He looks insulted. “I’m a freshman.”

“I started as a freshman.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re a real sac à foutre.”

I smile just as our coach growls, “Emmett, get your ass over here!”

It’s hard to look contrite when you have the world laid at your feet. This game doesn’t matter. We’re not going to make it to the playoffs. Earlier in the season, we lost two of our best guys to injuries, and another starter got kicked out of St. John’s because of drugs. Pity. He sold good weed.

My coach does a rousing rendition of Guy Trying to Rein in a Troubled Youth. He tells me I need to show some respect and I can’t go through life ignoring the rules, but he’s wrong and we both know it.

I stand there, silent, until he gets it all out, and then he waves his hand in defeat and tells me to pack up my stuff with the rest of my team.

Alexander’s waiting for me like a dutiful puppy. When I start heading back across campus, he falls in beside me.

“Parents Weekend starts Saturday. Excited to see daddy dearest?”

I ignore him, but he persists.

“Maybe Maman will come.”

That’s laughable. She’s never come to a Parents Weekend at St. John’s. We barely keep in touch, though she did call me out of the blue the other day. I almost let it go to voicemail.

“Oh Emmett! I miss my boys. Are you doing well? Learning and behaving as I taught you to?”

“I’m sorry. Who is this?”

She acted like she was in on the joke.

“Emmett, don’t be silly. Now, have you heard from your papa lately?”

It’s truly pathetic. After all this time, she’s still infatuated with my father.

Frédéric Mercier is a complicated man. Most people wouldn’t want to sit across from him in a boardroom, let alone a dinner table. He scared me when I was young, and any comfort to be found came from Maman. In our cold house, I equated happiness with her until I turned five and my father left.

Their divorce broke her.

She loved my father too much. When he left, our lives became a vacuum. I have memories of her being loving and attentive before they split up, but after, she checked out. Short trips turned into summers away from our home in Paris, winters with no phone calls. She was always off looking for her happiness, and apparently it didn’t include Alexander or me.

I used to give her the benefit of the doubt—it’s no easy thing to heal a broken heart—but that’s gone now. I see her for what she really is: selfish. Always searching, finding, leaving. When Alexander and I were still young and living in Paris, my father tried to be there some, but work kept him busy. You can’t be the head of a global luxury conglomerate and make it home for dinner every night, not to mention he remarried after he divorced my mother. Found himself a nice little family, a princess for a daughter.