Dust to Dust

by Audrey Keown

  I could never be at home here again.

  He stopped a few feet from me. “Ivy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have never lied to you.”

  “Where is the rest of our family? Why are we so alone here?”

  He stood frowning at me.

  “Why didn’t I get to know my grandparents? Why do you never talk about them? What’s wrong with a man who never talks about his family? None of this is normal. None of this is okay!” I picked up a mug from the counter and threw it against the floor.

  Linoleum isn’t very hard, but the handle popped right off.

  He glowered at the mug and back at me. “If you want answers to your questions, you’ll have to stop yelling and throwing things.”

  Stop yelling? I gave him better than that. I stopped speaking altogether and stood there stabbing my eyes like pitchforks into his.

  “What brought this on, Ivy?” he said. “Nothing has changed. It’s always been you and me. I know you miss your mother, but the two of us, we’ve always been enough, haven’t we?”

  I pulled the newspaper clipping out of my back pocket and tossed it toward him. It fluttered to the floor, and I took some petty satisfaction in him having to bend over to retrieve it.

  “Wow.” He jerked his head back and raked a hand through his silver hair. “I don’t remember this.”

  “You tried to hide it from me. But I found out.”

  “Hide what?”

  “That you are the Morrow. Not Mom!”

  “Yeah.” His eyes narrowed, uncomprehending.

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  He held his mouth open a second. “Ivy. If you’re saying you believed your mother was a Morrow instead of me, I had no idea that you thought that.”

  The expression fell off of my face, and I froze in front of him. “What?”

  So how had I come up with that narrative? I took a minute while he thought about what to say next to examine my own memories. There weren’t many that applied. Dad hadn’t brought up the family, and I hadn’t asked. Most of the times I remembered them being discussed were before my mom had left. Maybe that was why I’d thought they were her family. She was the only one who’d ever talked about them, and it was always Your grandparents this or Your great-aunt that.

  She’d never said my parents, my aunt.

  So I had assumed. Poorly. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know at what point that became the story that stuck with you, and I do take some of the responsibility here.” He shook his head gently several times. “I think I must have buried this topic under so many layers of … shame, Brené Brown would say, and pain. You probably never felt safe bringing it up.”

  “You’ve read Brené Brown?”

  He held up both hands as if at gunpoint. “I listened to the audiobook on the way to some house calls, okay, but that’s not the point—”

  “Sorry—”

  “That’s all right, just … the point is, I didn’t know you wanted to know all of this, and I should have.” His chest seemed to cave in, and he tucked his chin. “I should have talked about it.”

  “Okay. So, what happened to you?”

  “Are you aware at all of how the family lost their fortune?” he asked.

  I nodded and frowned. “Mr. Fig told me about the stock market crash. And the instability after that.”

  “That’s a kind way to put it.” He sat down. “Ralph always was kind.”

  “Ralph?”

  “Mr. Fig, as you call him.”

  “You know him? You remember him?”

  “Of course. Everyone loved him. They would have made him butler if he’d been just a little older.” His eyes sparkled. “He took me by storm. He was so cool. He used to drive this Jaguar—”

  “Cool? Mr. Fig?”

  “I mean, sure, he could be a little exacting.”

  “A little exacting? Dad, the man once had Bea rewash a whole load of linens just because she found a Dum Dum wrapper in the dryer.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  “Listen, I wanna talk more about the young Mr. Fig, but what are you telling me? What happened to you and your family?”

  “I was angry, disappointed, when we lost everything. All my life, they had fed me these ideals of what it meant to be ‘a Morrow.’ And then it felt like they just gave up. The economy tanked, and I didn’t see, Ivy, how hard my mother was working to hold it all together,” he said. “The bank took the house, and from my perspective, my parents let it happen. They lost the home my ancestors had kept together for generations.

  “I had to leave private school and wear clothes from Goodwill, which—I know—is not that bad, but when your name is Morrow and kids know who you are, they delight in your misfortune.”

  “Kids are the worst,” I agreed.

  “Even while my dad was still around, he was just so pitiful after his breakdown, the heart attack—I don’t know how much you know—but he was also just so stubborn. He refused to explain anything to me about what was happening.” Dad leaned forward and looked at me intensely. “I feel terrible about the way I treated them, Vee. I was immature, and I handled it all badly. By the time you came along, I just never wanted to speak of it again.”

  I had the instinct to lay a supportive hand on his, but I didn’t get up. “It must have been hard, losing your parents so early. And I know there must be a lot more you haven’t said yet.”

  He cocked his head. “Didn’t you ever wonder why your mother’s maiden name wasn’t Morrow?”

  “I just figured she’d been married before, I guess. I didn’t think that would be a favorite topic of yours either. Anyway, that was easier to explain than your name not being Morrow.”

  He shook his head. “Wow.”

  “So why isn’t your name, my name, Morrow?”

  “I changed it. I was that angry, and I was eighteen. I thought I had to reinvent myself. I’m sorry, Ivy.”

