The House of Alice

It was possible for Allen to keep climbing the corporate ladder and see his bonuses grow exponentially—thanks to the new job he’d landed last year and been translated in my translation.

Allen had cash-out his entire stock portfolio, insurance policies, and pension plan to meet the down-payment threshold by the skin of his teeth. The rest was financed with a forty-year jumbo mortgage.

It was a stretch in every way. But Olivia’s love pushed so hard—*We can’t afford a house on Fifth Avenue unless this is the one chance we get*—that he had no choice but to go along.

The apartment they moved into had last been renovated in the early eighties. It needed a full gut job before anyone could actually live there, so they took out another loan and launched into a major renovation.

The construction that was supposed to wrap by the end of August was still dragging on in early September, right up until the start of my tenth-grade year. Of course, the budget had blown far past the original plan.

“In Korea they wouldn’t even let you start a project like this! This country’s always late on everything—clock out at five and head home, right? Then how does the construction ever get finished? Money just goes up in smoke. Ugh, I’m so frustrated!”

Olivia, whose passion had run dry, grumbled and showed up at the site every single day to harass the workers.

Every morning she would remind me: “Hunter, walk you to school.” The temporary apartment was too close to Harlem and way below the Fifth Avenue standard, so she worried.

It was her own bias and anxiety, but Allen didn’t mind. He even seemed happy to shoulder the role, because it brought back memories of when I was little.

As a result, these days I barely saw Hunter at all. With no more overlap of living spaces, the connection had simply vanished, and the thought made me strangely hollow.

Sometimes, when my lips would part in a dumb daze, I’d wonder if the kiss from Spring Fling had really happened. Better if it had just been a dream.

But Chloe had brought undeniable proof, so I couldn’t pretend it never occurred. The photo I’d planned to toss was buried deep in my desk drawer so my mom wouldn’t find it.

Classic black-and-white shot against a simple backdrop—two people locked in a kiss. Eyes squeezed shut, Hunter’s hand tilting my chin, fingers strong yet gentle.

“My first kiss…”

The little tremble, the softness of those lips, the deep blue eyes shimmering with something raw—that image alone sent a shiver straight through me.

My heart clenched at the memory of his voice: *Who else would you kiss if not me?*

It made me feel a strange swell of pride. Among all the girls at that party, he had chosen only me. I had impulsively said yes.

But the moment the kiss was over, Hunter turned furious. He accused me of kissing Rex, hurled words that made no sense. He called it nothing more than curiosity and hormones—and crushed the trembling moment of my first kiss completely.

“What do you think I am to you, Hunter Hamilton?”

Just thinking about it made my chest sting, and a quiet fury rose. He had been gentle with me and I had nearly fallen for him again.

“Maybe it was for the best.”

That stupid mistake had been a gift. It gave me one last chance to remember exactly how he saw me. From now on, I would never fall for his kindness.

I swore it to myself—over and over.

After the promotion, Allen’s overtime became the norm, sometimes even weekends.

One early morning as we stepped out of the temporary apartment, I glanced at him with worry.

“Daddy, you look tired.”

He chuckled and tapped my cheek. “Yeah? Daddy’s fine. If I sleep through the weekend it’ll feel great.”

“There’s no job where you make tons of money and work little. You have to hustle to pay the mortgage faster.”

Olivia cut in, sharp.

Every morning on the walk from Ninety-Sixth to Eighty-Fourth Street, Allen and I walked alone. The rare time just the two of us had was precious.

In my childhood I had loved my father without a care. Even after puberty, some daughters drift, but I still adored him. Those morning chats while we walked were the one hour of the day my heart felt the lightest.

Allen, who had married Olivia at forty-two when she was only thirty, was already well into his fifties. Streaks of gray threaded his dark hair, he was shorter than most, and the laugh lines around his eyes were deep. Gentle and calm, he never flexed his authority as head of the house, especially in front of me or my mom.

“Our daughter’s living in a tiny place without even a proper bedroom. It’s rough, isn’t it?”

I was using the living room of the one-bedroom as my room. Sometimes the cramped space felt suffocating, but it wasn’t necessarily bad.

The three of us were crammed into every inch of living room, bedroom, and bathroom, bumping into each other constantly. We fought more, but we laughed more too.

“It’s okay. We’re moving soon anyway.”

“Yeah, just hang in there a little longer. Soon we’ll be in our real house. No more renting, no more shrinking. The place will be clean and spacious, so you can bring your friends over anytime.”

Allen’s face, pale from lack of sun and exhaustion, broke into a genuine smile.

Since I entered my teenage years, Olivia had been relentless in her push to get a house ready before I hit puberty and could still go to school without feeling out of place. She had been saying it since way before I was aware the money problems at home were different from everyone else’s.

I never let my parents know. I simply knew from the time I was much younger that my house was poorer than my classmates’.

Back in lower-school years the gap still felt too small to matter, but in high school it became impossible to ignore. I went to school with princesses from the Middle East, heiresses to department-store empires, daughters of hedge-fund CEOs.

I had watched those kids since childhood—kids with their own jets, horses on their estates, birthday parties costing thousands. I learned early how to stay confident among them.

As the quiet, shy girl who had never rubbed anyone the wrong way, I had to figure out how to survive as a ghost in plain sight.

If we had lived in a regular neighborhood instead of the Upper East Side, I would have been comfortably middle class. Here I was in the bottom thirty percent of Astor School. Twenty-five percent of kids got scholarships, and I was scraping by in the very bottom thirty while paying full tuition.

Sometimes I imagined how life would have been at a normal public school. “Then maybe I’d be as confident and bold as Hunter or Siena. Why do I always feel like something is missing? If something’s wrong, why does running away feel like the only option?”

With Allen I could speak freely about things I could never say to Olivia.

“Daddy, when I was little you said you were just like me?”

“Yeah. You’re so much like me it’s scary.”

But to me he looked nothing timid. In the office he was respected, he talked easily with strangers. When had that confidence started? When did you stop getting nervous in front of your boss and just blurt out what you wanted?

“Hey, you still tremble every time you present in front of the boss. When you take your jacket off after, your back’s soaked.”

Allen’s eyes crinkled with amusement. He ruffled my hair. “Livvy, don’t stress. You don’t have to force a personality. Grow up a little, find something you love, and the confidence will come naturally. People just get used to each other with time.”

“…Really?”

“Definitely! You’re the sweetest, kindest kid I could ever ask for. If I’d known I’d have a girl like you, I would have proposed the day I met your mother.”

Allen leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “We’d be together for a very long time. I’m getting old, you know.”

“Don’t say that, Daddy!”

I pouted. He laughed and stroked my hair again. “Don’t worry, Livvy. I’ll be right here until you get sick of me and tell me to back off. I love you, our daughter. Have fun at school today!”

When we reached the subway, Allen waved and turned to go.

“Daddy!”

I watched him descend the stairs to the last car, turn, and wave one last time. Then I headed toward Astor School, muttering, “I forgot to tell him I love him too. Tomorrow I’ll say it for sure…”