S2 Episode 7
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Welcome to Trainwrecks: Season 2 (2005-2006)! If you haven’t read Season 1, please start there! Trainwrecks is a free-to-read fiction serial that follows a group of six Seattle-adjacent friends from the year 2004 to the year 2015. Join Luna Cruz, Sebastian Velasquez, Dimitri and Victoria Hale, Duke Kingston, and Jasmine Nolan as they stumble their way from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love, making mistakes, overcoming their pasts, and staying together through it all.
For series introduction, character profiles, relationship charts, and general orientation, check out the Table of Contents!
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It wasn’t that Dimitri wanted to dislike Great Aunt Carmine. He just didn’t think he wouldn’t.
What he knew about his extended family had been pieced together over the course of several years. His mother had been raised by her sister, who had just finished university when their parents died, because no one knew how to handle the wild and impulsive Makoto. Grandma Hirashima had been native Hawaiian while Grandpa Hirashima had come from Japan to work in the plantations. The other Hirashima family members, who neither Makoto nor Leila spoke much about, still lived on the islands. Dimitri had never met any of them.
Meanwhile, his father’s father, Adam Law, lived in North Carolina with his wife and their five children, who had all grown up to become CEOs and book editors and doctors and bankers. James’s mother Freya Hale had committed suicide after stabbing her son with a knife and subsequently losing custody of him. Her six sisters comprised the rest of the Hale family, high class Indian women who had moved to the UK and married into even greater wealth.
In another life, Dimitri would have been a little prouder of his roots. He wasn’t a total nobody, but between the distant Hirashimas and the uptight Hales, he’d sure been made to feel like one.
The grandson of the black sheep of the Hale family. The son of the defective Hirashima daughter. Nothing but a drug addict and a criminal.
Still, he obeyed his mother when she told him to dress nicely for Great Aunt Carmine’s visit. He went out and bought a tie because he’d thrown out the only one he’d ever owned. He ironed his shirt and creased his pants and put product in his hair. When he was finished, the Dimitri in the mirror looked like any other rich asshole—and smirked like one, too. It disgusted him.
They drove to his father’s townhouse. Aunt Leila was already there, dressed in a suit jacket and skirt and sensible heels. His mother had chosen a long black dress which, coupled with her traditional fallen affect, made her look like a witch. Victoria wore a long dress as well but managed to look elegant because she’d inherited all the good genes. She did a double-take when she saw Dimitri.
“Goodness! I thought you were someone else,” she cried.
“What can I say? I clean up good.” He gave her a tight smile, but she was so distracted that she didn’t notice. She whacked him on the arm good-naturedly.
“Why don’t you dress like this all the time?”
Because it wasn’t him. Riches and manners and self-importance—it had never been him, never would be. He was the accidental product of his rebellious mother and the scoundrel his father had been in his past life. And no amount of nice clothes would make him anything less.
His father soon arrived from the airport with Great Aunt Carmine on his arm. With heels on, she was almost the same height as James, which put her at only a few inches shorter than six feet. Her dark brown hair had been cropped short, and she had the sort of hawkish gaze that missed nothing. She had the Hale family’s startling green eyes of course, which crinkled at the corners when they landed on Victoria. “There’s my little princess,” she cried.
Victoria ran forward and allowed her great aunt to envelop her in a hug. “Auntie Carmine!”
“Oh, I’ve missed you so, so very much. The house just isn’t the same without you.” She gave her a lipsticked kiss on the cheek.
James motioned for Dimitri to come forward. He almost didn’t, but his mother would likely kick him if he stayed where he was, so he reluctantly stepped towards them. “Aunt Carmine, this is my son, Dimitri.”
The older woman let Victoria go and stood up a little straighter to assess him. The critical way her eyes swept down his body made Dimitri’s skin crawl, but he forced himself to smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Aunt Carmine. Victoria’s told me a lot about you and your sisters.”
“All good things, I hope.” She finished her assessment and matched his smile. “Your mother has strong genes. Not much of the Hale family in you, is there?”
Dimitri bit back a God, I hope not and laughed as if she’d told him an amusing anecdote about her day. “You’d be surprised,” he said. And then she moved past him to greet his mother and aunt, and Dimitri slipped his hands into his pockets so that he wouldn’t strangle her if she insulted them.
“Makoto, I presume.”
“That’s right,” his mother replied, not one to be intimidated by alpha females.
