Million Dollar Dilemma

by Judy Baer

  Adam, whom I’d almost forgotten was beside me, slipped in a question. “So the money hasn’t exactly been a benefit for your family?”

  “I can now say for sure that money doesn’t buy happiness.” Betty sighed. “But I never dreamed that money would make my children so greedy.”

  “Why don’t you give it away?” I asked, knowing full well the kind of response I’d receive. “There are lots of good causes that can use the money.”

  Both women looked at me as if I were a crayon short of a box. “Give it away?” they chimed in unison.

  “If it’s making you and your family miserable…”

  “Not that miserable,” Paula protested.

  “We’re just venting, Cassia. You know that. You’re one of the few people we can talk to these days who understands….” She looked shyly from beneath her eyelashes. “I thought you were crazy to be unhappy when you won that share of the money, but I’m beginning to understand. It’s not as easy as I thought it would be.”

  “We’ll work it out, though,” Paula blurted. “So don’t worry about us.”

  “Even so, may I pray for you?”

  Paula looked up doubtfully, as if God were hanging from the ceiling tile above her. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.” Then her eyes narrowed. “But not here, in public.”

  “At home, then.” I reached out with both hands to hold Paula’s right hand and Betty’s left. “And if there’s any time you want to ‘vent,’ I’m around, okay?”

  Adam didn’t speak until we were halfway to the apartment house.

  “So you believe Paula and Betty should trust God for what they need and use the money they have for the good of others, sharing with the ones in most need?”

  Finally I was making sense to someone.

  “So why isn’t that good advice for you? What makes you think that you’re so different from anyone else, Cassia? Practice what you preach. The money came to you. It’s your responsibility to be a steward, whether you like it or not.”

  “I’ve come to that conclusion myself,” I admitted, and told him about my conversation with Pastor Osgood. I thought he’d respond enthusiastically, but he only nodded, his expression thoughtful.

  “Adam?”

  “Hmm?” He hadn’t shaved today, and the dusky shadow of stubble against his tanned skin made his visage dark and shadowy. His eyelashes, so thick and black that I know women who’d trade a molar for them, fluttered over his high cheekbones and hooded his eyes. Sometimes he looked so soulful and distant that I felt this man, despite all the time I’d spent with him, was an utter stranger.

  “Do you have a phone book in your car? Or can we stop someplace that does?”

  He eyed me cautiously. “I have the white pages in the back. I make a lot of calls from my car.”

  I found the book, turned around and slid back into my own seat. “You have phone books, atlases and what looks like a geography library back there. What is it you do with that stuff anyway? Are we anywhere close to…” I put my finger on the tiny line in the middle of the pages and read the address of my grandmother’s apartment building. I’ve been getting there by my own method that has nothing to do with street signs. I take a right at McDonald’s, a left at Kentucky Fried, another left at the Dairy Queen. It’s the fast-food mapping technique.

  Adam had told me he was “between jobs” and did some writing, but I hadn’t pressed further. Every time I decided to try he got this aggrieved expression in his eyes that told me he didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about Ken all the time either, so I understand. There are places that a person just isn’t ready to go on a moment’s notice. I wonder if Adam was fired from his last job. Every time he even alludes to it, he looks as though he wants to cry.

  “Any other personal errands before the chauffeur turns into a white rat and the Hummer into a pumpkin?” Adam asked.

  “Would you like to meet my sister and my grandmother? Jane is helping Gram do some baking.”

  Sometimes I amaze myself. What am I doing? I’ve been very careful not to talk much about my handsome neighbor. I know that once Jane and Grandma get wind of a new male friend in my life, I’ll never get any peace from them. At least perhaps Grandma will quit asking when I last washed clothes. She still thinks the Laundromat is the primo place to get a date. As if I’d ever go out with a guy too cheap or broke to own a washing machine and dryer.

