Earning Edie (Espinoza Boys #1)

by D. J. Jamison

  The living room was neat and orderly, if a little too floral. The matching sofa and armchair boasted matching violet blooms on a creamy background just begging for the glass to slip from my fingers. My lips twitched as I fought off a smile at the outrage I imagined it would cause Mrs. Mason if I were to stain her perfect furniture. The carpet, too, was light. The place was very Stepford wives, and frighteningly clean and organized.

  To be honest, it’s not what I would have expected of Edie’s home. I’m not sure why. I pictured peeling wallpaper and dingy, sagging couches — something to represent the lackluster care her parents seemed to have for her. But everything here was perfectly average. Perfectly bland, too.

  Debra settled on the sofa next to me, a smile on her face, while Paul took the armchair. I hated that I was here to interview them. I could have done it over the phone, of course, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to see Edie’s infamous parents. Directly after this, I was headed to her mom’s place.

  “Thanks for the tea,” I said, favoring Debra with a smile.

  I’d asked Edie for a little background to prep myself for this meeting, and she’d mentioned I was her step-mom’s favorite columnist. The look on Debra’s face now said I was in the penalty box but the game wasn’t over. So, I turned on the charm.

  “I don’t usually get such a nice reception for an interview, especially under these circumstances.”

  “Yes, well.” She sniffed and flashed a look at her husband before turning to me. “We’re not the terrible people Edie made us out to be. And we just want to share our side of the story.”

  I nodded, and leaned forward to place the tea glass on the coffee table. Debra immediately picked it up and slipped a coaster under it.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, as I pulled out a copy of the column I’d originally written about Edie’s relationship with her parents.

  Debra’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you have that?” she asked, the last word loaded with so much disgust you’d think I was holding a bag of dog crap.

  “Just for reference, to be sure you’ve gotten a chance to address each point,” I said, keeping my tone light.

  Paul hadn’t said a word yet. I glanced at him, and he was staring into space. Taking out a tape recorder, I paused with my finger over the record button.

  “Are you ready to start?”

  “Yes,” Debra said.

  I waited a beat, but Paul didn’t speak. “Mr. Mason?”

  He grunted. Debra nodded, and leaned in close. “He’s in a lot of pain this time of day. Please start.”

  I nodded uncertainly, glancing again at Paul’s glassy stare. I glanced down at the column that had started this mess, and began asking questions.

  “The night I met Edie, she told me you did not attend her graduation. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Debra said stiffly. “Paul was unwell.”

  “I see,” I said. “Did you tell Edie you wouldn’t be there, then? Ahead of time?”

  Her mouth tightened. “I don’t recall. It’s not uncommon for her father to be too ill to go places. It should have been no surprise.”

  Fair enough. Common courtesy would seem to dictate letting someone know you wouldn’t be attending an event in their honor, but if it was a common state of affairs, perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable for Edie to expect as much without notice. I would try to give Debra the benefit of the doubt.

  “What about her 15th and 18th birthdays?” I said. “Edie indicated that neither of you celebrated with her those years. She seemed to think you’d forgotten her 15th birthday entirely, and that you’d told her she was old enough to celebrate on her own when she turned 18.”

  Debra rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yes, it’s such a sad life. Just like ‘Sixteen Candles.’ You know, that movie from the Eighties with Molly Ringwald?” I nodded my understanding, and she kept going. “It was such a favorite of Edie’s. I imagine she just embellished the truth, wanted to imagine herself a martyr who would capture the handsome boy.”

  She paused and gave me a pointed look.

  “She didn’t strike me as a liar,” I said.

  “She’s not a liar.”

  Paul’s voice made me jump. I turned toward him, but Debra was already talking over him again.

  “No, not a liar, but she exaggerates, certainly.”

  Paul sighed. I got the impression he had long ago given up forcing his voice against the steamroller that was his wife. But Edie was his daughter. He needed to stand up for her.

  I bit my cheek to resist speaking up in her defense. I am here to be unbiased, not to stand up for her character, I reminded myself.

  “So, you did remember her birthday those years?” I asked, just to be sure.

  “Of course!” Debra said.

  “Did you hold a party, or give her presents?” God, I was supposed to be a journalist, and here I was interrogating a couple of parents about a girl’s birthday. Why did I ever write that God-forsaken column?

  Edie had seemed so forlorn that night, like an unloved puppy. Still, I should have never printed such a he-said, she-said article. I was trained better than that.

  “Well, no,” Debra said. “The year she turned 15 was a very tough year. She’d only recently moved in with us from her mother’s, and there was a lot of anger in her. She point-blank said she couldn’t imagine a party without her mom there. She was very upset that her mother was angry about the move. And this last year, she turned 18. Surely, that’s old enough to have friends to plan parties for her. She didn’t need us for that.”

  “That explains why you didn’t hold a party when she turned 15. But didn’t you wish her happy birthday, or offer to have a quiet birthday dinner? Something to mark the occasion.”

  Debra huffed. “I honestly can’t remember that far back. I’m sure we did.”

  “I see.” I decided to go another direction. “She mentioned you had never been to a parent-teacher conference, or visited her school.”

