Blind to Beauty

Chapter Fifteen

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” ― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

     I pulled in front of a gated community, staring at it in wonder. This was a really ritzy area of town. Only people with big bucks lived here. It made me feel like my house, that was two stories and fairly big, was a shack.

     “So this is where you live?” I asked, wonder filling my voice.

     “Yep,” Seamoore replied nonchalantly, rolling down his window.

     I watched as he stuck his head out the window and yelled for someone to open the gate.

     “Isn’t there an intercom?”

     “Yeah, but this gets their attention faster.”

     The gates slowly swung open, and I slowly pulled through them, with them closing almost immediately behind me. I guess security didn’t want anyone sneaking in.

     “So what house is yours?” I inquired, driving down the long street of mansions. They were all so beautiful.  Some of them looked like the mansions you’d see over in Spain or Italy, others looked like your typical twenty-first century mansions, and then there was one completely different than the rest. It looked like an old time mansion from the late nineteenth century early twentieth, maybe.

     “The one that looks like it should have been knocked down decades ago,” he said to me, sounding bored.

    “You mean the really beautiful old one?”

     “Yeah, Count Dracula’s castle is what I like to refer to it as.” He yawned.

     “It’s beautiful,” I whispered, pulling up onto the driveway.

     “I think it’s a bit gaudy,” he grumbled.

     I parked the car, and Seamoore got out, and waited for me to get out of the car as well. We walked up the smoothly paved driveway and went in through the garage. His garage was attached to the house and it was as big as a barn house.

     “I didn’t think they had garages back when they built things like this,” I commented to him.

     “Dad added it when we moved in. He didn’t want to park his cars outside.”

     “Cars?” I asked, following him up the steps to the door.

     “Yeah, my dad  likes to have enough cars to give away.”

     “You must be rich.”

      “Just financed well.”

     “Same thing,” I mumbled under my breath and walked through the door.

     The inside of the house was huge. The ceiling had to go up at least twenty-feet, the floor was cherry-wood, and the walls were painted a rich brown color. A chandelier hung from the ceiling.

    “Wow,” I gasped my voice bouncing off the walls.

     “Home sweet home,” he said sarcastically.

    We walked farther into the house, I felt uncomfortable in this new environment. I kept tugging at the hem of my shirt feeling insecure. For some reason I kept thinking that I should be more dressed up to be in this house.  Walking through the kitchen I saw everything was stainless steel. It was my mother’s dream kitchen. She was always looking at kitchens like these in magazines and said if we ever moved she’d want to build the kitchen like that.