  Funny, but Ken is beginning to look better and better. Money didn’t change him. His friends have told me so. Maybe the toys he buys are bigger—Harleys rather than crotch-rockets and pickups with dualies and extended cabs instead of the cheaper models—but he wouldn’t curl up and die if all his money were gone tomorrow. He’d discuss it with Boosters and his buddies, reminisce about the good old days and get back to work. There’s something there to be learned, I think.

  Maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder…. Then I glanced at Adam and finished the rest of the phrase in my head. Or give you serious competition.

  An odd expression flitted across Adam’s features—guilt, remorse, regret, shame—before he nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

  I can’t really read him. The people in my life have always been very straightforward. The mysterious male has been limited to fiction and fantasy for me. For the first time ever, I’m attracted to an enigma. He occasionally speaks of Christianity in his life in the past tense, but that’s not enough. The idea of reintroducing Adam to his faith warms my soul. Once God has him firmly in His grip of grace, then maybe…

  No wonder Ken was so reluctant to let me come to the city. What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get Ken didn’t want me to meet the competition.

  CHAPTER 17

  I smelled cookies baking as we got off the elevator. Oatmeal raisin. Chocolate chip. Macaroons. And banana bread. Yum.

  We followed our noses to Grandma’s apartment door. I knocked once and walked inside.

  “Hi, Cassia, did you come to help? We’re doing molasses cookies next, and you make the best frosting…oh, hello, there…” Jane’s voice slid the continuum from drill sergeant to restaurant hostess to enamored groupie in a matter of seconds. Adam has that kind of effect on women, I’ve noticed.

  I’d barely made introductions before Jane hustled Adam into the kitchen and Grandma started loading a plate with freshly baked delicacies. Before I even got a civil greeting, he had a glass of milk in his hand.

  It is one thing for Jane or Grandma to run into my neighbors when visiting my place. It is quite another to have me bring someone into Family Central.

  I knew exactly what was going on in their heads.

  Jane: “Well, well, something serious must be happening. He’s gorgeous.”

  Grandma: “He’s a nice-looking young man. I wonder if she met him in the Laundromat?”

  Jane: “Does Ken know about this?”

  Grandma: “I wonder if his grandparents are still living.”

  Jane: “Does he know about Cassia’s money? If so, how do we know we can trust him?”

  Grandma: “He has honest eyes. Such a beautiful color. I wonder if he knows the Lord? Cassia wouldn’t be interested in someone who doesn’t.”

  Jane: “I don’t trust him. He’s after my sister’s money, no doubt about it.”

  Grandma: “I’m so glad she has a new friend.”

  Jane: “What on earth is she thinking?”

  Grandma: “I’ll pray about it.”

  Jane watched him with the eyes of a hawk. Adam was a field mouse of dubious origins that she would obviously have loved to swoop down upon to nip off his head. Grandma, on the other hand, was smiling happily, thinking how nice it was that her little Cassia wasn’t alone in the city anymore.

  Fortunately, I’m somewhere between unadulterated distrust and benign benevolence, and find the whole thing quite amusing. I could tell by Adam’s expression that he knew he’d walked into something potentially combustible, but he didn’t know quite what to make of it.

  “So, Adam,” Jane said as no
nchalantly as a loaded semi barreling down the highway, “tell me about yourself. I’d love to know everything about you.”

  “Oh, please do,” Grandma said happily. “We love to meet Cassia’s friends.”

  Wait a minute.

  Jane wasn’t usually this high-pressure, nor was Grandma a fluffy, clueless old lady. They were playing good cop/bad cop. They’d been waiting for the opportunity to find out more about my neighbor, and I’d trotted him right into their trap.

  It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud.

  My poor family. They’ve been worried sick about me, about how I reacted to the money and now about not wanting me hurt by someone who had their eyes on my bank account and not my heart. But this! I gave them a big grin and, to Adam’s surprise, tucked my arm into the crook of his and gave it a squeeze. He looked down at me, startled, and then a slow, wide grin spread across his face. I smiled right back.

