I want some money to go to good causes, but I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time left, and I don’t want Ruth to get wind of any big donations. She checks my laptop when she thinks I’m asleep. You’ll pick me out some winners, won’t you? Maybe the American Cancer Society, in memory of my mom? Other places, too. It’s too hard to think about right now.
I also want you to keep some. That’d make me happy. My present to my two best friends.
My lawyer said I should leave Ruth some money, because she’s my cousin and, as a family member, she could contest the will if I didn’t. (And she totally would.) So I left her five hundred dollars and the steel commode she made me buy. I’d give a lot to see the look on her face when you tell her. Georgia, you’re my executor. (Sorry, Marley, but you’re not the lawyer in the group.) I hope Ruth gets so mad her head explodes.
I almost just wrote down, Make sure you record it so I can see. Guess I can look down from heaven and watch.
There’s this family in my neighborhood. The Williamses. Single mom, three girls. I don’t think they have a lot of money, and their house is in bad shape. Maybe you could give them my house. It would be nice to have a family in here. I think they’d take good care of it.
You’re probably wondering why I’m not leaving anything to Mica. He never knew how rich I am, so it’s not like he was after my money. I really do think he loved me. Loves me? But I’ve come to see that he loves me being helpless. I’ve been killing myself with food, not even trying to be healthy for the two years he and I have been together, and he helped me. Food has been basically poison, and he brought it to me on a tray, smiling the whole time.
That’s not the kind of love that should be rewarded, is it?
I’m getting tired now, so I should go. You’re probably asking yourself why I don’t stop right now. Why I don’t quick go to the hospital and check myself in.
Because of food. Because even now, I just can’t stop eating. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to be this way, but I’m too tired to fight it anymore.
I want you to know that being your friend was one of the best parts of my whole life. It made me proud. I hope when you think of me, you’ll remember how much fun we had at Camp Copperbrook. I think of you all the time.
Please don’t be sad. I love you both.
Emerson
Marley handed me a tissue, and I blew my nose. “Damn it all to hell,” I whispered.
We should’ve. We could’ve. We didn’t. No one did.
Marley deadheaded some herb and shredded the leaves. “First order of business is to kick that horrible cousin out as soon as humanly possible,” she said, wiping her eyes. Her chest bucked with a sob. “Jesus, that letter.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath and looked at the will. It was pretty straightforward. “I bet Emerson would love to be an investor in Salt & Pepper,” I said. “Helping people eat well . . . that’s a noble cause.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Marley said, chewing on her lip. “That feels too . . . self-involved. I make enough, anyway. Might even expand next year.”
“She wanted us to have something from her,” I said.
“Then we can, I don’t know, go on a trip together or something. Otherwise, let’s give it all away.”
I looked at the letter again and took a deep breath. “Okay. Come on inside, and I’ll pour you a glass of wine. Time to make another list.”
CHAPTER 26
Marley
Stop pretending to be happy all the time.
You get to have other feelings, too.
(This list thing is really growing on me.)
I never knew how satisfying it could be, giving money away.
There were legal things Georgia had to do before we could start writing checks, but we’d made a list, all right. The American Cancer Society, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, the Foundation for Female Entrepreneurship (Georgia’s pet organization) and a group that gave service dogs to veterans were all going to be very, very grateful.
And Camp Copperbrook was going to have a new endowment for girls who couldn’t afford the steep tuition.
The name Emerson Lydia Duval was going to mean something wonderful out there in the world.
And, per our friend’s wishes, we set aside a sum for ourselves, enough for a week away. Next summer, Georgia and I would go to Glacier National Park in Montana. A hiking vacation. Georgia had said she’d start coming to the gym with me so she could get in better shape.
We thought a wilderness vacation was something Emerson would’ve loved to do in another lifetime, another body.
I swallowed. Sometimes it surprised me, how much I missed Emerson, her sweet voice on the phone or Skype, her unexpected sense of humor in one so shy, the way she listened and remembered, always so invested in whatever I was doing. The first few times I’d told her about Camden, she was so excited for me.
As I’d been about Mica. It was odd. Camden didn’t date me because of my size, I was almost positive; Mica only dated Emerson because of hers. I’d done a little research after Emerson died; Evil Cousin Ruth had said a few things that made me suspicious. Feeder, a guy like Mica was called. A person who got off on watching his partner get bigger, providing food, being the one in control.
It was so scary, to realize the only love she’d ever found had actually been a kind of . . . fetish. In a different way, maybe that was how my relationship (for lack of a better word) with Camden was. Screw a fat girl. Or was I just an easy lay? Either way, if I wasn’t over him before, I sure was now.
I shuddered.
Well. I had to go to work. Tonight was dinner at Will’s, and, I admitted, I was more than a little curious.
I had put some personal effort into this dinner. Oh, yes. One doesn’t get called out for being fat and dressing like a man without responding. So first and foremost, I’d made a point to dress like a woman. I wore a tight white T-shirt topped by a flower-print cardigan, a stretchy olive pencil skirt that most decidedly did not hide my chubby belly and made the most of my generous ass. Sandals of the El Sluttio variety, with a high heel that did wonders for my calves and laces that wrapped around my ankles. A skinny belt to show that, yes, fat girls could have waists. Thin, dangly silver earrings and four silver bracelets. I’d pulled my hair back in a French twist, and, as usual, a few wiry curls had sprung loose.
