Burnt

by Lacy Hart

  We sat around the office for a lot longer than I had wanted to. Carol kept giving us nervous glances and apologizing for having to wait so long for Mr. Rogers. She even tried calling his cell phone a few times or sending him text messages, but he never responded to any of them. Abby would give me the occasional dirty look as she sank lower and lower into the chair she was sitting in, and she finally asked Carol if there was Wi-Fi here so she could plug in her laptop and do something more entertaining. Carol led her to the small conference room off to the side so she could at least entertain herself.

  Finally, after about ninety minutes of waiting and me threatening to just leave and come back another time, Irv Rogers rushed through the door. It was obvious he was having a bad morning. His gray suit was all rumpled, his tie was mostly pulled out, and what little hair he had on his head was sticking up all over the place. He rushed passed me, slammed his briefcase down on his desk in his office just beyond Carol, and then rushed back out to where Carol and I were.

  “This has been an awful morning,” he said to Carol as he straightened out his suit and fiddled with his tie. “My car wouldn't start at all this morning, so I called Greg down at the shop, and it took them forever to get a truck over to my house. Then they spent twenty minutes fooling around with the car trying to get it going and of course, it wouldn’t. After they finally towed it to the shop, I had to wait around to talk to Greg about it and then find a ride over here. He’s all the way on the other side of town. Otherwise, I would have walked.”

  The other side of town is about a mile from here, I thought to myself. Taking a closer look at Irv Rogers, he was clearly in no shape to walk that mile without the risk of keeling over. He was overweight, and that was being kind, and he looked to be in his fifties. His face was beet-red just from getting angry, and that was probably enough to push him too close to having some kind of cardiac event.

  After he calmed down a bit while ranting at Carol, Carol was able to interrupt him long enough to let him know who I was. Irv walked over and extended his sweaty palm to me, and I reluctantly took it and gave him a brief handshake.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you Mr. Stone,” he said to me. “Please, come in my office.”

  I followed him into the small office, and he closed the door behind us to give us some privacy. The office itself was very sparse, with his desk and a couple of chairs in front of it, a couple of bookcases and filing cabinets, his computer on his desk, and his law degree on the wall, along with a few pictures. Irv worked his way behind his desk and sat down with a large exhale, catching his breath. I hoped he would make it through the meeting.

  “Now, let me see what I have here,” as he turned on his computer to get it going and took out a folder on his desk that I assumed dealt with my father.

  “Your father’s will was pretty straightforward,” he said to me as he looked the papers over. “I had drawn it up for him years back. He left everything to you and, well, was very particular about making sure your mother wasn’t left anything, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t think my mother will mind,” I said to Irv bluntly.

  “Yes, I imagine not. That was a messy thing years back I guess, wasn’t it? In any case, there’s the house, which was all paid for at the time of his death. There are some things you will need to cover to get the electricity and such turned on, and there may be some taxes owed, but beyond that, it’s free and clear. I’m not sure what exactly is in the house; I haven’t been over there in years, but that’s all yours as well. There’s also a matter of what he had in his bank account and his life insurance.”

  “I didn’t realize he had any insurance,” I said to Irv, surprised my father was responsible enough to have life insurance. I also wondered why he would even bother with it. He wasn’t going to leave anything to my mother, that’s for sure, and I hadn’t seen him in almost fifteen years.

  “Oh yes, he took a policy out, well, right after he and your mother split up. He kept up with the payments all this time, so it’s still active. You’ll have to deal with the insurance company directly to get that all squared away, but here’s the information on it.”

  Irv handed me some papers, and I briefly scanned them. Apparently, he had a term-life policy for $200,000. I was shocked to see that. Irv then handed me his bank account information, and that shocked me just as much. Dad had over $75,000 in the bank. I knew he had his army pension to live on for all these years, but he must have really squirreled everything away.

  “How did he have this much money?” I said out loud.

  “Your father didn’t live on much,” Rogers said to me as he leaned back in his chair. “He had few bills since the house was paid for and I think he lived a pretty quiet life for all these years.”

  I had lots of papers to sign to finalize things, and according to Irv, there would be more papers in the coming days as ownership of everything got transferred to me. He graciously offered to take care of it all for me, saying my father had paid for his services upfront to cover costs like this, another shocking statement to me.

  He handed me the keys to the house, which included the keys to the front and back doors and the keys to the garage behind the house.

  “Oh, there’s one other thing,” he said to me. Irv rose from his desk and lumbered over to a safe he had in the corner of the office. He got down on one knee (which was no easy feat for him, or for me to watch), pressed the buttons for the security code, and opened the safe. He took some things out and then walked back over to me, placing a small box and an envelope in front of me.

