What She Inherits

by Diane V. Mulligan

He sounded so sincere that she bit back a snide remark and switched channels until she found it. All Jason had ever wanted to watch were sports, horror movies, and porn, so this was a change of pace. Despite his broken nose, Brett managed to call out answers to most of the questions. He was usually wrong, but this didn’t dampen his enthusiasm. Casey watched him, amused, not bothering to chime in with the answers she knew, which were surprisingly numerous. He was a college-educated businessman, and she was a high-school dropout baker, and yet, if they had been keeping score, she’d be kicking his butt. She decided to chalk it up to the fact that he’d just been punched in the face.

  After Jeopardy!, Casey found some stupid sitcom that Brett liked, but within minutes he was asleep and snoring. She wondered if he always snored, or it if was because he couldn’t breathe through his nose right now. She carefully lifted his legs from her lap and got up. She might as well go to bed, too. She had to work early in the morning.

  Before she turned off the light, she stood in the doorway, watching him sleep. He was a good man, even if he worked for some evil corporation that turned nice places into big, ugly resorts. Would it be so bad to get to know him better? Would it be so bad to kiss him again and see how it felt? And as quickly as she thought this, she forced herself to shake the image of Brett kissing her from her head.

  Everything was one big perfect mess. That was all she could be sure of.

  Part Four

  Chapter 39

  St. Nabor Island, South Carolina

  In the morning, while Randy worked, Angela checked Facebook to see if Helen had responded yet—she hadn’t—and then she decided to try his idea to find CJ. She found a group for Ryan’s high school class—Beechmont High School, Class of 1993—and then struggled to compose a succinct explanation of who she was and what she wanted.

  I’m looking for friends of Ryan Ellis, a classmate of yours who died during your junior year. I’m his younger sister, and I never got to know him.

  She reread her words. If these people went to school with Ryan, they probably didn’t need to be reminded about his death, because the death of a high school classmate is traumatic, and also they likely knew that his girlfriend had been pregnant, because as far as Marilyn knew, CJ had stayed in school until she had Angela, so maybe she should be honest? She erased the words and tried again.

  I’m Ryan Ellis’s daughter. He died before I met him and I was raised by my grandparents. My grandmother died recently, and I find myself asking a lot of questions about my family. I’d like to talk to more people who knew Ryan.

  Well, that was truth, she thought, watching the cursor blink. She couldn’t drop all of that on a bunch of strangers via Facebook. She erased it again.

  She hadn’t expected this to be so hard, and she wondered why she felt compelled to explain herself. These people didn’t need to know everything about her or about why she was asking. Maybe later, when people responded, she’d need to tell them all the details, but not now.

  I’m looking for classmates of Ryan Ellis. If you’d be willing to talk to me about Ryan, please send me a private message. Thank you.

  Angela wasn’t sure if that was better or if it made her sound like a cop or a private investigator. She added that she was a relative of Ryan’s, a fact that her own last name could corroborate, and hit “Post.”

  Although she hadn’t yet admitted it aloud, she had made up her mind: If she could locate CJ, she was going to go meet her. She had to. The only person who could add clarity to the situation was CJ, and if Angela was going to have closure, she needed clarity.

  All morning she checked Facebook. Every few minutes. Refresh, refresh, refresh. Nothing, nothing, nothing. She thought thirty-somethings loved Facebook. Peers in her own age group kept their accounts only because they used Facebook to log in to a zillion other things online, and also because it was a handy way to reach people who weren’t really your friends but whom you sorta-kinda knew and might want to connect with sometime. But thirty-somethings hadn’t moved on to other social networks. As she understood it, they used Facebook to flirt with old flames and share a thousand pictures a day of their children and pets.

  She had also discovered that Randy had all the graphic design software she had used in her classes at St. Kate’s, software she’d never purchased herself because it was way too expensive. At school, she’d relied on the design lab. She’d been so wrapped up in her grief and confusion these last few weeks, she hadn’t had time to miss creating art, but now she opened a blank canvas and begin to compose a design—a beach-scape using the same technique she’d been using for her project at school where she mimicked the look of layered cut paper. She’d draw for a minute, and then check Facebook, and then draw for a minute, and then check Facebook. She wanted to throw herself wholly into this new art project, but her heart wasn’t in it, and after a while she stopped flipping back and forth and just stared at Facebook, waiting.

  She was staring at her post, with its absence of responses, when she felt Randy’s hand on her shoulder. He gave a little squeeze, leaned down, and kissed the top of her head.

  “Give it time. People are at work now,” he said.

  Angela nodded.

  “Can I see what you were working on?” he asked, reaching around her and tapping the mouse, opening the design program.

  “It’s nothing yet,” Angela said. “One drawing can take me forty or fifty hours. I’m just setting up a flat design, sort of like an outline, right now.”

  “I’d love to see some of your work.”

  “Yeah?” she asked, swiveling around to look at him.