  Let them think about that for a while.

  By the time I’d told Jane and Grandma about our meeting with Betty and Paula, they’d given up their inquisition of Adam. My sister and grandmother, I’m afraid, have begun to live vicariously through me. Jane’s husband, Dave, travels for his work, often for three or four days at a time, giving Jane plenty of time to meddle in my business. And I could tell they already liked Adam.

  “This is my husband and me when we were first married. Isn’t he handsome?” Grandma had trapped Adam on the couch. He had an open photo album on his lap, and she was regaling him with stories. They both looked perfectly happy.

  “Now I see where Cassia got her smile,” Adam said. “Look at that grin.”

  White head and dark touched as they leaned together over the old black-and-white images.

  “Oh, my, there’s our first house. Needed a good coat of paint, didn’t it? At that time we were lucky to have walls and a roof at all. Those were good times.”

  “Good times?” Adam echoed. “When you couldn’t even afford a gallon of paint?”

  “It doesn’t matter what’s on the outside of the house if the inside is happy. And we were very happy.”

  “So the hardship was okay with you?”

  “Second Corinthians, 4:17, you know.”

  He looked at her puzzled, but didn’t ask. He must be growing accustomed to our biblical shorthand.

  “‘These troubles and sufferings of ours are, after all, quite small and won’t last very long. Yet this short time of distress will result in God’s richest blessings upon us forever and ever!’”

  Grandma gave me an elfin grin. “Frankly, in the past when I’ve thought of getting almost more than I can handle, I’ve assumed it would be troubles of some sort. But until this happened to Cassia, I’d really never thought of trouble being too much money.”

  “God works in mysterious ways,” I muttered. That statement is fast becoming my new mantra. Every time I turn a corner lately, there’s something new I didn’t expect.

  Grandma Mattie sent us home with tins of cookies, a sack of old magazines and some new flour-sacking dish-cloths on which she’d embroidered roosters. As we walked away from her apartment, she gave me a thumbs-up sign.

  Now where had she learned to do that?

  It was the magazines that puzzled Adam.

  “What are these for?”

  “To read.”

  “But they’re all out of date.”

  “Of course they are. I’m third on the list.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s something that’s been going on in our family for years. Someone orders a magazine they like and tells everyone they’re getting it. Jane, for instance, likes Good Housekeeping. She gets and reads it, marks the interesting spots and gives the magazine to Mattie. Then Mattie reads it, responds to Jane’s comments and makes a few of her own. After that, she gives it to me.”

  “And you read them?”

  “Of course. This way we really get our money’s worth out of that magazine. It was something Grandpa thought up.”

  “Even if the news is two or three months old?”

  “If it’s new, it’s news. If it’s old, it’s history. Either way, I learn something. And best of all, I get to read Jane’s and Mattie’s comments, so I know what they’re thinking about a subject, as well.”

  As seems to happen a lot with Adam and me, he looked completely mystified by my ways.

  “Then, if they are still in decent shape, I give them to Mattie’s friends at the nursing home.”

  He threw up his hands. “Cassia, I used to think you were exceptional. Now I think you and your entire family are extraordinary.”

  “We like saving money, remember? To us it’s a game. But we aren’t idiots, either. I do have a pension fund, you know.”

  The ride home was quiet. Adam seemed to be slipping slowly but inexorably into a quagmire of moroseness.

  Sometimes there’s a murky darkness about him that borders on despondency. I don’t know where or what it comes from, but I’ve seen it more and more lately. It’s as if he has a tumor growing inside him, taking him over and shutting him down. It’s when these moods come on that I am so clearly reminded that, no matter how much time I’ve spent with him, Adam Cavanaugh is still very much a stranger to me.

  CHAPTER 18

  Friday evening Adam stood staring out the window watching Cassia’s retreating figure. Winslow, glad to be on a walk, was pulling so hard on his leash that her long slender legs churned to keep up with the exuberant pet. Though he couldn’t hear her, Adam had a good idea that Cassia was laughing. He hadn’t quit thinking of her in the five weeks since she’d won the lottery, and every day he loathed himself a little more.

