I start dating the right kind of girls and maybe a girl who allows me to buy her a very expensive dress isn’t she.

I had to tell her that Melody’s grandfather was the vice-chancellor at the University of Cambridge for twenty years and her great-aunt was a former tenured professor and department head. The Plums, I told her, came from old tea money, then they ventured to oil and railroads.

But my mother, once she’s made up her mind about something, is hard to dissuade. She’s convinced that Melody is the “wrong sort of girl” and I told her she’s crazy. We’re currently not speaking.

But I’d never really been very close to my mother anyway. My nanny used to wonder if it was my mother’s “Russian temperament.” I would reason that I’m half-Russian, but she’d pat my cheek and say, “But you’re really more English, dear.”