  “What’s this?” I said to him.

  “Well, the envelope is a letter your father had written to you and left it with me to be opened upon his death. The box is, well, your father’s ashes. That was another stipulation in his will.”

  Dad’s final parting shot to me, I suppose, I thought to myself. I picked up the small box. It weighed more than I thought it would and leave it to Dad to not pay extra for an urn or anything. A plain brown box suited him just fine.

  “I’ll let you know if I need you for anything else,” Irv said to me, extending his still sweaty hand once again. “Will you be around town for a bit?”

  “Yes, I’ll be here for a while,” I replied, knowing I really didn’t know where else I was going to go at this point. I shook Irv’s hand and headed out of the office. I walked over to the conference room to corral Abby, who was typing away on her laptop when I came in.

  “Let’s go, kiddo,” I said to her as she looked up from her keyboard. She gathered her things quickly and put them in her backpack and followed me out the door. We said a polite goodbye to Carol and walked out to my car.

  “What’s that?” Abby said to me as she slid into the front passenger’s seat and put her seatbelt on.

  I placed the box on the center console between the two of us.

  “That’s your grandfather,” I said to her matter-of-factly, as I started the car.

  “That’s gross Dad,” she said as she tried to inch away from the box.

  “It’s his ashes; Don’t worry, he won’t jump out and grab you.”

  I started up the car and headed over to Collins Drive where the house was. It was already almost noon, and it had taken much longer than I thought it would to get this stuff done.

  “Where are we going?” Abby said to me, taking an interest in what was going on for the first time in a long time.

  “Over to his house,” I said to her as I tried to remember exactly where Collins Drive was. I navigated my way through the side streets so we could get over to the house and see what was there.

  “Why are we going there?” Abby asked, creeped out by what we might find there.

  “Well, because it’s our house now I guess,” I said to her as we got closer to where the house was.

  “No way!” she said with some excitement. “We have a house? Does that mean we are going to live here?” This was as happy and excited as I had seen her in a long time.

  “I’m n
ot sure yet, honey,” I said to her, trying to calm her down, so she didn’t get her hopes up too high. “I have to see what the house is like, what we need to do to it, and so on. There’s a lot of details we would still have to work out before we decide on something like that.”

  I pulled into the driveway next to the house and drove back towards the garage. I parked the car and Abby and I both got out warily, looking at the back of the house. The house needed a new paint job for sure, and the lawn was well overgrown in the back and the front. We got up to the front gate and unlatched it letting ourselves in. Abby reached down and plucked something out of the grass and held it in her hands. It was a long blue ribbon, like what someone might use to tie their hair. She held it, studying it as we walked slowly up the rickety front steps towards the door of the house. We were both a little nervous about what we might find inside.

  11

  Sophie

  The whole ride over to the school from the Homestead was just like a blur to me. I barely remember concentrating on the road and thinking more about Travis and how things were now. Before I knew it, I was parking my car in the customary spot in the parking lot right next to Mary’s. I was glad she was actually here and hopped out of my car and found myself pratically running through the front doors and towards her classroom, which was one door down from mine. The hallways were empty and quiet, just as they always are this time of year, and I could hear my sneakers squeaking on the polished floor as I ran, making a loud squeak as I stopped short in front of her classroom. I threw the door open, feeling a little out of breath.

  Mary looked up from her paperwork on her desk with a surprised look. “What are you doing? Is everything okay?”

  She surely wasn’t used to seeing me this excited. I grabbed a chair from one of the desks nearby and sat down right next to her. I reached over and grabbed her hands, more to get mine to stop trembling from excitement than anything else.

  “He’s here,” I said to her as I couldn’t contain my smile any longer.

  “Who? Kenny? What did he ask you to this time?” she said as she turned her face back down to her paperwork.

  “No, not Kenny,” I said to her, pulling the papers away from her so she could look at me. “Travis. Travis is in Canon.”

  “THE Travis?” Mary said with wonder. Now I had her attention.

  “Remember the red-headed girl we saw last night at the Homestead with Maggie?” I said to her, trying to control myself a little bit.

  “Sure, how could you miss her? No one in this town has red hair like that.”

  “That’s Travis’ daughter,” I said to her. “I saw her eyes last night, and she has his eyes. I knew they were related somehow. I spent all night thinking about it, so I went to see Maggie at lunchtime this afternoon and asked her. She confirmed it; she’s his daughter.”

  “And how is this good news for you?” she asked, turning to face me now, curious where I was going.