“I read your latest novel, and I must say, you kept me guessing until the very end. Not a lot of mystery authors are capable of that.”
“I know. That’s why so many of them hate my guts.” The corner of her mouth slid upwards. “I give those boring white guys a run for their money.”
Aunt Carmine laughed, but Dimitri couldn’t decide if it was sincere or not. “Too true! The mystery genre is starving for diversity.” And then she moved on to Aunt Leila, the most respectable member of the family, and Dimitri allowed himself to relax because the only way Carmine could find something disagreeable about her would be to make it up herself.
“Ms. Hirashima, it’s wonderful to meet you. My dear nephew has had nothing but good things to say about you.” She clasped Aunt Leila’s hands in hers. “To think that you raised your sister all on your own—no husband! I hope you haven’t come to regret not being married.”
“Not at all,” Aunt Leila said serenely. “I’m quite settled. A roof over my head, a garden to tend, and my family nearby is all I need.”
Carmine looked as if she couldn’t decide what kind of creature stood before her. A person who enjoyed solitude and spinsterhood? An unmarried woman living a life of peace and quiet dignity? It must have been unheard of in whatever awful sphere of society she inhabited, Dimitri thought.
With introductions out of the way, Great Aunt Carmine insisted Victoria play something for her on the piano. Dimitri watched his sister scurry over to the piano by the window, chattering excitedly about her most recent piano competition win while Aunt Carmine beamed with pride. He sidled up next to his mother, took her hand, and gave it a quick squeeze.
“I’m fine,” Makoto muttered. “I can handle myself.”
“Just making sure.” Dimitri smiled his first real smile of the day and went to sit in the living room. The housekeeper Linda entered with tea and snacks, made eye contact with Dimitri, and jerked her head in Aunt Carmine’s direction as if to say get a load of this chick. He widened his eyes as if to say I know, right?
Soon they were all seated and conversing like a family in a painting. Dimitri sipped his tea to keep from making a Boston Harbor joke. He didn’t know what his great aunt’s stance on colonization was, and it probably wasn’t the best time to find out.
“Dimitri, I heard you were a genius,” Aunt Carmine said, forcing him out of his far more entertaining mindscape and into the present.
“I have been known to genius every now and then.”
“Your father says you were retaining more of his medical textbooks at the age of four than he was.” She extended her pinkie finger as she lifted her teacup. “Are you planning to go into medicine as well?”
“I was, but I’ve decided to lean into my American roots and go into law.”
“Ah yes, the Law family,” Aunt Carmine said as if they weren’t altogether important. “How interesting. Your grandfather turned down law to run a publishing house, and now here you are, picking it up again.” She looked at James. “Do you stand to inherit anything of that enormous fortune when Adam passes away?”
James cleared his throat. “I’m… not sure.”
“You ought to find out. You’re his firstborn. Money like that could secure a very comfortable future for your children. For their children, even.”
“We don’t like to think about Adam dying,” Makoto cut in. She and her former father-in-law had gotten along so well that they’d kept sending each other Christmas cards after the divorce.
“Oh, of course not.” Aunt Carmine turned back to Dimitri. “It’s wonderful to hear that you’ve gotten your plans sorted out. I was so worried when you had your… accident.” A quick, thin-lipped smile. “It would be a tragedy to see a mind like yours go to waste. You are the future of two very important families—”
“Three,” Dimitri interrupted with a nod towards his mother and aunt. “Three very important families.”
“Yes.” She blinked as if he’d slapped her across the face, then leveled him with a calculating stare. Dimitri held her gaze, hoping she would see how much he loathed her, how little he thought of her and her money and her status and her opinions on his future.
He hoped she’d go to bed haunted by the knowledge that the drug-addicted, criminal grandson of her crazy sister thought she was beneath him.
Author’s Note: Dimitri “Eat the Rich” Hale.
With four weeks left until the midpoint of this season, it’s time to start submitting questions for the Trainwrecks: Season 2 Mid-Season Q&A! As before, you can write them in the comments, direct message them to me, or submit them to the Official Trainwrecks Tumblr! I’ll stockpile the questions for the Week 11 bonus post, which will be free for all readers.
Remember, these questions don’t have to be for me. You can ask the Trainwrecks cast (period-appropriate) questions to get to know them a little better! Last season we found out what flavor of muffin everyone saw themselves as.