P&P

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Please, dad!" Lydia begged my father in a screech. "I'll be with Mary and Cat! It's not that big of a deal." This back and forth between my sister and my father had been going on for a full thirty minutes, and I was tempted to wake up mom just so she could be the deciding opinion and shut Lydia up for good. No sane person should be up before eleven AM on a weekend.

"If I already told you no a hundred times before, why do you feel the need to continue asking the same question?" My father said, not even bothering to look down from his newspaper to answer her. "New Orleans is too far from home, and also just plain dangerous for three young teenage girls to go alone. I've made up my mind."

"I told you, it's not just gonna be us!" Lydia pushed. "Cat's parents are taking us."

"That's not making it any better. You'd be better off without that girl's parents, quite frankly." Cat's parents were as gullible and misguided as their daughter.

"So are Mary's!"

"Mary's parents? Really?" My father asked, raising a curious eyebrow. I suddenly had an urge of panic that he was relenting to this trip. "They're quite stricter than I am, aren't they?" He turned to me this time.

"Are you sure Lydia's not lying to get her way?" I asked him. He turned back to my little sister, raising an eyebrow suspiciously this time.

"That's not what I'm doing." Lydia said, shooting me the death glare. "Both their parents are coming, they really are!"

"Then why shouldn't your mom and I?"

"Because you're both totally embarrassing!"

"I'll think about it." My father finally said. "Now go away. I can hardly enjoy the paper with you constantly screaming at me." Lydia squealed all the way up to her room, and I looked at my father accusingly. "What? That doesn't constitute a yes."

"I really hope you're not gonna say yes."

"I'm never going to hear the end of it if I say no." He told me. "She would still be here to celebrate New Year's with us, and then leave for a few days to New Orleans with friends we know don't get her into trouble. I hardly see the problem with it."

"You hardly know Lydia." I told him. "That's why you have no problem with it." He simply shrugged and I stormed up the stairs to my room, already so concerned for my baby sister.

During Christmas, my aunt and uncle came over to visit. They only lived one small town away from us. Aunt Gardiner was a very sweet woman, who I considered a second mother, especially when my real one got too crazy. This time during their visit, however, they invited me to Sacramento to see Lake Tahoe.

"A lake? In the middle of winter?" I asked my aunt. I had never heard of anyone visiting a lake in the dead of winter, and was wary of it.

"Your uncle wants to try out ice fishing." My aunt rolled her eyes. "Men. What can you do? But anyway, I just figured we could do some shopping while he hangs out with some of his pals to fish. I was going to invite Jane and Lydia too, but Jane said she's going to be very busy transferring back to the University here and Lydia's going to be in New Orleans."

"Okay, why not?" She smiled and we set a date, which would be the same day Lydia left, two days after New Year's day.

There wasn't much to do after Christmas came and went, so I would spend my days sitting by my window with a cup of tea and looking out. It rarely ever snowed, so I seemed to be looking out the window at the bare tree branches blowing with the howling wind. Things seemed to finally be dying down, and I was just enjoying the peace.

Lydia suddenly burst into my room with two leather jackets in hand on one of these nights, with one black and one brown. I widened my eyes at her as she asked for my opinion.

"For what? Your trip?" I asked her.

"Duh! What else!?" She exclaimed. "I just found out the league of soccer players from summer are having a tournament in New Orleans!" She squealed, and my mind started racing.

"Wait, does that mean-"

"Yep." Lydia smirked and my heart dropped. "George Wickham will be there."

"Lydia, please promise me you'll stay away from him." I urged, but she only rolled her eyes. "Lydia! You have to believe me when I say that I have a really good reason to make you promise me that."

"Because you're still holding out for him?" She rolled her eyes. "I guess you heard he and that chick he was with are over. The rumor-mill is a very dangerous place to reside, sis."

"It's not about that." I said through gritted teeth.

"He's done with you, Lizzie." Lydia told me in the same voice I had heard her use with Cat countless times when putting her down. "Get over it." She held out both jackets again and asked, "So which one would you choose? Because I need to know which jacket to leave behind. Your poor sense in fashion can tell me that."

The day after New Year's, Aunt Gardiner called me out of the blue. When I picked up, she sounded stressed.

"So Lake Tahoe is out." My aunt told me over the phone. "A cold front is coming in or something, so the lake is going to be closed tomorrow. But don't worry dear, we're still going to do something."

"Oh, alright. Like what?"

"I don't know, really. I thought we'd just go on a mansion tour in some of those houses in LA. It won't be as cold, and who knows, we might even see some celebrities."

"Mansion tours of celebrity homes?" I asked her suspiciously. "Won't that be kind of expensive?"

"Well, maybe not celebrities. Just the homes of famous plastic surgeons and lawyers and doctors and that sort of thing. Oh, you know what? I hear that that mansion in Pemberley Grove is huge."

"Pemberley?" I asked, my voice shaking. I was pretty sure I knew who lived there.

"That's right! Didn't you meet William Darcy when he moved into Netherfield with Charles Bingley?" My aunt sounded so excited about this trip just as dread was beginning to settle into the depths of my mind.

"You could say that..." I trailed off and my aunt began raving about seeing Darcy's property and his mansion and I dropped the phone two minutes into her rant and didn't even notice until I heard my name over and over from the speaker of my iPhone. "Sorry." I told her, regaining at least a small portion of my composure back. "I, um, I dropped something." My phone. My dignity.

"Well I was just saying that we are definitely seeing Pemberley Grove! I already got your uncle excited over it."

"Um, you wouldn't happen to know if Darcy will be there when we tour, would you?" I asked her. To say seeing him there would be awkward would be a colossal understatement.

"I doubt it." She told me. "If the masters of the homes were there more often, I think more people would tour." She continued to rant as I exhaled a sigh of relief, hoping she would be right.