The Beautiful Daughters

by Nicole Baart

  “What are you going to haul off today?” Sam asked cheerfully, nestling the final dish into the cupboard. “Any big plans I should know about?”

  Adri shook her head. “Nothing major. I need to touch base with Caleb.” She glanced at the clock on the wall, and swallowed the tiny butterflies that threatened to flutter up and out of her throat at the mere thought of her coworker. “We’re six hours behind, so if I call now, the timing should be perfect. And then I’m heading into town. I want to talk to Clay and get this whole thing cleared up quickly.”

  Something in Sam’s eyes dimmed. “Your appointment isn’t until the day after tomorrow.”

  “I know,” Adri said. “But I’m hoping I can talk Clay into letting me off the hook. Victoria didn’t know what she was doing when she named me the executor of her will.”

  “She knew exactly what she was doing.”

  “I mean, she didn’t know how difficult it would be for me to carry out her wishes.”

  Sam sighed. “I think she did it on purpose, Adri. She wanted you to come home. Take a break. Face whatever it is you ran away from when you left Iowa in the first place.”

  There was a note of frustration, or maybe even anger in her father’s voice, and Adri was stunned into silence. It was one of the only times that he had directly admitted that Adri had run away after David died, and it chilled her to realize that she wasn’t fooling anyone—at least, not her father—with her passionate aid worker act. She was passionate about what she did, but she sometimes wondered what her life would have been like if she had done things differently all those years ago. If she had taken that job as a traveling nurse instead of submitting an application online for a medical aid job with an obscure organization that was floundering its way through ministry in West Africa. They had been overjoyed to receive her résumé, and in the months after accepting the position, Adri came to suspect that she hadn’t been the best applicant, she had been the only applicant.

  But none of that changed the fact that her life had evolved into something raw and beautiful, even if she had never dared to hope it would. It was a tenuous peace Adri had made with herself, and one she didn’t want to disrupt.

  “I’m sorry, Dad, I have to get home as soon as possible.”

  Sam gave her a long, hard look. “Adrienne Claire, you are home.” And then he turned and stormed out of the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind him.

  Adri sank against the sink, and leaned there for a long time, listening to the door rat-a-tat-tat against the warped frame as the morning breeze gusted through the porch rails. Her dad was the definition of calm, and it had been a long, long time since she had seen him visibly upset. She had forgotten how much it stung. How guilty she felt knowing that she was the one who had etched disappointment across his features, even if she felt his reasons were unjustified.

  But as she tried to convince herself that his anger was groundless, Adri realized that he wasn’t angry at all. He was hurt.

  It was the reason why her bedroom had remained untouched for the five years of her exile, T-shirts still folded in her drawer and prom dresses zipped up in plastic bags in the back of her closet. Her antique hairbrush still sat on her little white vanity, a pretty thing that she loved to look at but never used. And though Adri hadn’t checked, she was sure that if she opened the chest that sat at the end of her twin bed she’d find all of her old journals still lined up in a row, the desiccated remains of a yellow rose Harper had once given her, and the jewelry box that contained her mother’s wedding ring. A ring she wore for less than a year before tucking it away out of sight. But never out of mind.

  Of course, there was an entire box devoted to David. A few of the ill-suited gifts he bought her—a gold bangle bracelet that slipped off her wrist, a shell-pink cashmere sweater, perfume that stank of money—and a handful of letters that he had written to her during class. He liked to pepper his notes with thees and thous, shalts, and a pretentious closing that always felt dispassionate to Adri. Truly. Ever devoted. Sincerely yours. She hadn’t opened the box in years.

  “Go ahead and get rid of that stuff,” Adri had told her father the last time she visited home. “You could turn my room into a spare room.”

  “I already have a spare room.”

  “But my junk is just taking up space.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he said, avoiding her gaze.

  “Box up the clothes and take them to Goodwill. It’s not like I’m ever going to wear them again. And,” Adri paused, “throw the rest away.”

  Sam snorted. “I’m not throwing your stuff away. You can do that yourself.”

  Of course, she didn’t. Because she couldn’t. Adri couldn’t help it if she was sentimental. If she could spritz an old perfume and be transported to her first day of high school. She had been terrified. Or brush her fingers along the satin ribbon of the teddy bear that the hospital had given her when her mother had died. She was too little to know what it meant, but that bear slept with her until she was well into her teens. And when it was David who held her to sleep, she secreted away mementos of the life she hoped to have with him. Adri simply couldn’t throw them away.