  “Wow.” I closed my eyes a second, as if that would stop the flood of new realizations.

  “I … abandoned my family, really. Just when they were hurting the most. I couldn’t go back to them after that.”

  My dad had been so stable for so long. It was impossible for me to picture him as the leaver. He was the one left behind. At least when it came to our little triad.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.” I meant it on so many levels. I was sorry for yelling at him and sorry for all the pain he’d carried. I had questions that would fill the weeks ahead, but right now, I just wanted us to be whole again.

  He pulled me close to him, then pushed me away just as quickly with a face like he was disgusted. “What have you been doing tonight? You smell like the exit line of the Tilt-A-Whirl.”

  I smiled. “Oh that? That’s only because I puked a little while ago.”

  XXI

  The Thing With Feathers

  Disappointment was inevitable, conflict unavoidable. But maybe—maybe neither of those things had to mean quitting on a person. Maybe neither had to mean someone leaving.

  I’d taken some painkillers and a nice long nap after the talk with Dad and woken up around dinnertime, still only beginning to process all the pieces of my life that looked new to me in light of what he’d shared.

  But it wasn’t long before I was thinking of George again. I was used to having a hundred casual thoughts of him in a day, but now, having admitted to myself how I really felt about him, my body kept reminding me of the discovery. Every time he came to mind, my cheeks went hot.

  And then there were the deliberate reflections on everything we’d done and said for the last few weeks. I was trying to nail down when things had shifted for me.

  I had a text from him asking how I was feeling and another from Dad saying he’d gone to pick up tacos for us.

  I could see us, George and me together—me bringing a little healthy flexibility into his life, him grounding me.

  Of course I could see it. We’d been doing that already for yea
rs.

  I was getting ahead of myself. I knew he loved me but not if there was anything more than friendship coming from his end.

  But the possibility there made the risk worthwhile.

  Before I could change my mind, I showered, slapped a big Band-Aid on my cheek to cover the nasty black welt from Velvet’s pistol-whipping, popped two more ibuprofen, and got on my old Schwinn.

  In a little while I was knocking on George’s condo door, my sweaty palm hidden safe inside a brave fist. Something about this hallway—the crisp paint lines, the velvet carpet runner, the art deco sconce lights—made me feel exposed and inferior. George’s building wasn’t nicer than the hotel, but I was used to the old Mustard Mansion and felt at home there.

  I knocked again.

  When he finally opened the door, the gap was only wide enough for him to stand in. He’d obviously spotted me through the peephole, because he wasn’t surprised to see me. “Ivy. Hi.”

  Weird to use my name like that. What was going on? I tried to read his face. It was like there was something he had to say and didn’t want to.

  “Hi.” I took a breath.

  “You feeling better? After everything that happened today?” Behind him, the hard angles of his white leather sofa were all I could see in the dimly lit interior.

  Why didn’t he just let me in?

  “Yeah, a little sore. Are you hiding something in there?” I said. “Don’t tell me you got so lonely you adopted a cat. I promise I’ll make more time for you after midterms.”

  He squinted his eyes and barely smiled at my joke.

  My nerve faltered. This wasn’t starting out at all the way I’d hoped.

  Maybe going in loaded, with this laser focus, wasn’t the best way to approach this conversation. Maybe it’d be better to wait until we were just hanging out sometime and the moment felt right again.

  “Actually.” He smiled at me … politely … as if there was something wrong, as if I’d just received bad news and he was trying to be kind about it. “Bea is here.”

  Those three words normally wouldn’t alarm me, but his tone of voice and the sympathetic look he sent me signaled something more. Signaled danger.

  He stepped aside a few inches, revealing behind him his little bistro table set with candles and some kind of dinner and Bea in one of his two chairs. She looked gorgeous in a tiny blue dress that would’ve matched her eyes if I had been close enough to see their color.

  He had cooked for her.

  They were having dinner.

  This was a date.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  George watched my face.

  “Oh.” I nodded rapidly to affect nonchalance and understanding.

  I totally pulled it off, of course. There was no way my best friend of a decade and a half could see right through my little charade.

  “Hi, Bea.” I swiped a hand in a halfhearted wave, and the air felt cooler than it should’ve on my damp palm.

  She waved back heartily and grinned behind George’s back as if this were a victorious moment for us, as if we were on the same team. And we should have been. We were friends.

  As were George and I. We were all friends. All friends, except that they were also on a date.

  I looked at George with what I hoped was an encouraging smile and thanked God that I was able to keep my head. “Good for you. Cool. I only had five minutes anyway.”

  I took a step backward.

  “Bea was under the impression,” George said, “for some reason, that you and I were … something more than friends.”

  He said it like the idea was only mildly off base.

  “Really?” My voice spiked an octave. “Glad you got that straightened out. This is your first date, then?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Sure, yeah, just tired from today, you know.”

  He hadn’t told me what he’d cooked for her. That was unexpected.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. Well, rest up. I’ll call you.”

  “Yeah, great. Let me know how it went,” I said, already turned toward the elevator, already turned away from him.