  Like taking candy from a baby. Kicking crutches out from beneath old ladies on the street. Shooting someone in the back. Robbing a nursing home. Putting salt in the sugar bowl. Juvenile, self-indulgent, despicable, low, sneaky, untrustworthy, infantile, under-handed, devious, contemptible, loathsome, repugnant, abhorrent, vile…

  Adam had never needed a thesaurus before and he didn’t need one now. Rat, pond scum, leech…

  “Well, I’m glad to see you, too,” Terrance Becker said as he lounged on the big leather couch in Adam’s apartment drinking stiff black coffee that tasted like chicory. He took a swig and shuddered. “How you can drink this stuff so black is beyond me. How do you get to sleep at night with all the caffeine in your system?”

  “Practice,” Adam said grimly. “Occasionally staying awake has saved my life.”

  Terrance knew Adam meant that literally and nodded. “Good point.” He eyed his client as Adam stared blankly out the window, not even noticing that Pepto was trying to sharpen his claws on the leg of his jeans. “Do you mind that brute clawing you like that?”

  Adam looked down and saw Pepto embedded in his pant leg and shook him off. The feline said something unseemly in cat language and stalked off, probably to destroy a curtain in the bedroom in an act of revenge.

  “What is eating at you anyway, man? I’ve never seen you like this.” Then Terrance perked up. “Of course, it is a pleasant change from that disheartened, defeated attitude you had when you got off the plane from Burundi.”

  “Very funny.”

  “This is supposed to be an entertaining story you’re working on, remember? Mind candy? Fluff? Easy inconsequential reading for your hungry public, right? What’s gone wrong?”

  “Nothing. Everything. Aw, I don’t know.” Adam scraped his hair away from his forehead to reveal the profile that usually made women weak in the knees.

  Terrance, oblivious to that, continued. “Which is it? Nothing or everything?”

  “The research is great. Cassia has made me her confidant, a friend. She thinks of me as her sounding board in this struggle she’s having over the money. And she’s already introduced me to some of the other winners, so I’ve got their stories, as well.”

  “And?”

  “And she and her family are the most quotable people I’ve ever met. I could take off in a
million directions on the things they say—God’s testing Cassia with too much money, the outside of a house not needing paint if the inside is a happy home, the shtick with those out-of-date magazines. The family alone is worth a book.”

  “What could be better?” Terrance sat up straight.

  “It’s all a lie, that’s why. She trusts me. She believes I’m holding her secrets confidential. Worst of all, she thinks I’m her friend.”

  “Well, aren’t you? Every time you talk about her I can see the light in your eyes. Light I haven’t seen for some time, by the way. When you walked off the plane from Burundi, I thought it was gone forever.”

  “I am her friend. At least, I want to be. She’s like a breath of spring after a long winter. She’s funny, smart, quirky…and she has a soul that seems to—” Adam searched for a word “—a soul that shines.”

  Terrance arched an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

  “And preying on her for information with the intention of spreading her personal thoughts all over the media makes me sick to my stomach.” Adam spat out each word with such force that it seemed to hurt. He sank into the cat-claw chair across from Terrance. “I should have told her from the beginning what I was up to. Then she could have said yes or no. Now when I break it to her, she’s going to be furious.” He looked at Terrance meaningfully. “Redheaded, claws-out, fangs-sharpened furious.”

  “So we have some guilt and remorse going on.”

  “I’ve been a straight shooter all my life. I call it like I see it. Now I know why. Being deceptive goes against every fiber of my being.”

  “So quit.”

  Adam looked up sharply. “What?”

  “Quit. Stop. End it. Cease and desist. Put an end to the charade.”

  Adam contemplated his agent. “Do you mean that?”

  Terrance locked gazes with him and stared back.