  Debra made an angry hissing noise. “So hateful, so ungrateful,” she said. “She should have been happy to be living in our nice house instead of in that sty with her mother!”

  “Deb,” Paul said in a pained voice.

  “It’s true, Paul. She just came barging into our lives and then expected the royal treatment. She’s not a princess, she—”

  “That’s enough,” Paul snapped. But now I was curious.

  “She came barging in?” I asked.

  She was Paul’s daughter. How exactly did a daughter get blamed for her appearance in her parent’s life?

  “She moved in just before her 15th birthday,” Debra said. “Before that, she always lived with her mom. That’s who you should be talking to.”

  I nodded. “I will talk to her, as well.”

  I ran down the rest of my questions, touching on the other disappointments I had highlighted in the first column. Each time, Debra gave me a half-truth, avoided the question or tried to redirect me by complaining about Edie’s lack of appreciation. I was noticing a pattern.

  Taken one at a time, the offenses didn’t seem so large. A missed birthday. Missed conferences at school. A missed graduation. But taken together it painted a picture of parents who couldn’t be bothered to take an interest in their daughter. And that hurt her. I had seen it firsthand the night we met, though she tried to cover her sadness with self-deprecating humor. I had seen the damage to Edie, the feeling she was unworthy of anyone’s notice.

  I turned off the recorder and stuffed the column clipping back into my pocket. I’d afforded Debra an opportunity to say whatever she wanted about how she viewed their relationship and their parenting of Edie. She’d given me more than enough material about their good intentions, Paul’s illness that preoccupies their time and a daughter who didn’t appreciate what she was given. I didn’t want to use any of it, but I would. I didn’t have a choice.

  On a whim, I asked if I could see Edie’s room. She’d been living in my house, sleeping in my bed, and I found myself curious to
see what her own space would look like.

  “She doesn’t have a room anymore,” Debra said.

  My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Oh?”

  “We turned it into a craft room,” she said. “It’s not as if she needs it now, is it?”

  Not when you’ve kicked her out.

  I forced a tight smile. “So, you don’t expect she’ll want to visit, then?”

  “She can visit; she just can’t stay overnight. I suppose there’s always the couch in an emergency.”

  I nodded again. “I understand. And, Mr. and Mrs. Mason, I do want to apologize for writing that first column. I hope you understand Edie didn’t realize I was going to print her comments. So, perhaps you’ll forgive her for speaking out of turn.”

  Debra snorted. “Whether her thoughts were going in print or not, it’s how she felt. She spewed poison to a stranger.”

  “Maybe. But it was a party, and all kids complain about their parents, right? It seems worse in black and white.”

  I stood up and extended my hand, and Debra shook it. “Thank you so much for your time,” I said, adding a beaming smile.

  That brightened her up. She patted my arm.

  “Play your cards right, Nick, and you just might be my favorite columnist again. Do you think you can do that?”

  My lips pressed together tightly to keep my words in. I desperately wanted to tell her that not only did I not care about being her favorite columnist, I’d prefer she not read my column at all.

  I gave a stiff nod and walked out the door. One interview down, one more to go. It couldn’t be any worse, right?

  Edie’s mother’s house was more as I’d originally imagined her childhood home. I pulled into the address, and looked up at a teal blue trailer battered by hail. The porch was cluttered with two junked computers that were years outdated. I stepped out into gravel, and made my way up the steps. The screen door opened before I knocked.

  “Hello,” Sheila Staples said, with a close-mouthed smile. “There’s not a lot of space in there. Ray is working on his computers. Can we just sit on the bench out here?”

  She gestured to a worn wooden bench I hoped would hold our weight.

  I nodded. “Can I just use your bathroom real quick?” I couldn’t miss my chance to get a peek at this side of Edie’s life.

  She heaved a sigh but nodded. “Fine.”

  I followed her inside, and noticed a head of thinning dark hair bent over the insides of a computer hard drive. The living room was chock full of junked out computer towers and monitors, some stacked several high and looking none too steady. A few battered tablets and old cell phones also lay on a counter nearby. Ray had apparently developed a niche in outdated technology, something for the people who couldn’t afford the hundreds of dollars it cost to get the newest tech gadgets, I supposed.

  A small path one body wide weaved through the room to a hallway. Sheila led me back to the bathroom, and I shut myself in. I actually could pee after all that tea from Debra. So, I did my business and then made my way back to the front door.

  “Mr. Staples,” I called, and his head popped up from the computer he tinkered on.

  “Eh?”

  “Just wanted to say hello. I’m the reporter who wrote about Edie before…” I trailed off at his blank look.

  He nodded. “Sheila’s out on the porch.”

  “Thanks.” I lifted a hand in good-bye and stepped outside to interview Edie’s mom.

  She was more lucid than Paul and more sympathetic than Debra. Though she, too, ignored many of her daughter’s needs, her excuses rang more true than Debra’s evasive answers.

  “Edie was just always such a good girl. She was a great student,” her mom said with a small smile. When she smiled genuinely, I noticed she was missing several teeth. “I guess I never realized it bothered her that I didn’t check up on her at school. It never seemed necessary, and as a single mother, I really didn’t have the time.”

