by Piper Lennox
“Heads up,” Graham whispers. Before I can ask why, I feel a hand on my shoulder.
“Here.” Tim holds out a scrap of paper as I turn. I take it.
It’s an address.
“Stop by the estate, sometime. I’m there most evenings after eight, and Sundays in the afternoon.” He checks the buttons on his coat, which looks like it costs more than all my lawyer fees combined. “I know today probably wasn’t.... It didn’t go how I thought, either, but...but it was good to see you. I’d like to get to know you better.” He holds out his hand for another shake, but draws back when I just stare at it.
“Thanks.” I accept the handshake, using the other to pocket the address.
My hand brushes the letter.
“Oh, uh...here.” I pass it to him. It’s crumpled and forgotten-looking, like a receipt in a glove box, but Tim takes it as though I’ve handed him a billion-dollar check.
“Thank you,” he nods, without opening it. I climb into Graham’s idling car before I can change my mind.
While we pull out of the parking lot, I let myself look back. Tim stands on the sidewalk while a driver holds a door for him, patient in the cold.
He opens the letter.
I turn back in my seat and face the front. I don’t even check the mirrors for more.
Whatever I might see, whatever his reaction, I’m not sure it would make me happy.
12
“Who’s Silas?”
I take the card Dad plucks out of the bouquet and pocket it. “Nobody.”
“That boy I told you about,” Mom chimes from the laundry room. She pops her head into the kitchen and adds, “The Fairfield.”
Dad looks at me for confirmation. I rearrange the flowers in their vase and pluck a few dead petals from a rose instead of answering.
“Fairfields,” he says, almost cautious, like he’s gauging my reaction. When I refuse to give one, he scoffs. “Bet he’s just like his dad. I’d watch myself around him, if I were you.”
“He’s nothing like his dad. He wasn’t raised by Timothy Fairfield at all. The guy abandoned him.”
“How’d you meet him?”
I pause and swallow. “The Acre.”
“If he’s not connected to his dad, what was he doing at the Acre?”
“Joel,” Mom scolds, slamming the lid of the laundry machine with a clatter before she steps back into the kitchen.
“I’m just saying, Cami should keep a good distance until she knows this kid. The Fairfields are conniving and selfish. Even their charity stuff is just a show. I could just see one of them hanging around the Acre with some bullshit story—”
“Joel,” Mom snaps again, while I roll my eyes and carry the vase out of there. It’ll probably be safer in my room.
“Camille, sweetheart, wait.” Mom’s voice is so pleading, I just have to stop and turn. “Your dad didn’t mean that.”
We both look at him: me, skeptically; Mom, forcefully. It’s an old trick of ours, sometimes reversed, that never fails to make him step back and reevaluate the blowhard persona.
He looks between us. Then he blinks at Mom, sighs, and nods.
“I’m sorry, Camille. I just...didn’t know things were serious between you two, that’s all. Your mom made it sound casual.”
“It is casual.”
Both of their gazes land on the vase.
“Flowers are just...a nice thing to do. Since when is that a metric of how serious or casual something is?”
Dad nods as I speak, like he’s listening intently. But I know him. That smile on his face is as forced as they come.
“Fair enough,” he says, exhaling as Mom runs to check something in the oven. “Ah, hey—tell me...tell me more about him. What’s he like?”
“You don’t have to feign interest,” I whisper. “Mom’s in the kitchen now.”
“I’m not feigning anything. I want to know, honest.”
I stare at him. He blinks at me, one foot on the bottom step, hand resting too nonchalantly on the banister.
“He’s sweet,” I answer, finally.
“Sweet,” he echoes, hitting the “T” harder than necessary. It’s subtle, but one of Dad’s giveaways.
“He is sweet,” Mom says as she returns, with a whisk in one hand, bowl cradled in the other arm. “That’s exactly the word I used.”
“Cami,” he says slowly, “they all start out sweet—”
“Oh, for the love of God.” I turn and finish my trip upstairs. My bedroom door muffles their argument.
