by Skye Jordan
“No.”
Olivia’s stomach squeezed tighter and she exhaled on a groan. “What about personal accounts?”
Quinn scrapped her upper lip between her teeth and stared at her hands. Then just shook her head. And the fear dug deeper into Olivia’s gut. This was bad. Really bad. Like bankruptcy-bad.
The overwhelming financial disaster unfolding in front of her eyes, pushed panic into her throat. She moved her hand there, swallowing back the burn. “Oh my God.”
Quinn broke down, covering her face and sobbing quietly across from Olivia. Olivia’s heart shattered, and the pieces plummeted to the pit of her stomach.
Consoling Quinn wouldn’t do any of them any good. Olivia’s anger wouldn’t do anyone any good. So she did what she did best. She dug into the vendors and venues that had been paid in search of money they could get back, orders they could cancel.
“How much do we need for the liquor?” she asked, clicking on the number of the last check written to open an image of the check itself.
“Tw—“ Quinn’s voice broke. She cleared her throat, sniffled. “Twelve thousand.”
Olivia exhaled hard. She’d known it would be high for the number of people attending and the caliber of the crowd, but that number still took her breath. Not because it was unreasonable, but because she couldn’t imagine finding that kind of money in an account this bone dry. She knew she could cut three grand off the top by substituting well liquor for quality name brands. Normally something she’d never consider doing, but right now, she was in survival mode. Right now, she wanted to pull this out of the fire for Tate.
She focused on the last check written for two thousand dollars to O’Conner’s Tavern. The memo line read “Burnett/Thompson dinner” with a date for the following week.
She clicked on the next for the same amount to a different restaurant in downtown DC. The memo line read “Burnett/Washington dinner” and another date for the following week.
“What are these Burnett dinners?” she asked, continuing to click through the checks.
Quinn didn’t answer, and Olivia forgot her question as she counted eighteen thousand dollars paid out to various high-class restaurants in DC over the last three days. A week earlier, she found an eighteen thousand dollar deposit into the account.
The deposit was electronic, but when she clicked on the details, the notes read “Final payment Afterschool Advantage.”
“Fuck.” She’d used Tate’s final payment for the venue to fund the deposits for this Burnett deal, but hadn’t gotten a deposit check from Burnett yet. A spark of hope brought her gaze to Quinn. “Is she holding a check? This Burnett guy’s deposit check?”
Quinn sniffled and wiped her face on her sleeve. “N-no,” she said, her voice stuttering from her choppy breaths. “He’s in Greece. Was supposed to be back yesterday or today, but something happened with his flights and won’t be in until Monday.”
Olivia’s eyes welled with tears of fear. Her options for pulling this from the fire for Tate were narrowing. And she felt physically sick at the prospect of telling him that his family had fucked up. In essence, fucked him over, and if he wanted alcohol at his celebrity hockey-studded event, he was going to have to dole out another ten grand.
Shame and anger and hurt coiled tight at the center of her body. She covered her mouth and absently let her eyes roll over the debits and credits as she searched her brain for some other solution.
At the bottom of the page she found a five hundred thousand dollar line of credit. The available credit on that line was zero.
“What’s this?” she asked. “Where did this line of credit come from? Is this right?” She cut a look at Quinn who was leaning on the table, her head in her hand. She was pale, her eyes pink and puffy, a zombie-like emptiness on her face. “Is this half a million dollar line of credit maxed out?”
Quinn’s lashes fluttered, then closed. She nodded.
“Quinn.” Olivia had always been good at scraping money together. But this… “How did you guys qualify for a line of credit that big when the business wasn’t even in the black?”
Quinn licked her lips, and kept her gaze down. “The house.”
Olivia frowned, “What hou—”
She sucked a breath and shook her head. “No. No, you didn’t.”
Quinn’s gaze lifted to hers with a spark of defiance, the one she got whenever she felt unjustly challenged. “I didn’t.”
