Status Updates From Exquisite Things: An Epic Q...

"Look at my face to see the price I paid. I'm hideous." I want to despise him, but a part of me also feels sorry for him. Unhappiness is indeed etched onto his face. "At least I know it. I'm aware I don't have a face aged with warmth. The face of a beloved grandparent. Wise and sweet and sexless. No, my cheeks are hollow. My life is hollow. Cold blue veins line my skin. Every bit of me is twisted out of shape."

I didn't plan on following him like this.
But I do have a plan. I'll observe him in his new habitat. Try to understand why he feels this is our time. I'll deduce how I feel about this city independent of him. I've been free of him for sixty years. Free and lonely. Free and yet chained to him by the fate only we share. What's a little more time to figure out how I feel when all we have is time?

"Who was he, Mother? Were you really in love with someone before Father?" The question I almost asked is if she was in love with Father at all. There are so many reasons she may have married him despite not loving him. Duty. Fear. The pressure of parents. Social expectations. And of course, the most obvious one...she was pregnant with Liam and was forced to marry the man who would become her son's father.

They speak in code, Brendan's friends, and I love that about them. It's like learning a new language. Or a new instrument. They're in the life, as they say, which means they know the hidden things, the things my mother doesn't see happening in her city, to her beloved son.
The birthday boy, Cyril, approaches me. "Brendan says you'll be coming to Harvard."
"Oh, I don't know," I say sheepishly. "I hope so."