There, I thought with a final look in the mirror. Prepare yourself, Will Harding. A woman is coming for dinner.
I drove to his house, which took all of thirty seconds, and got out of the car, grabbed the bags of food and headed in.
There was a vase of flowers on the bottom step—creamy roses and white hydrangeas, orange ranunculus with dark green ivy and some curly twigs. Utterly gorgeous.
I knocked on the door, and Will answered. “Can you get those flowers?” he asked.
“Hello to you, too. And no. My hands are full. Get them yourself.” I went into the kitchen and set the bags on the counter.
He’d set the kitchen table. Very nicely, in fact.
“Those flowers,” he repeated. “Would you mind getting them?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Lady Grantham. Of course. For a second, I forgot I was the help. Forgive me.”
“Who’s Lady Grantham?”
“You are.”
I added Doesn’t watch Downton Abbey to my mental list of his many flaws and went out to fetch the flowers. “Here,” I said, presenting them to him. “They’re very pretty.”
“Yes.”
I suppressed a sigh and watched as he put them on the table, exactly in the center, then looked at me. Folded his arms.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Not really.”
“Okay.” Not for the first time, I wondered why I was here. “Well, I brought wine, because I don’t see me getting through this without a bu
zz on. Why don’t you uncork it while I unpack dinner?”
“Sure.”
All my dinners came with sides and salads, but Will hadn’t specified what he wanted with the Mongolian beef, so I’d just done what I wanted. The whole meal had turned out so well, I was thinking I might have to add it to my regular offerings. It smelled like heaven—thinly sliced beef tenderloin marinated in rice wine, garlic, ginger, candied orange peel and red pepper. For sides, we had long-grained rice with peas, diced carrots, corn and sesame seeds, and sugar snap peas with just a little salt, pepper and garlic, because they were best served simply.
“I’m going to stick these snap peas in the fridge so they don’t go limp,” I said.
“I’ll do it,” he said, taking it from me.
“Thank you, kind sir.”
He nodded, put the peas away. Then we looked at each other. I raised an eyebrow. He looked at my forehead.
“So this is fun,” I said.
“Um . . . would you like to see the backyard?” he asked.
Well, well. I was usually only allowed in the kitchen. From the street, I had seen that his yard was surrounded by a privacy fence ten feet high—you couldn’t see anything from the outside, reinforcing the idea that Will Harding didn’t like people knowing what he was doing (chopping up bodies, for example). “I’d love to,” I said.
I followed him to the back, through the darkened den, the frighteningly tidy mudroom, and out into paradise.
“Good God, Will,” I breathed.
In front of me was one of the most beautiful gardens I’d ever seen, lit up by lanterns and fairy lights. The yard was small, and every inch of it was taken up with . . . life. It looked Buddhist to me—a little path made of stones meandered through perfectly manicured shrubs, and an island of moss sat in the middle of a little pond. There was a bank of lush green ferns surrounding a red Japanese maple tree, glowing with color. On the inside of the fence hung at least a dozen planters, overflowing with ivy.
Closer to the house was a tiny slate patio with two chairs and a little table. “Have a seat,” he said, wiping his brow with his sleeve.
“This is beautiful,” I breathed, ignoring his offer and going into the little wonderland. “Was it like this when you bought the house?”
“No,” he said, not leaving the patio. “I made it. There was nothing here when I moved in. Just some patchy grass.”
“You made this? Get out of here!” There was a pile of stones, balanced on top of each other. “This should be in a magazine, Will Harding! Look at your roses! They’re still so beautiful.”
“Maybe we should go inside,” he said. “The bugs.”
There were no bugs that I could see. “I can’t get over this.”
“Let’s go inside,” he said. “Please.”
“Don’t want me to see the secret side of you, huh?”
“Yes. Exactly. I’m Batman, and I shouldn’t have shown you the cave.”
A joke. He had made a joke. Not a great one, but hey.
I wanted to stay outside, but it was his house, after all. I walked past him, noting that he was rather sweaty. “Having a hot flash?” I asked.
“Very funny.”
He told me to sit in the living room and went upstairs. When he came down, he was wearing a different button-down shirt, this one pale blue instead of white.
“Where were we?” I said when he stood there like a lump.
“You wanted wine.” He poured me a glass, then one for himself
“Right. Cheers,” I said, clinking my glass against his. “Thanks for inviting me.”
He glanced at me, and glugged his entire glass and poured himself a refill.
Alrighty, then. Not the best harbinger for a lovely evening, not if he was trying to drown his sorrows already. Nevertheless, I persisted. “How long did that yard take you?”
“A long time.”
“Are you a landscaper or something?” No answer. “A garden gnome? Will?”
“Let’s sit here,” Will said. “In the living room.”
Ah, yes. The plainest and most boring room ever. I suppressed a sigh.
