Chapter 10

 

Thirteen years ago …

 

January, two months after my twentieth birthday. I’d fully expected this morning’s meeting with the family lawyer to go the same way every other one went: No, Charlotte is too young to be living on her own; no, she can’t have free access to her inheritance yet; if she’s really going to marry this North fellow then there should be a pre-nuptial agreement.

All the meetings with this impossibly ancient attorney went the same way. Elsa attended as my guardian, Ron as the senior-most family member, and me, slumped into a chair while they all talked about me as if I weren’t in the room. I’ll graduate with an accounting degree in one more year. I think I can handle my own money now.

“… the house, furnishings and vehicle. For now,” the attorney was saying. “Upon her twenty-first birthday, she’ll receive access to half the trust fund. At age thirty, the remainder.”

I patted the tabletop with my hand. “Could you all at least pretend I’m right here.” I tried for a respectful tone.

“Sorry.” The lawyer actually looked a bit chastened. “Charlotte, the trust fund provision is not my decision. Your parents wrote it that way. Each of your brothers received his share at the appropriate age, as well.”

I know I made a face when he used the word ‘appropriate.’ I couldn’t help myself. He turned his attention back to the long sheets of paper on the desk and I fiddled with the ring on my left hand. The diamond Brad had given me when he proposed at Christmas wasn’t a large one but it signified that we had a future together. In one year’s time I would have my degree and a husband and we would be living in a nice neighborhood, a far cry from our contemporaries in their student-housing apartments.

Today’s meeting was momentous for me—my own home. No matter what the rest of them said, I felt like a grownup—finally. I signed the papers the lawyer pushed toward me and walked out of his office not quite believing my luck.

Gram suggested a celebratory lunch. She’d put stew in a big pot on the stove before we left for the meeting. Ron begged off, saying he had to meet with a woman about renting space for his business. He’d received his private investigator’s license two years ago and the cases started to roll in, thanks to the guy who’d mentored him. But working from home with his shrewish wife Bernadette and three small kids underfoot was proving nearly impossible.

So the celebration ended up being just Gram and me, which was fine. I gobbled down the stew and cornbread, mentally cataloguing the possessions I’d collected in five years in this house, while she talked about the practicalities of being a homeowner.

“You’ll need to be sure to have the furnace serviced each fall. Ron did it last September so it’s working fine now. And he’ll help you this spring when it’s time to switch over to your air conditioning.”

I nodded absently. She probably thought the smile on my face was gratitude for her advice, when in reality I was thinking how great it would be to have Stacy over to hang out tonight. I was pretty sure some of my dad’s liquor supply must still be in a cabinet somewhere over there. The moment Gram paused, I jumped up and put my dishes in the sink then dashed to my room to start packing.

The shiny black extension phone I’d bought for myself sat on the bedside table. I was fairly certain the phone at my own house—my house!—wasn’t connected yet, so I picked up this one and punched Stacy’s number to deliver the great news.

“Tonight? Yeah! Wow, that’s fantastic, Charlie. I’ll tell Jennifer and Karin and Lisa. They’ll round up the guys, and I’m pretty sure Dominic was getting a keg for the weekend. If he can get it now, he’ll bring it.”

“I was thinking it’d be just—”

“Oh, man, this’ll be great!”

… you and me … But she’d hung up. Wow. I was about to host my first party. I started flinging things into a box.

I spent the afternoon putting my clothes into the closet I’d used five years ago. At some point I would have to go through the old stuff I’d left behind. Clothes the fifteen-year-old me had loved were just plain icky now. Walking through the living room and kitchen sent me back to childhood with waves of memories, both sweet and painful. My mother’s china in the dining room hutch, linens she’d inherited from her mother, my dad’s pipe on an end table.

I went into their bedroom, half expecting to see Mother’s robe hanging from the hook on the bathroom door, but Elsa and Ron and the other responsible adults of the day had cleared my parents’ personal things. When Brad and I were married we would move into this room. It would be weird.

Another thing that had been cleared from the house was all trace of food. There was not so much as a stale cracker or ancient bag of popcorn. I would need to buy groceries. I checked my wallet where I had a whole ten dollars to last me the month. Welcome to the real world, Charlie. At least, thanks to Elsa’s diligence and my own sneakiness, the car out in the garage was gassed up and ready to go. I went out there and got behind the wheel.

The neighborhood had a whole different feel to me, adult Charlie driving my own car from my own house to do my own grocery shopping. Up the block, I saw a woman at the Delaney house, holding the hand of a little blonde girl with each of hers. They must be in kindergarten or first grade by now, just coming home from school. The woman wasn’t their mother. A fragment of conversation passed through my memory, Gram saying something about the parents now having a nanny for the girls. They were apparently making an obscene amount of money now (her words) and could afford such things. It meant nothing to me.

At the supermarket I discovered this stuff was expensive. Bread was more than a dollar a loaf, and my ten bucks wouldn’t go far. I settled on items for the party, for now. Tomorrow, I would have to figure out something that didn’t involve Gram or see-I-told-you-so Ron.

Friends started arriving a little after ten-thirty that night. Obviously, Stacy knew that was the magic hour when Gram finished watching the evening news and would be dead asleep, the time I had always sneaked out. By midnight I was beginning to wish they’d all go home. I kept turning down the music. Even though all the windows and doors were closed on a January night, surely the sound was rocking the neighborhood.

The gang had decimated the food supply but the keg seemed bottomless. By two a.m. I was ready to hide under my bed, except Rick and Lisa seemed to have locked themselves in my room. I wanted to be a good sport but I had an exam on Internal Revenue Service rules in—oh, god—six hours.

Where was Stacy? Maybe she could convince the rest of them to wind things down. I walked through the living room, past overturned cups and paper plates gooey with onion dip. A dribble of red salsa trailed across the white rug in front of the TV. I picked up as much of the trash as I could hold and headed for the kitchen. I should have put the big wastebasket in the living room. As if anyone would actually use it. I pushed through the swinging door.

There stood Stacy and Brad. Kissing.

The cups and plates dropped at my feet. Stacy heard the sound and backed away from him.

“Nope,” she said with a laugh and a little slap at his shoulder. “Scott’s the better kisser.”

She was laughing as she walked toward me. “Silly bet. I told Scott he was the world’s best kisser.”

My best friend had always been a joker, much more playful than I, full of pranks. Was this just another of those? I didn’t know. I only knew I was tired and grumpy and had a huge mess to clean up and an exam to pass very soon.

“Party’s over,” I said to her. “Go tell the rest of them it’s time to go home.”