I set the flowers on my desk and open the blinds. There’s not much sunlight; it’s a wet, gray kind of morning. But it still makes the flowers look more alive when I snap a picture and text it to Silas.
“They’re beautiful,” I type. “Thank you.”
Seconds later, he answers, “No, thank you. My boss loved the name suggestions you came up with.”
I set my phone on the bureau and try to focus on my work. I’d never admit it to Silas—it’s fodder for teasing—but, in the two days since we went to the dog park, I’ve picked up a third job, line-editing for people over the internet.
The document is riddled with typos, and exceedingly dull. I tell myself this is why I jump up to answer my phone right away, when it pings again: I’m just eager for any distraction. Not necessarily him.
“Last day in the city. Any chance you’re free?”
The laptop on my bed stares back when I look up. The assignment I took isn’t due until next week. And truthfully, part of me knows I won’t keep this job very long. Mom refused my money this morning when I saw her with the electricity bill in one hand and phone in the other. “We have it, sweetie,” she’d smiled, and shooed me out of the kitchen. It felt strange to pocket the money, like it wasn’t really mine.
“Actually,” I type back, as I look at the flowers again, the brightest thing against a backdrop of gray, “I am.”
* * *
“Do you think you’ll go?”
Silas takes back the paper with the Fairfield estate’s address and shrugs. “I drove past it yesterday, just to check it out from the street. Couldn’t see much.” He watches a rivulet of rain slide down the window. Everyoung Ice Cream Shop, one of three in the city, is empty; even the two employees who served us have disappeared somewhere.
I scrape the bottom of my ice cream sample cup and lick the spoon. “Why didn’t you go in? You’ve got the gate code, now. If it were me, I’d waltz in and start taking what’s mine.”
“Yeah, right. I bet you’ve never taken so much as a mint from a restaurant.” We laugh, feet tangling together under the table.
“Besides,” he adds, a few seconds later, “it’s not mine.”
“It’s just as much yours as it is Caitlin-Anne’s,” I point out. “Speaking of which, are you going to meet her?”
“To be decided. I have the feeling she’ll eviscerate me on sight for stealing half her inheritance.”
The cinnamon ice cream from my next sample is practically melted, but I still manage to choke on it. “Half?”
“I’m exaggerating. I looked at the will in the meeting but didn’t absorb it, really. My lawyer said the companies all go to Jeannie, but she’ll probably sell her shares and retire.”
“So…what does that leave you guys?”
The look he gives me drips with impatience. “Caitlin-Anne and I get something like thirty percent each of some investments and savings upon his death. Then, when Jeannie dies, her will dictates what percentage each of us gets from the estate. A lot is going to foundations and charities, though. And inheritance taxes are, like, ridiculous. So I don’t know any hard figures.” Tonguing his cheek, he nods at the cup in front of me. “Go.”
“CinnaChill,” I say quickly, then, “So who gets the mansion?”
He drops his pen on the table with a flourish and sits back, sighing at me. “Caitlin-Anne gets it. Can we change the subject, please?”
“Wow, just asking questions.” The table wobbles as I t
ake the next flavor, taste it twice, and think. “What’s this one called, again?”
Silas peeks into the cup. “Lemon Dream.”
I take another bite. “That sounds like a pie name, something really sweet and creamy, but this is kind of tart. In a good way. Like...lemonade.”
Maybe I imagine it, but he still seems impatient, the pen he picks up hitting the notebook in a steady, rain-like rhythm. “What would you call it, instead?” he asks flatly.
“‘Lemonade Stand.’” While he writes it down, I study him. His jaw is set, tongue tucked against the side of his mouth again.
“Why don’t you want to talk about it?” I don’t add the second part of my question—we’ve already told each other so much about ourselves; why not this?—because it sounds, even in my own head, clingy as hell. When he looks up from the notebook, I clear my throat. “Like...is it upsetting that Caitlin-Anne still gets more, when she...?”