Which meant their mother had.
“It was paid off.” Everything inside Olivia crumbled. She slammed the laptop and shoved it away. “Dad worked his ass off and sacrificed so they’d have that house paid off in fifteen years. He knew how much that house meant to us, and he never wanted mom to have to worry about finding the money to pay for it if something happened to him.”
“It’s not our house, Liv. It’s mom’s.”
Olivia shook her head. “You’re going to lose it, aren’t you? I don’t see any money anywhere to make the next payment.”
“We won’t lose it if we can keep these jobs through to the end. When the money starts coming in, we’ll be able to pay everything back.”
“To what end? Just to make the same mistakes over again? Five hundred thousand dollars, Quinn. How in the hell are you going to pay that back?”
“In payments, the way everyone pays house loans. With the income we get from the company.”
Olivia put up her hands, palms out. “Whatever. I can’t talk about this now.” She pushed to her feet, one hand on her forehead, one at her hip. “When does the distributor need the money?”
“By five-thirty.”
Olivia looked at her watch. “In an hour?” This just got worse and worse. “Are you serious?”
“It’s Friday. They’re closed tomorrow.”
“Fucking sonofabitch.” She squeezed her eyes closed to focus. “I have to find Tate.” She dragged her phone from her back pocket, tapped into Tate’s number, then just stared at it. Another wave of nausea rolled through her gut. “Oh my God, how am I going to explain this?”
She exhaled, closed her eyes and tried to form a concise way to tell him about this mess. It was a mess for him. A catastrophe for her.
“You won’t have to.” Quinn’s words pulled Olivia’s eyes open and she swore the last two weeks fell on her shoulders all at once.
“What?”
“You won’t have to explain much. He already knows most of it.”
Her dazed brain didn’t absorb any of what Quinn just said. “What? What does he already know?”
“About the house. About the company struggling.”
Olivia shook her head at the ludicrous statement. “How could he possibly know that?”
“He overheard mom and me talking at Lily’s party.”
No, she wasn’t hearing this right. She couldn’t be hearing this right. “Okay…” She shoved her phone back into her pocket. “You’re telling me that Tate knew that the company was leveraged against the house and that the company was in trouble?”
Quinn nodded. “Mom was telling me that after the senator’s christening, we only needed one more job to get enough to pay off the balloon payment coming due.”
Olivia shook her head. “You only thought he heard you. He wouldn’t keep that from—”
“Mom asked him not to tell you.”
Olivia didn’t respond. Her mind was spinning, her world shattering.
“It put him in a really bad position,” Quinn said. “Mom did exactly what she did to me, snowed him with the assurance that it would be fine. That the new business would solve all our problems.”
Olivia felt a time bomb at the center of her chest. Tick, tick, tick.
She crossed her arms and reset her feet. “You’re telling me that Tate knew all this and kept it from me because mom asked him to?”
Quinn lifted a shoulder. “Mom said it would cause more stress for you and more problems between us. And that’s true. It’s not like you could have done anything—”
<
br /> “Don’t.” She put out a hand. “Just don’t. This isn’t about whether or not I could do anything to help. This isn’t about the money. This is about being honest with the people you love. Or in this case, claim to love. I’ve told you and mom this over and over. I resigned myself to the fact that we have different values. That we would never have the relationship we had before. That there is too much hurt and loss between us to repair things. But to ask Tate to keep something like this from me? When you both know how this kind of…”
She stopped talking. Closed her mouth. Shook her head. “This is pointless.” Tears spilled over her lashes. “God, I should have known he was too good to be true.” She lifted her gaze to Quinn, but felt more pity for her than anger. “Should have known…nothing would change.”
She pushed her hands into her back packets and turned for the exit.
“Olivia,” Quinn called. “Where are you going?”
She had no fucking idea. She’d already learned that no matter where in the world she traveled, pain followed. She only knew she needed to get away from the people hurting her. “Away from here.”