  “Single?”

  “I met Ray later on, when she was a teen. She went to live with Paul not long after. They had a bigger house, a nicer one. Edie started to think she was too good for this place. Too good for me.”

  Bitterness edged her words.

  “You were angry she left?”

  She shrugged. “She did what she wanted to do. I didn’t stop her. I don’t understand why I’m being blamed now that it hasn’t worked out. I warned her that Debra was cold and Paul was oblivious.”

  I steered the interview back to the other points in the article, and I quickly got a picture of life with Edie’s mother. She barely paid the bills, much less had money for the things teens might want or need. Sheila knew she didn’t have a lot to offer Edie in terms of material items, and she seemed to think Edie found her inadequate, but knowing Edie I doubted that was true.

  Edie was a practical girl; if she thought one parent could more easily afford to support her, I could see her making a choice based on that fact. I’d have to ask Edie later, but she didn’t seem to care about material things. Sheila was also obviously bitter about Edie’s option to live with her father, possibly even jealous.

  But she did seem to love Edie.

  “Wasn’t it a little harsh not to give her a place to stay when the Masons kicked her out after that column?”

  Sheila picked at a sliver of wood on the bench restlessly. “What she said about us was harsh. Besides, she left us years ago, and she doesn’t really want to be here. Have you seen this place? I always knew Edie could take care of herself. She’s not sleeping on the street, is she?”

  “No.”

  She’s sleeping in my bed.

  It was a distracting thought, a tantalizing one, even if I wasn’t in the bed with her.

  “I knew she’d be okay. Edie is pretty and bright and she’ll have a great life, if she can get over these pity parties she throws for herself.”

  “Well, thank you for your time,” I said.

  “One more thing, Mr. Espinoza.”

  “Yes?” I asked, as I stood to go.

  “You did wrong, by her and by us, when you printed that first article.”

  I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’m trying to make it right.”

  She chewed on her lip thoughtfully. “I sense that you know Edie past that first night you interviewed her.”

  “I have talked to her since then, yes.”

  “Well, tell her she’s still welcome to visit, of course. Just like always. I wish I could offer her more.” She shrugged. “This is my life now. Between Ray’s overflowing hobby and our two pennies for bills, we can’t accommodate Edie. But we do miss her.”

  I smiled. “I’ll pass on the message,’ I said. “I think she misses you too.”

  ***

  A few days later, I walked in after work, happy to return home in a way I never used to be. It was nice to have someone waiting when I walked in the door. I finally understood why people liked marriage and kids.

  Today, I was especially glad to get away from the office. Tanya had called me to her office, again, but at least there’d been no threats to fire me this time. Today, she wanted to tell me how much she liked my work. That should have been good news, but she liked my work so much she’d decided the column about our county treasurer’s abuse of public funds should be revised into a front-page news story instead.

  I was killing myself to prove my column’s worth, and she was robbing it when I’d written the best column to date.

  It frustrated me to no end, even with her extending the deadline on my column’s performance an extra week. With the strain put on staffing at the newspaper, I was pretty sure my column’s death sentence was a foregone conclusion, no matter what I did.

  “Honey, I’m home,” I called out jokingly, just as I always did.

  In the beginning, it irritated Edie to death, which I enjoyed. Now, she just rolled her eyes and went with it.

  Edie looked up from a spot in the middle of the living room floor. She was sitting cross-legged in the mi
ddle of an explosion of books and printouts. She turned her head away, but not before I saw the tear tracks on her cheeks.

  There was a time seeing those tears would have sent me walking right back out the door. But Edie’s sadness seemed to bring out my protective side.

  I immediately forgot my irritation with Tanya, my concern for Edie overtaking all other thoughts.

  “Oh, hey,” I said, my voice automatically going to gentle mode. “What’s the matter?”

  Please don’t let it be something I did.

  Edie had already read the column about her parents, so I knew it couldn’t be that. I’d let her read a copy ahead of it going to print, and she’d taken their words stoically. She wasn’t surprised Debra was the most bitter of the bunch, and I got the impression their relationship had always been strained.

  She gestured at the mess. “It’s hopeless! I kept thinking I might find another scholarship or grant or something, but it’s just too late.”

  I dropped to my knees beside her and looked at the book covers. “Scholarships for Dummies” and “Rare college scholarship opportunities.” So, she was worried about college. I’d kind of figured that out from some of the searches in my laptop’s browser history.

  “Maybe you should talk to your parents again,” I said.

  She snorted. “After what they said in your follow-up column? No thanks.”

  I winced. I hated that I’d had to write that column. She said she understood, but I still wasn’t sure she really did. She probably just didn’t want to look for a new place to live.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “So, level with me. How bad is it?”

  Her eyes met mine in surprise. “I have a scholarship that will cover one semester of tuition if I stay in state,” she said. “But … it’s the cost of living. Rent and food and books…”

  One semester. But that meant even if she found the cash for room and books, she’d have to go through this all over again at winter break. She might be able win a scholarship from her degree program by then, I mused, thinking back on my own college experience. But that’s a lot of pressure when you’re already stressed out to be in college for the first time.