He spins the pen in his fingers. “When she what?”
The sugar coating my throat turns to glass. I swallow. “When she got to have your dad around, and you didn’t.”
“No. Why would it?”
The pen scratches at the paper, scribbling out notes he’s already written at least twice.
“Because it isn’t fair.”
“Look, Camille,” he laughs bitterly, “I gave up on life being ‘fair’ a long time ago. It just isn’t. And I’m sure Caitlin-Anne will need the house way more than I will, because I’ve heard she’s basically an idiot. Like I said, it’ll be up to her mom, barring some backwards miracle where he outlives her. I’ll just be grateful if the woman doesn’t push me in the grave at his funeral.”
“Silas.” My hands envelop his and pull the pen away. “You can tell me, you know. If it bothers you. I mean...I can’t imagine that it doesn’t.”
“It really doesn’t. I’m not interested in his property. Jeannie and Caitlin-Anne can have all that. The way I’m looking at it, what Tim’s already leaving me will be a nice windfall when I’m middle-aged and my mom needs help or something. But even if I wasn’t getting it, I wouldn’t care.”
He pulls his hand away. I grab the next flavor and taste it.
“Bubblegum-flavored ice cream and bubble-gum pieces?” I ask, wincing as I bite into another rock-hard candy. “Bit overkill.”
“Yeah, I hate that one. The idea is that you sort of ‘collect’ the gum as you eat the ice cream, I guess holding it at the back of your mouth? I find it disgusting, myself, but it’s got its niche.”
“’Pop Culture,’” I christen it, and he gives a weak smile, adding it to the list.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a stretch of silence. “It’s been a weird couple of days.”
Something in his voice clues me in. “You wrote him the letter, didn’t you? And...he hasn’t said anything about it.”
His teeth pull across the corner of his mouth as he begins stacking the empty sample cups and gathering spoons. “Yeah. The day of the meeting, I didn’t expect anything—but yesterday, I just sat around the motel thinking he might call. Which was stupid, because it’s not like I really need an answer to the letter.”
“What kind of stuff did you put in it?”
“Not much, besides what you and I talked about. How I didn’t know where to start, so I was just going to let it write itself. It was mostly me telling him I didn’t care about the money. I was just mad he wasn’t around.”
I hesitate. “Sounds like you did want an answer. You wanted to know why.”
Silas glances at me as he carries the cups and spoons to the trashcan. “Maybe,” he says, finally. “But I don’t think there’s any answer he could give that would make it okay. He already tried blaming my mom for it all. Said she wouldn’t let him see me.”
“Which...isn’t true?”
“Of course it isn’t true. God, Camille.” Silas grabs his coat from the back of his chair so forcefully, I’m sure he’s about to storm out and drive away, abandoning me in an ice cream parlor. When he shrugs it on and stands by the door, waiting, I rush to get mine on and follow.
“I was just asking.” It’s hard to keep up with him, his strides are so long and stabbing across the parking lot. “I don’t know your mom, I don’t know all the facts—how would I know if I don’t ask?”
“Sorry, sorry,” he stammers again, dropping his keys and cursing. He stands by the car a minute, breath stuttering out in short blasts of fog. I watch him over the roof. Eventually, he stoops, grabs them, and unlocks the car. We climb in.
“You can take me home,” I say quietly. But not meekly.
“No, no, I don’t want you to leave. I’m sorry, I keep messing this up.”
My anger softens. “Messing what up? Because I haven’t agreed to this being a date, you know.”
“Oh, it’s not. I’ve been way too big a jerk to deserve that.”
I fight the smile rising to the surface. “You’re not a jerk. You’re just going through a lot. I get it.”
“Agree to disagree. Whatever I’ve been up till now, it’s over—let’s go do something fun.”
“Like what?”
Silas starts the car and catches my hand in his, making me shift the car into Drive with him, holding it there even after we’re on the road. “I don’t know. Let’s see where things take us.”