Quinn ran in front of her just as she reached the door. “Liv, mom and I are the ones to blame for this. Tate was caught in the middle. He didn’t tell you because he loves you.”
“No, Quinn. People who love you don’t keep parts of their lives secret. People who love you don’t shut you out. People who love you stand up in the face of the hardest choices and choose you. Not only didn’t you and mom do that for the umpteenth time with me, but Tate didn’t do it either.”
Olivia held it together until she’d reached the Metro. But waiting for the next red train gave her too much time to think. And, as if her mind had been just waiting for the opportunity to ambush her when her walls were down, everything hit her at once. Years of lies and loneliness. Years of grief over the loss of her father and her family. Years of taking care of everything on her own. Even trying to take care of her family from a distance the best that she knew how.
But none of it had been enough.
By the time the train pulled into the station, tears were all over the place. She just kept wiping them away with her shirtsleeve, grateful for the first time in her life for the red line at quitting time, where she was packed into the next car like a sardine. She stared at the floor while the car swayed, trying to untangle the knot in her head. But it was useless. The pain created a haze she couldn’t think through.
She only had to endure the sardine can for three stops. Then collected herself on the short walk and paused outside the office of District Distributing. Olivia wiped her face one last time, took hold of her emotions the way she’d taught herself over the years and looked up at the sign over the door. She took several deep breaths of the summer afternoon air, and once she could take a full lungful without a hiccup, she blew it out slowly.
Olivia pushed through the front door, praying the negotiation skills she’d learned bartering in the streets at markets all over the world would come through for her now.
Tate climbed the grand concrete steps of the Andrew Mellon Auditorium and threaded his way through the lobby and halls toward the kitchen, feeling jittery. He felt guilty about how excited he was to spend time with Olivia tonight, because he knew the problems with her mother’s company would upset her.
He still thought it would be better to tell her about it tomorrow night, after the banquet, but Joe had convinced him the sooner the better.
Pushing into the kitchen, he found the sous chefs gone, the kitchen clean and all kinds of things stacked on counters in bowls and pans, covered in clear cling wrap. Man, this woman impressed the hell out of him.
“Liv?” he called then wandered into the storage room and found her standing at some shelves with a clipboard, taking notes. She’d taken her hair down from the knot on the back of her head and it skimmed just past her shoulders. “Hey, this place looks amazing.”
She turned and the instant her eyes met his, he knew it wasn’t Olivia. He also knew Quinn had been crying. Alarm pinched his gut. “Oh, hey Quinn. Where’s Olivia?”
Quinn lowered the clipboard and turned toward him. “I don’t know.”
When she didn’t expand, Tate’s unease deepened. “Okay. Maybe she went home to change for dinner. I’ll just—”
“No,” Quinn said. “She didn’t go home to change.”
Tate exhaled, pressed a hand to the wall and asked the obvious question. “What happened? Did you two have another fight?”
Quinn cleared her throat and came a little closer. “I have some bad news.”
Tate listened as Quinn explained the liquor fiasco. And how the liquor fiasco had lead to exposing the companies troubles. Tate was vibrating with stress for Olivia when Quinn finally dropped the bomb.
“She knows you knew,” Quinn said. “About everything.”
Tate’s breath froze in his lungs.
“We were both so upset and she was stressing over how she was going to tell you. She’s tried so hard to make this perfect for you, and I couldn’t stand to see her twisted over one more thing.”
“Oh my God.” Tate’s heart dropped clear to his feet. He closed his eyes and planted a hand over his face. “Oh my God.”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Quinn said. “I’ve put in a few emergency calls to chefs we’ve worked with in the past, but I haven’t heard back yet. I’m trying to get a handle on the food. Olivia had everything prepared. She’s been working with the sous chefs for two days and has full, detailed recipes for every course. I’ve asked the sous to come back so I can see how much they feel they can handle on their own. It might not be—”
“Stop, Quinn. I don’t want to hear about the banquet. I want to know where to find Olivia.”