  And, apparently, neither could her father.

  Standing in the kitchen with his words ringing in her ears—you are home—Adri knew that her dad wasn’t just sentimental. He was optimistic. Clinging to a hope that no doubt hung like a millstone around his neck.

  Her father hoped that someday, for more than a week or two, Adri would come home.

  It broke her heart a little to know that she never, ever would.

  7

  In spite of her father’s misgivings, adri felt she had no choice but to go on with her day as planned. She called caleb, punching in the fifteen digits of his cell number and the country code, but there was no answer. A ring or two, and then an automated message that insisted the owner of the phone had either switched it off or was out of the coverage area. Adri couldn’t help but be annoyed. Towers were infrequent and poorly spaced throughout the jungle, coverage often hit-or-miss, but it seemed like a personal affront that she couldn’t get hold of caleb.

  “Never mind,” Adri muttered to herself, slamming the antiquated rotary handset onto the hook. She wondered for the millionth time why her dad insisted on keeping a landline when he owned a smartphone. Especially this mustard-colored relic from her youth. It seemed to her like an intended reminder of simpler times, but Sam claimed he was just too lazy to take it off the wall.

  Adri loved to complain about the junk that cluttered Maple Acres, but she was thankful for her dad’s hoarder tendencies when she lifted the heavy garage door of the old shed and found her car awaiting her eventual return. Really, it was Will’s car, too, but the practical, nondescript Buick in a dull granny gray was hardly the sort of vehicle that Will, at eighteen, was eager to claim. When they left for college and needed transportation, Will made a point of finding a friend who had a better set of wheels than he had been strapped with. Jackson fit the bill nicely, and Adri ended up driving the Buick. Well, Adri and Harper. They eventually nicknamed it Betty and decorated the doors by painting little fingernail-polish daisies over the handles and signing their initials in glitter glue.

  Their artwork had survived the decade, though the flowers were obscured by a thin layer of dust and faded by time. Adri ran her hand over the tiny pink petals and traced the curlicued AV with her fingertips.

  When Adri had told Harper that she was engaged to David, Harper hadn’t hugged or congratulated her friend. At least, not right away. Instead, her nose crinkled as if she had caught a whiff of something indefinable but pungent, and the first words out of her mouth were, “How the hell are we going to change the V to a G on Betty?” As if they’d drive the car forever, perpetually young and carefree, sun-kissed arms and legs draped out of open windows.

  Best friends forever.

  It to
ok Adri two tries and a bit of gas, but the engine turned over without much fuss. Evidence that, despite the grime, Sam regularly took Betty out for a stroll. Pulling out of the garage, Adri scanned the barns for some sign of her father, but he was either working hard and hadn’t heard her start the car or he simply didn’t want to see her. She guessed the latter.

  Blackhawk seemed deserted to Adri as she drove the empty streets. Quiet and oddly bereft of people milling about, loitering near buildings, and weaving through crowds with packs of Chiclets and bags of water. It was so different from her home in Africa; it made her feel hollow. There was no music, no laughter. And there were no cars parked in front of the squat, brick bungalow that Clay Foster had transformed into a law office.

  Blackhawk was a small town, but there was a fairly large law firm on the picturesque main street that handled most of the civil and even the few criminal infractions that the community drummed up. The city paper still published every traffic citation and parking violation, and in her college years Adri had noticed that more insidious crimes had crept their way into the community. Trespass, possession, and, every once in a while, assault. An ugly, hidden part of Adri had felt mildly superior in the face of such public failure. Midwesterners kept a tight lid on things. And she was a master of pressing down. Hard.

  In the moment before Adri stepped out of the car and walked the path to Clay’s office, she did exactly what she had become so adept at: she buried. Every thought and emotion and memory of those days following David’s death, of sitting in Clay’s conference room, she and Clay on one side of the table, a small contingency of plainclothes cops and top-notch, big-city lawyers on the other. It had been hell.

  The first time she had been formally interviewed, Adri hardly said a word. She couldn’t. Everything was too new and fresh. So far beyond her understanding. David’s blood was still stiffening on her T-shirt, the metallic scent mingled with the cold, mineral smell of the shallow water where he had died. They had taken a trip, The Five, a last hurrah only days after they graduated and stood poised to take on the world. David had died there, in British Columbia, a world away from home. She had irrationally hoped that it was all just a bad, bad dream.