13
I should have known my bad luck would strike more than once on this trip.
Actually, it’s not just bad luck: it’s always some karmically misaligned incident that feels like a personal attack. You just know the universe is laughing at you, when it happens.
Besides getting a crush on a girl who hated my bloodline, I’ve had dogs literally eat my homework, car batteries die as soon as I jumped someone else’s, and cell phones drop through storm grates without so much as a bounce. I once started a fire in the chem lab at school, when I tripped during a fire drill. In a “let’s make sure you’re not really an arsonist” talk with the school counselor, I got a minor concussion when her framed inspirational poster—a mountain climber clinging to a rope, with the caption “Hang on”—fell off the wall and cracked against my head.
I don’t know why I’m the target of this kind of stuff, but I’ve learned to laugh it off. Most of the time.
Today, that’s going to be hard.
Camille leads me into Savoy, a fancy French restaurant in the heart of the city. It might even be nicer than Maison at the Acre.
“You do know I haven’t gotten my inheritance yet, right?” I joke when we sit, in a two-person booth in a corner, and open our menus.
“It’s on me,” she says, then smiles. “Well, actually—it’s on Brynn.”
“Look who we have here.” A girl in a uniform balancing a tray of empty glasses ambles over, giving Camille a surprised look. “Ada said you were out here, but I didn’t believe her…because she said you were with a guy.” Her eyes glide to me. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
I stand, nervous under her stare for reasons I don’t quite understand. “Silas,” I say, offering a handshake.
“My hands are a little full,” she says slowly, hiding her laugh as I sit and she looks back at Camille. “I’ll be right back. Coffee?”
“Please,” Camille drawls, and I get another once-over before she leaves.
“Meeting the best friend, pretty big deal. You should have warned me we were at that stage already.”
She rolls her eyes but, I notice, doesn’t correct me.
The meal goes well, which should be my first sign bad luck is about to backhand me across the face. We laugh over coffee and the free pastries Brynn brings us. When she grills me about my job, I don’t even flinch.
“Ice cream research and development,” she says skeptically, and scans the section; her other tables are still content and chatty, so she relaxes with one hand on the table and one on her hip. “Can’t imagine that pays too well.”
“Brynn.” Camille droops in her chair.
“It pays
all right, considering I didn’t go to college.”
Brynn clucks her tongue, but Camille reminds her she, too, dropped out, and that Brynn herself dropped out of beauty school. Twice. The humbling rolls off her like water.
“Where are you from? You have a kind of....”
“Accent,” Camille finishes, and laughs behind her coffee cup when I glare at her.
“I do not have an accent.”
“‘I do not have an accent,’” Brynn says, in a grossly exaggerated Southern twang. They both laugh, now. “One of the Carolinas?”
“No. Filigree.”
“Ah,” she nods, as though that was her second guess. “And what are your intentions with my sweet, innocent Camille? You plan on corrupting her?”
“If she’ll let me.”
Brynn laughs again, much louder, earning more than a few looks from her customers in their designer clothes and smart watches. She pushes off from the table and points at me, telling Camille, “I approve.”
When she’s pirouetted into the kitchen, door still swinging behind her, I finish my coffee and say smugly, “She approves.”
“It’s only fair to tell you that Brynn treats my being single like leprosy. I could bring just about anyone off the street and she’d ‘approve.’”
“Nope. I don’t buy that. Best friends are always critical of who their friends date.”
“Not if said friends have never dated anyone.”
“Oh, come on—don’t take my win away like that. I didn’t even have to tell her I was a Fairfield.”
She nods as she takes a sip. “That would have been too easy. She’d have ended her interview right then and there.”
“Which is exactly why I didn’t say it. All victories obtained by being a Fairfield are hollow.” As the restaurant grows quieter, conversations reaching a simultaneous lull, we grow more serious. I add, “Besides, the last thing I want today is any reminder I’m a Fairfield.”