Back in the Burbs by Tracy Wolff
Chapter Twenty-Four
I manage to wake up around three o’clock in the afternoon, sunlight be damned, to the to the sound of my doorbell ringing over and over again.
I’m tempted to ignore it—I’m not expecting anyone, and after my last surprise guest, I’m not in any hurry to see who’s out there. But just as I start to drift back to sleep, I remember. The porch!
I jump out of bed and go racing down the stairs as my phone starts to ring and Dad’s photo pops up on the screen. “Sorry, Dad, I can’t talk right now. I have to—”
“I’m downstairs, Mallory, and I know you’re here,” he says. “Please come—” He breaks off as I throw open the door.
“Come in!” I all but pull him off the porch. “You shouldn’t be out there! I haven’t had a chance to have the porch repaired yet—”
“Don’t you mean you don’t have the money to have it repaired?” he asks as he casts a disapproving look at my pajamas.
“Well, yeah, that too.” I turn and head toward the kitchen, happy that I at least have the family room and kitchen done, so that—as long as I keep him in this part of the house—he won’t be able to speak badly of Aunt Maggie.
“Has it occurred to you to get a job?” He follows me toward the kitchen. “Since money is such a problem for you?”
I clench my jaw. As if looking for a job isn’t exactly what I’ve spent the last several months trying to do. Up until I inherited Aunt Maggie’s house, I was doing nothing but circulating my résumé, trying to get a bite.
“Yes, Dad. I’m looking for a job.” And if something doesn’t come along in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to forget about office managing and put my name in at a few temp agencies for office workers. The pay will suck, I’m sure, but something is better than nothing. I just need to get Aunt Maggie’s house in any kind of decent shape first. And by decent, I mean livable.
“By sleeping until three in the afternoon?” He settles himself at the head of the kitchen table.
Counting to infinity, I walk straight to the coffee maker and start brewing a pot. Silence reigns in the kitchen for a couple of minutes, which is so unusual for him that I can’t help glancing behind me to see what’s up. I barely stop myself from snickering when I see him staring in horror at Aunt Maggie’s canisters—particularly the ones marked Quaaludes and Ganja.
I’m tempted to offer him a gummy bear—he definitely looks like he needs to relax—but I’m not up for the fight that would probably ensue.
“Your addition?” he asks when he catches me looking.
“Oh, yes. Definitely. I have so much extra money to toss around that I decided to spend it on a thousand dollars’ worth of canisters.” Yes, I looked them up. And yes, they really do cost more than a hundred dollars each.
He shakes his head. “My aunt always did have her problems.”
“Maybe so, but being a drug addict wasn’t one of them, Dad.”
He harrumphs his disagreement. Or maybe it’s his disapproval. Since I announced my divorce from Karl, it’s gotten harder and harder to tell the difference between the two.
The coffeepot starts brewing. “Do you want a cup?”
He looks around the kitchen. “Do you have something stronger?”
“Stronger?” I lift a brow in mock surprise. “At three o’clock in the afternoon, Dad?”
He shrugs but doesn’t say anything else.
I don’t have any hard liquor, and I haven’t found Aunt Maggie’s stash yet—if she had one—so I grab one of the open wine bottles from last night and pour him a glass.
“Thank you.” He grabs the glass like it’s a lifeline and takes a deep sip. Then he sighs and looks around the room. “I hadn’t realized things had gotten this bad.”
“What things?” If my mom told him about Sasha being pregnant, I really don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it—not now. Not until I absolutely have to.
“With Aunt Maggie.” He gets a pinched look around his eyes, and the muscle in his jaw twitches. “The house is a disaster.”
I have no clue what to say to that. If he thinks this is a disaster, I can only imagine what he would have thought if he saw the place a couple of days ago—or the upstairs right now.
“I saw all the bags down at the curb,” he continues. “My parents used to talk about Maggie’s tendency to ‘collect’ things, but it wasn’t until I was much older that I understood what that meant. She did so well for so long, I hadn’t realized she’d fallen back into her old habits.”