  Hope was still the cruelest thing I knew.

  I downed several quiet cups of tea that night and the next day thinking of George.

  He filled my consciousness now as much as he had last fall when I was working to clear his name, but every thought I had of him was now accompanied by the ache of loss and longing.

  The truth wasn’t my friend.

  George didn’t commit himself lightly, but once he was into something, he was all the way in.

  If he had begun this thing with Bea, I had to let him see it through.

  Or not, another part of me said. Maybe he loves you but he’s afraid. Maybe you haven’t given him any evidence that he could act on. Maybe the kindest thing to do is intervene before his relationship with Bea gets too serious.

  And round and round they went, these parts of me.

  Clarista called me Tuesday afternoon to say Mr. Fig had been released, and even though it was the outcome I’d expected, I was so relieved for him that I cried.

  I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel to see him. But maybe he would take some time off to recover.

  I pictured him being handed back his shoes, his wallet, his watch, walking out of the jail without so much as an apology from anyone, but with his head held high again in the fresh air.

  I felt a little like I’d just gotten out of jail too, a cage of denial about my feelings that I’d built myself. The honest light on the other side wasn’t much easier to bear, but the pure joy I felt about Mr. Fig being cleared made it easier to set aside my own regret and jealousy for a while.

  On Tuesday evening, I turned my thoughts to my dad and the people that I now understood to be his family. A wealth of knowledge about them was within reach now, but the first question I wanted answered was the one that had bugged me all week.

  If anyone knew where my grandparents were buried, surely it was Dad. I worked up the nerve to ask him, no small thing after my own long-running moratorium on the subject.

  “We’ll need to go back to the hotel for that,” he answered mysteriously.

  We parked the Volvo in the staff lot. Seeing the car here was normal. Having my dad on the property was not.

  “This used to be the kitchen garden.” He glanced around. “These birch trees were always here, screening the garden from view. Shorter then, though.”

  “I guess you ate well.”

  “That we did.”

  “It occurs to me now why you have such good table manners,” I said.

  “Ah, well, yeah.” He wrinkled his nose. “Hard to shake those after so many important dinners where I had to impress so many people.”

  “At least you’re not bitter.”

  He laughed. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t all bad.”

  “So if you spent most of your life avoiding this place, why did you take the call to come and fix the leak last week?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to explain, but …” He put his arm around me as we walked, as if for warmth. “Maybe it’s because I’d seen you doing all these hard things, going back to school again, working here even after your accident last year, just staring your demons right in the face. I just thought, I should try to face mine too.”

  He stopped at the edge of the tree line and looked up at the house in the growing dark. The row of wavy-glassed French doors sparkled with golden light, and I wondered if he was picturing those candlelit dinners he had so hated, or perhaps his own father.

  As we watched, a human silhouette stepped from the dining room out to the terrace. I recognized the backlit outline of Mr. Fig’s neat hair and square shoulders at once.

  I ran up the steps, every ounce of me aching to hug him, but I saw the serious smile on his face and thought better of it. I stopped in front of him and stuck out a hand. “Welcome back, sir.”

  “Thank you so much, Miss Nichols.” He took my hand in
both of his and gave it a wholehearted shake. “I owe you my life.”

  “Well … I don’t know about that.”

  Mr. Fig’s gaze went behind my shoulder.

  Dad had joined us. “Ralph.” They shook hands. “It’s great to see you.”

  “You’re looking well, Mr.—Nichols, isn’t it?”

  That funny intonation Mr. Fig always put on my name—this was why.

  Dad smiled softly. “I appreciate the way you’ve been looking after my girl.”

  “I’ve been repaid tenfold,” Mr. Fig said.

  Dad must have sensed that we had things to say only to each other because he drifted away toward the back corner of the house.

  “I figured out who taped up the drawings,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “It wasn’t the painting thief. It was Naomi, a friend of the maid who was fired after the theft all those years ago. She was trying to drive a confession out of you.”

  “Gracious me.” Mr. Fig grasped and tugged one jacket cuff and then the other.

  “She was Velvet Reed … or pretending to be Velvet, at least, and she was also Renee’s killer, but maybe Bennett already told you something about that.”

  He frowned. “It’s rather hypocritical to commit murder and still judge another person for theft, don’t you agree?”

  I chuckled. “Yes, I do.”

  “Speaking of which, Miss Nichols, you know that I abhor speaking of money, but I’m afraid it is necessary to ask you to talk with me about the same when you come to work tomorrow.”

  “You’re giving me a raise?” I asked.

  “Well, yes, that is a very good idea, and furthermore, there is the matter of my debt to your family. Now that everything is out of the bag, as they say, I’d like to set you up better for the future.” There was no guilt in his expression, only resolve and affection. “Of course, the amount won’t be anywhere near the combined value of the paintings that were stolen, but it will be a step toward reparation.”

  My eyes were hot and damp. I wanted Mr. Fig to keep his money, and yet, this was what he wanted. And let’s face it, I could really use a car. “Thank you.”