“So what do you do for work, Will?” I asked, sitting in the same place I had when I’d hurt my ankle. He took the chair.
“I think I’ve told you. I’m a computer programmer.”
“Yes. My sister is in cybersecurity. She’s kind of a badass.” No response. “So what do you program?”
“I write code for children’s video games.”
“Really? My friend’s nephew, Mason? He’s kind of like my own nephew, too. He loves computer games.” I couldn’t help trying to fill the vacuum where conversation was supposed to be. “Children’s video games. That sounds like a fun job.” Still no answer. “Is it fun, Will?”
“I suppose.”
Horrible at making small talk.
“Do you enjoy the work, Will?” I enunciated clearly.
“Yes. I used to. I still do, some days.” He looked at his wineglass.
This was going to be a long evening. “Do you have any games here? Games that you made?”
He looked back up. “I do. Want to see one?”
“I’d love to.” Anything other than trying to carry the whole conversation.
But when he met my gaze before getting up, I noticed again that he had nice eyes. Not really serial killer eyes. Denim blue in color, turning down a little, which made him look a bit sad.
He turned on the TV, clicked a few buttons and a screen appeared. Yoshi and Spike’s Amazing Adventures!—Amazon Rain Forest Edition.
“It’s part of a series,” he said. “Kids learn about different ecosystems and everything that lives there. Animals, plants, insects, that kind of thing. Here. You can use the controller to make them move.”
“This is so cute!” I said. “My friend Georgia, the one with the nephew . . . she’s a preschool teacher. She would love this.”
Yoshi and Spike were little green aliens with tufts of hair that blew in the wind as they swung from vines onto the tree canopy, somersaulting through the air. “The colors are gorgeous, Will. Oh, a parrot! Did you see that?”
He wasn’t exactly smiling, but his face was relaxed. He was on the cusp of smiling, maybe. “I made that.”
“Aren’t you too cool for school. How do I get points? I want to win.”
“You have to match the food with the animal. Nope, parrots don’t eat monkeys. Sorry.”
I reversed the parrot’s direction. “There. Does he like a juicy bug?” The screen chimed, and my score registered five points. “He does!”
“You look nice,” Will said. “I meant to tell you that before.”
I paused, and my parrot crashed into a tree, but revived on the rain forest floor. “Thanks.”
His gaze dropped to my boobage, then back up again. “Anyway. I’ll get dinner on the table.”
“Want help?”
“No. You keep playing.”
“Just throw those snap peas into a hot frying pan for ten seconds.” I resisted the urge to do it myself, then turned my attention back to the game. Yoshi and Spike were admiring an anaconda. “Get away from that, you two,” I said. “Go see those yellow monkeys.”
“Those are golden lion tamarins,” Will called from the kitchen.
“They’re gorgeous. Are they real? As in, do they actually exist?”
“They do. I assume they do, anyway. I don’t research this stuff; I just write the code. I make the monkey look like a monkey, in other words.”
The world on-screen was so vibrant and detailed. There were birdsongs and jaguars screeching, bugs clicking. The leaves and flowers moved in an imaginary breeze as Yoshi and Spike hopped and tumbled through the landscape, chatting in a nonsensical, adorable language. I couldn’t even imagine how long it took to write code for every litt
le ant, every movement, every color.
And that garden in the backyard . . .
Strange that Will’s house was so stark by comparison. He could use a visit to Crate & Barrel, yes sir. Pier 1 Imports, even better. The house itself had character—an arched doorway into the living room, a built-in china cabinet in the corner of the kitchen, old wooden floors. It could be just as beautiful as the backyard with a little effort.
And here was an entire world of color, sound and movement on the screen. There was more to Will Harding than I had realized.
It was a very pleasant thought.
Yoshi and Spike were staring at a line of leaf-cutter ants. I steered the bugs away from a puddle and over to a little tree, then, cruelly, clicked on the anteater and dragged it over. “Circle of life, yo,” I said as the anteater extended its hideous tongue.
“Excuse me?” Will asked.
“Nothing. I’m playing God in here. This game is amazing. Yikes! Where did that jaguar come from? Run, anteater, run!”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard Will laugh. Something squeezed in my stomach.
“Dinner’s ready,” he said, appearing in the doorway. “Want to eat?”
I put down the control. “Sure.”
The table looked lovely. Candles, the flowers, my food on platters. His plates were white (and painfully boring), but at least they were china. I always pictured him eating out of the biodegradable cartons I used. The kind of guy who only had one fork, one spoon, one glass. That kind of thing.
The thought occurred to me that maybe he’d bought an extra plate, fork and spoon just for me.
We sat down, and he nudged the beef toward me. I helped myself to some of everything, then took a bite. “Oh, man, this is good,” I said. I may have moaned a little. The beef was velvety and tender, the orange and ginger flavors rich without being overbearing, the little bite of pepper adding just the right balance. The snap peas had a clean, crisp freshness. “Oh, Madonna,” I murmured.
“Do you always eat food like this?” Will asked.
“Like what?”
“Like a porn star.”
I smiled slowly. “Yes. I’m Italian. I make love to food.”
Good Luck with That Page 27