  He nodded. She went back to the web browser and opened her cloud storage account where she’d saved all her projects from school in a virtual portfolio. She opened the first one and slid out of the way so he could look. Some of them were school assignments, but the more recent ones, the ones that showed off her skill with texture and her interest in playing with traditional folk art styles were pretty good, if she said so herself.

  “These are all yours?” Randy asked, clicking from picture to picture.

  Angela smiled and blushed. He sounded surprised. He hadn’t expected her to be a digital artist. She liked taking people by surprise in this way.

  “These are really good. This kind of intricacy—you could really sell these.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—”

  “Um, I do. I do design work for people. Nothing like this, though. With these sorts of skills, you could be making people logos and things like that and selling work like this on one of those sites that does paid downloads.”

  Angela thought of what she did as fine art, not graphic design, and she cringed a little at the thought of designing logos.

  “I’m serious,” Randy said. “You should go look at some of those stock photography sites. They sell digital designs and drawings too. It’s not all photographs.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Angela said, and she knew she sounded unconvinced.

  “I mean, if you’re learning this kind of stuff at college, what do you plan to do once you get a degree? You can make an okay living in graphic design if you’re good at it.”

  Angela sensed that she’d hurt his feelings by showing so little enthusiasm for his idea, as if the fact that she wasn’t sure she wanted to work in graphic design was an insult to him in his chosen career, but it was totally different. He wasn’t an artist. He was a programmer who built and maintained websites. What she did was nothing like what he did.

  “Totally, that’s definitely something I have to look into, especially if I decide not to go back to college,” Angela said, hoping to sound more appreciative of his suggestion.

  “Or what, you thought you’d go get a job at Pixar or something?” he asked.

  Actually, she kind of had thought that. She shrugged.

  “College girls dream big,” Randy said.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Angela asked. She didn’t know what was the matter with him. Did he expect her to decide right now to be a fre
elance graphic designer and work here, out of his apartment, like he did?

  He sighed. “Sorry. I’m tired. Anyway, we should get you back to Grace’s.”

  Angela glanced at the clock. Eleven. Just enough time to get to Grace’s, shower and dress, and meet Marilyn at the hotel. She wanted to sit here, greasy hair and dirty clothes, and make Randy see that she hadn’t meant to offend him. And watch the computer screen until somebody answered.

  “It’ll be good for you to go out for a while,” he said. He reached around her to shut the screen of the laptop.

  Angela tried not to pout. He was right, of course, but she was still not caught up on sleep, and was so wired with conflicting emotions that she wasn’t about to concede as much. Grudgingly she followed him to his car and let him drive her back to Grace’s.

  ***

  It was strange sitting across a table from Marilyn. She looked so much like Deb, although her style was completely different. Where Deb had been prim, proper, matchy-matchy perfect, Marilyn’s style was funkier, messier, more lived-in. But they had the same eyes, the same face-shape, the same heart-shaped lips. Their voices were similar, too. Angela thought that if Marilyn called her on the phone, she wouldn’t be able to detect a difference between her voice and Deb’s—except for the accent, of course. Deb’s years on St. Nabor had given her a hint of a Southern drawl, and she was prone to using the ever-convenient pronoun “y’all,” whereas Marilyn spoke with the hard, clipped tones of a Northerner.

  Angela still didn’t know how to feel about Marilyn’s appearance in her life, let alone how to feel about the fact that she was already leaving. She had arrived at a moment of such turmoil that they hadn’t even gotten to know one another at all.

  When the waiter came with the bread basket, Angela realized that for the first time in days, she was actually hungry—no, starving—and felt relieved. Maybe the insanity really was over now. As she buttered a piece of bread, she noticed that Marilyn was watching her intently and felt a little self-conscious.

  “I’m sorry you have to go so soon,” Angela said.

  “Are you?” Marilyn asked.

  Was she that transparent? Angela wondered. “Well, I feel bad. I wish we could have met under some other circumstances.”

  The fact was that thanks to the lies Angela’s parents had spun for all those years, there were no good circumstances under which they could have met, but still, she did wish she could have a do-over for her introduction to Marilyn. She should be happy to discover that she had long-lost family and that she wasn’t all alone now, instead of being suspicious and confused.

  “I shouldn’t have shown up like that,” Marilyn said. “I did try to contact you, though.”

  She had said this when she arrived, too, but honestly Angela thought the handful of voicemail messages (which she listened to only after Marilyn’s arrival) didn’t constitute much of an effort. Any normal person would have waited for a response before getting on an airplane.

  “I was wondering, have you worked out where you’ll live? Until you go back to school, that is?” Marilyn asked.

  Angela shook her head without looking at her aunt. Instead she pulled the bread apart and rolled it into little soft pieces.

  “Will you go back next semester, do you think?”

  Angela glanced up at her. She knew where this was going. Marilyn was going to urge her to go back to school and finish her degree and act like she had the right to counsel Angela on her life, which she did not, as they had known each other for exactly two days.

  “I’m worried about you. You’re so young to be dealing with all of this, and I would hate for you to make decisions now, during this difficult time, that you’ll regret later.”