He turns his face away from me, his lips pursed together, and if it hadn’t been broad daylight, I never would have believed for a second that the man’s cheek was wet before I watch him wipe the single tear away.
“I should have checked on her more,” he admits.
I plop down into the chair next to Dad’s, my knees no longer willing to hold me up with the sudden and totally out-of-character reveal.
“She was always something. I mean, I didn’t understand her. Ever. She was flighty and wild and more than a little bit of everything a Martin shouldn’t be, but I couldn’t help but be amazed by her. She never did what was expected.” He drains the rest of the wineglass in one gulp. “The last thing I would have expected was for her to leave you the house. I guess that’s why I should have expected she’d do it. She always did love cheering on the underdog.”
Wow. Okay, that hurts even if it’s true.
But where Dad saw a flighty woman who didn’t meet expectations, I saw a woman who bowed to no one. Ever.
Dad twirls the glass around on the table. I figure he’s thinking about Aunt Maggie some more, and I stand up to get more coffee and give him a little bit of time to collect his thoughts.
But then he totally surprises me by asking, “Why didn’t you tell me you hired some law firm to represent you in the divorce?”
“How do you know that? I haven’t told anyone.” I whirl around, shocked, until it dawns on me. “You talked to Karl.”
“He is my son-in-law, you know.”
“Your soon-to-be-ex-son-in-law,” I shoot back, wondering how coffee would taste with a wine chaser.
“My soon-to-be-ex-son-in-law,” he repeats, sounding defeated. “I just can’t figure out why you wouldn’t ask my firm to represent you once you decided you really wanted to go through with the divorce.”
“Dad, I decided I wanted to go through with the divorce the moment I found out Karl was cheating on me. I can’t live like that.”
“Maybe so.” Somehow, he looks even more pained. “But I wish you’d come to me, to my firm.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to represent me.”
More, I don’t want him to represent me. One, because I don’t want to mix my family up in this any more than they already are. And two—and this is the kicker—after everything he and my mom said about Karl and me, I don’t actually trust him to represent my best interests—not once Karl starts spinning tales about how hard he worked to establish the firm and how most of it should thus, rightfully, belong to him.
“I’m still your father, you know.”
There is a wealth of emotions in those words and at a different time, I might want to explore them and what they mean. But that isn’t today. I’m just too exhausted. Everything that happened over the past couple of days has taken the last of my emotional strength, and I don’t have anything left for the complicated mess that is my relationship with my parents.
Someday, I will talk to my dad about everything that happened since I told them that I was leaving Karl. But someday is definitely not today. Not even close.
“I know.” I drop a kiss on the top of his head.
And then I change the subject to lighter things.
We talk for a few more minutes, and then my dad pushes back from the table. “If you’re in a pinch, I can hire you at the firm. You can be an assistant office manager—I know it’s a step down from what you were doing for Karl, but we’ve got Lottie, who handles all the big managerial tasks. Still, we can always use—”
“No, Dad,” I say firmly, even as I take his hand in mine.
Going from Karl to my dad feels like a definite step backward, and I can’t do that right now, not if I want to be able to keep looking at myself in the mirror. Not if I want to keep telling myself that I really am moving forward.
“There might be a time when I have to take you up on that offer. I hope there isn’t, but I’m realistic enough to admit that there might be,” I say. “But I’m not there yet. I appreciate the offer—and no matter what happens, I will always appreciate it. But I’ve got this.”
He looks around the kitchen, which is now clean but still needs a good coat of paint and probably a new floor.
“You’ve got this?” he asks doubtfully.
“I do.”
And as I say the words, it hits me. I do have this. Somehow, some way, I’ll figure things out—with Karl, with the house, with myself.
It’s gonna take a while, but the best things always do. Besides, who cares? Right now, it feels like I have nothing but time.