“I don’t know. She left and wouldn’t tell me—”
The rattle and shake of glass bottles echoed in the main kitchen followed by, “Hello? Anyone home?”
Tate turned into the kitchen to a delivery man with a hand truck loaded with boxes that read “Wild Turkey”.
“Oh my God,” Quinn said behind Tate. “She…she… How did she…?”
The guy unloaded the boxes and handed over a clipboard with an invoice. “If you wouldn’t mind signing for the receipt, I’ll grab the rest from the truck.”
Quinn looked past Tate’s arm to read the invoice, stamped with a big red PAID at the bottom next to an amount just shy of ten grand. Next to the words Paid in Cash. Next to Olivia’s signature.
“Cash? Where in the hell would she—“ Quinn sucked an audible breath and took a step away. “Oh no.” Her wide blue eyes teared up. “Oh shit, no.”
And she dropped her face in her hands.
“What—“ Tate started, but the delivery guy returned with another load and Tate held his questions for Quinn.
The delivery guy pointed to the bottom of the form. “If you could just sign there, beneath the other signature.”
Tate scribbled off his signature. Something he’d done thousands of times. But when he saw it there beneath Olivia’s, a weird buzz kicked off in his head. It reminded him of his signature on his marriage license with Lisa’s. Then on the divorce papers with Lisa’s.
Tate had failed. Again.
He handed the board back and asked, “Do you know anything about this delivery?”
“Only that the lady gave me a hundred dollar tip for staying past quitting time to deliver it.” He tore off the top sheet and handed it to Tate. “Have a great weekend.”
As the guy walked out whistling, Tate was sure this was going to be the worst weekend of his life.
15
Olivia was sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing one of the dog tags from her father’s military service as a young man between her fingers when her mother arrived home.
She came into the kitchen from the garage door just like she had for decades. And as soon as she lifted her gaze and saw Olivia sitting there, Olivia knew Quinn had told her everything.
; “Olivia.” She was shocked and a little breathless. Her brow pulled and her lips quivered. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re still here. I thought you’d be gone.”
The pain that had receded over the last hour collected again and yanked in Olivia’s gut. She didn’t respond, not sure what she wanted to say. Caught between the desire to rehash every moment of the last ten years and never speaking to her mother again.
Her mother dropped her purse on the kitchen island and took a seat beside Olivia, pressing a hand to her knee. “Honey—”
“Do you remember these?” She lifted the metal tag with a sad smile. “Remember how dad gave this to me for a metal shop project?”
“And you made a key ring out of it,” her mother said. “You still have that old thing?”
“Yep. It goes everywhere I go. I always sort of felt like he was traveling with me, getting to go all the places he always wanted to go, but never got the chance.”
A sob escaped her mother and she put her fingers against her lips. “He would have liked that.”
Olivia nodded. And the tears started again. “I think he would want us to figure this out, mom.” She closed her hand around the metal and crossed her arms. “I think the way we’ve been living would break his heart.”
Her mother’s eyes closed and tears pushed beyond her lashes. The sight plunged another knife into Olivia’s heart.
“I—“ she started, then choked on the words. “I thought I had everything handled.”
“If that lie is for me, its dead on arrival. You don’t take out a five hundred thousand dollar mortgage to save a flailing company and call that handling things. If the lie is for you, that’s up to you.”
“I meant now. I thought I had everything handled now.”
Olivia sighed a choppy breath and nodded.
“I’m going to make this right, Livvy.” She reached out and covered Olivia’s hand, squeezing it. “I stopped by the Senator’s home and picked up a deposit check from his wife. I don’t have twelve thousand dollars to spend on liquor but I have five. I know a good discount store that will give me a deal. You don’t have to worry about Tate’s party. I’ll make sure it’s fine. I always come through, Livvy.”