  “I didn’t think it would be either, but Maggie told me he’s not married. He’s never been married. The girl – Abby is her name – the girl’s mother left them when she was a baby. He’s raised her himself. He’s still single.”

  “And he’s here in Canon? Are you sure he’s going to be here for a while?” Mary said to me. This put a pinhole in my balloon.

  “Well, no I don’t know that for certain,” I said to her as I got up from the chair and started pacing a bit. “But if Travis is here there’s a chance we could run into each other.”

  “Do you hear yourself, Sophie?” Mary said to me as she stood up in front of me to stop me from pacing. “There’s a chance we could run into each other? You’ve been hung up on this guy for how long? Fourteen or fifteen years? I don’t want to rain on your parade, I really don’t, but if he’s been single this long, why hasn’t he ever come back here to Canon? Or tried to find you? People aren’t that hard to track down nowadays you know. Facebook, the Internet, all that stuff – I do plenty of cyberstalking of old boyfriends; it’s pretty easy to do.”

  Mary made some good points that stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t come up with an immediate reason as to why he never tried to find me after all these years. It could be that he lost interest, gave up hope, gave up on me, but I didn’t want to believe it.

  “Okay, you make a good point,” I said to her. “But that doesn’t matter. The fact is that Travis is here now, for whatever reason, even if it isn’t to find out about me. We could still run into each other, see each other, and maybe…”

  “If you want to see him, Sophie, let’s just make it happen. Why does it have to be by accident? I know Canon is a small town, but suppose he was leaving today? Your chance might already be gone. Let’s go to the Homestead again tonight for dinner. It’s his mother’s place. I think the odds are good that he would be there, especially if his daughter were there. Then you can guarantee you see him and we’ll see what happens.”

  I knew Mary was right. I couldn’t just hope that he would magically run into me on the street somehow, sparks would fly, and he would tell me he still loves me after all these years. This wasn’t a romance story after all; it was real life.

  “You’re right Mary,” I said to her nervously. “We’ll go back to the Homestead tonight for dinner and see if he is there. If he is, we’ll see what happens.” I tried to sound as grown up about it as I could, but inside I felt like I was that eighteen-year-old girl again.

  “Fair enough,” Mary said to me. “We’ll head over there around five. That should get us there before the Friday crowd for dinner so we can get a table and scope things out. Until then, I really do have work to do,” she glanced down to the papers on her desk then back up to me. “Do you think you can contain yourself until five?” she said, smiling at me. She could see me practically jumping up and down at the prospect of what could happen tonight.

  “I’ll try,” I told her as I walked towards the door, figuring I would go to my classroom and pretend to do work for a few hours until we could leave. The excitement I felt in my body had replaced that anxious knot that was in my stomach just a little while ago. I walked into my classroom, sat down at my desk, and tried to concentrate on lesson plans, class rosters and the like. This was not going to be an easy few hours.

  12

  Travis

  Based on the worn condition outside the house, I was more than a little worried about what I would find inside the house. I warily unlocked the front door, and Abby and I stepped inside. What we saw made both of us stare in wonder.

  “This place looks immaculate,” Abby said as she slowly walked around the living room as we got inside.

  I was in complete shock. It looked as if the place was in pristine condition, almost as if it had just been cleaned up. I know I hadn’t seen my father in years, but he was never the kind of guy to go crazy with housecleaning. He usually just left that to my mother, saying it was “woman’s work” as he put himself in his chair and sat down to have a beer and watch TV. I had expected to find dust and dirt, and probably trash strewn all over, but everything was in its place, neat and tidy, and there was no dust at all, which seemed almost impossible. Irv Rogers had said he hadn’t been out here, so no one had been in the house since Dad died, yet it looked sparkling.

  Abby wandered around the house into the kitchen and then back out to the living room.

  “The kitchen is perfect,” she said to me. “There’s not even anything in the fridge except a few bottles of beer.” Now that sounded like Dad, but you would expect some spoiled food if no one had been in here in a month or more.

  I kept looking around the living room, seeing it was pretty sparse for furniture. Dad’s customary leather recliner was right where I would have expected it to be, near the front window so he could get some light without having to turn the lights on. There were a sofa and coffee table, and a small bureau that had his record player on it with a few records next to it. I looked through the two drawers in the bureau but found little there outside of some old mail and paperw
ork.

  I decided to go upstairs and have a look around there. If anything, maybe I would find something in Dad’s bedroom. The stairs creaked lightly as I made my way up the steps. I looked down the short hall at the top of the stairs. Dad’s bedroom was down the end of the hall to the right, and then there was a bathroom, a closet, and another bedroom at the end on the left. I decided to start in his bedroom to get a look around.