  “Well, thanks, but you really don’t need to worry about me,” Angela said, sweeping the little doughy balls of bread up into her paper napkin and setting it on her bread plate. Just like that her appetite had vanished again.

  “Yes, but how well do you know Randy? It seems like things are pretty serious between you, and I have to say, all the ghost talk,” she paused and shook her head. “Are you sure he’s the right sort of person?”

  Angela was ready to get up and leave. Marilyn could have lunch alone and get a cab to the airport. Who did she think she was, prying this way?

  “I’m afraid he’s giving you funny ideas about things. You know ghosts aren’t real,” Marilyn said. She reached out to put her hand over Angela’s, but Angela pulled hers away.

  “I went to Randy for help. He isn’t giving me wrong ideas.” Angela crossed her arms and scanned the room for the waiter. She needed to cancel her order and get the hell out of there.

  “Angela, I don’t know what you thought happened in that room last night, but you’ve got to see how it might look to other people. I mean, it seemed kind of crazy. I feel somehow responsible for you now that Deb is gone, and I really am very worried.”

  “Why did you come here?” Angela asked, struggling to keep her voice down.

  “Why? I—” Marilyn looked uncertain.

  “You knew you were going to tell me the truth about my parents, right? That’s really why you came.”

  “I came because I needed to see for myself. Reading the obituary, it was like it couldn’t possibly be real,” Marilyn said.

  “So why did you bring that picture of Ryan and CJ?” Angela asked. She doubted Marilyn happened to carry it around in her purse day in and day out.

  “I hoped I could finally meet you, and, yes, I thought you deserved to know the truth, and then I showed up and walked into a séance! What was I supposed to do?”

  Angela started to slide out from the behind the booth, but this time Marilyn managed to get hold of her hand.

  “Look, I think you should come live with me and my husband for a while, until you’re ready to go back to school. It isn’t healthy for you to be here all by yourself trying to deal with all of this,” Marilyn said, her tone low and insistent.

  Angela shook her head and pulled her hand free. “You are a stranger, and I’m hardly alone here,” she said, and she walked out of the restaurant as fast as she could.

  ***

  After Angela left, Randy thought about how she’d acted when he’d said she could make money as a graphic designer. She’d had a look on her face like he’d spit in her eye. This was exactly what he had been afraid of—the ghost investigation was over and now she was thinking of herself as above him again.

  He could also detect this attitude of entitlement that sometimes crept into what she said. She’d never had to work hard for anything. She kept saying how she was totally broke now because her mother’s finances were such a mess, and yet she showed no sign of doing anything about it. She talked about transferring to art school, maybe in Savannah, but today was the first time he’d seen her artwork. He knew she was grieving, but he wondered if she was ever going to start making a plan for her future.

  And what sort of spoiled rich girl doesn’t even know how her parents are paying for college? When she told him she hadn’t been aware that her mother had taken out loans for her tuition--to the tune of nearly forty-thousand dollars a year—he could hardly believe it. They came from different worlds. His own parents worked maintaining the homes and lawns of people like Angela. When he’d driven her by the house where he grew up the other day, she had stared at the tired-looking little ranch house like she was touring a third world country.

  He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made a terrible mistake letting things get so serious between them. He had to walk on eggshells around her, and that was no way to be, but it was also an impossible situation because he couldn’t talk to her about it without upsetting her. He either had to be okay with possibly hurting her feelings or keep walking on eggshells while ignoring his own feelings. But that wasn’t fair either. It wasn’t that he was afraid to upset her, but rather that she had so many other things on her mind. If this was a normal situation, he’d be honest with her, but nothing was normal about her life righ
t now. Which was exactly why he never should have let the ghost investigations turn into something romantic.

  And as he sat there, it occurred to him that he needed to break it off with her. He’d been so obsessed with her, with helping her through this stuff with her mother, that he’d fallen way behind on work. He’d been acting like her, like a person without responsibilities, but he had a life, and he couldn’t neglect it forever.

  But she wasn’t so bad, was she? She was beautiful and sensitive and she liked being with him. She was a computer geek, like him, and he had to admit, he found that kind of sexy. Most girls he met seemed skeptical of him when he told them what he did, like they assumed he was one of those guys who’d rather play computer games than have a conversation, but Angela understood that there were other reasons for a person to get lost in a computer screen than games.

  Why couldn’t they have met some other way than because of her mother’s death? The timing made everything so complicated. They’d definitely been spending too much time together. He needed space to get his feelings in order. He needed to work up the nerve to tell her so, even if it meant saying things she didn’t want to hear.

  Chapter 40

  Devil’s Back Island, Maine

  Casey tiptoed past the futon in the morning on her way to the bathroom. She hated that she had to work so early. She didn’t want to disturb Brett. As she passed, he said, softly, “Hey.” She cursed herself for being too loud.

  “It’s okay, I’ve been awake for a while,” he said. He still sounded congested. Casey didn’t want to turn on the light. She didn’t want to see how bad he looked.

  In the dim, early morning light, she saw him kick off the blanket she’d thrown over him the night before. As he sat up, he brought one hand to his forehead. No doubt he had quite a headache.