  But, of course, it wasn’t.

  Adri stepped out of the car and made a point of throwing back her shoulders the way her dad had relentlessly encouraged her to so many years ago. He used to walk up behind her and put his fingers on her upper arms, his bony thumbs between her shoulder blades and spine, and pinch until she had the posture of a ballerina en pointe. She hadn’t appreciated it then, but she certainly did now, for it was a uniform of sorts and she donned it purposefully.

  Clay’s secretary was his self-absorbed daughter-in-law who was absent as much as she was around, so Adri wasn’t surprised when she stepped into the reception room and found it empty. Since there was no bell, no way to alert anyone to her presence, she stood awkwardly at the counter for a minute before taking a few tentative steps in the direction of Clay’s personal office. She didn’t have to go far.

  “Adrienne Vogt.” It was a statement, not a question, and when Adri turned, Clay was standing in the hallway behind her with a look of mild bemusement on his face. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  “I didn’t think I had a choice.” Adri gave him a crooked smile. “Sorry to just pop in like this. I was hoping you could squeeze me in.”

  “As you can see, I’m very busy.” Clay grinned and wiped his hands on his khaki pants, a pair of ill-fitting chinos that stopped short of his ankles and were oddly endearing. Paired with an expensive dress shirt and cheap tie decorated with rainbow-colored fishing lures, it completed an ensemble that made him at once lovable and absurd. His clothes and a shock of wild, snow-white hair camouflaged a quick and brilliant mind that was able to siphon the most minuscule, pertinent detail from a sea of useless facts. Adri loved him like an uncle, but she had never once dared to tell him so.

  “Sorry,” he said, offering her his palms. She noticed for the first time that they were stained a brownish green. “I was yanking out old petunias. I should wash up.”

  “No need.” Adri crossed the narrow room and held out her hand, but after a second of studying her outstretched arm, Clay gave her wrist a tug and pulled her into a clumsy embrace. “We’re a little past that, wouldn’t you say?” But they couldn’t quite figure out where to put their chins, and when Clay finally stepped back, Adri’s cheeks were on fire.

  She didn’t argue when he offered her a drink, and minutes later they were settled in his office. Adri cupped a mug of hot, if bland, Lipton tea in her clammy palms, but she wasn’t the least bit interested in drinking it.

  “It’s good to see you,” Clay said, studying her features. There was more to his words than she could discern.

  “I’d say the same.” Adri smiled wanly.

  “But . . . ?”

  “But this is hard, Clay.” Adri’s heart felt like a stone in her chest. It thumped painfully. “None of this is mine. It never was. Not the name, the family, the home. It feels wrong to be in charge of it. Victoria was . . .” But what had Victoria been to her? A friend? Less. An acquaintance? More. She had been the hope of what might have been. But Adri couldn’t say that.

  From the moment David proposed, Victoria had considered Adri a Galloway. There was something almost regal in the bestowal of her favor. Something binding. Never mind the fact that Adri was a penniless nobody or that Liam, had he been around to grant his own approval, would never have smiled on his son’s choice. David had made up his mind, and that appeared to be enough for Victoria.

  But it was more than that, too. The older woman seemed almost relieved when everything was official. She dutifully examined the ring and gave Adri a stiff hug, but when she pulled away there was something unhidden in her eyes. Just for a moment, just a flash of raw emotion. Maybe understanding? It felt to Adri like she had unwittingly sealed some sort of covenant with her mother-in-law to be, though she couldn’t begin to imagine what they had pledged to one another.

  Clay gave her a sympathetic look and dug into a bowl of caramels. He produced a tiny key and fit it into the bottom drawer of his desk. “Shhh.” he winked. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  Adri buried her nose in the steam from her tea and inhaled. “I didn’t see a thing. Though I can’t imagine why you have to lock anything up. This is Blackhawk after all.”

  “And this”—Clay slapped a nondescript manila envelope on his desk—“is Victoria Galloway’s last will and testament.”

  “So small?” Adri raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t it be reams of paper long?”

  “It was longer,” Clay said. “Before Victoria started making changes.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t worry, she didn’t go off the deep end and leave it all to the horses. And Iowa law doesn’t allow for holographic wills—nothing handwritten or unwitnessed—so it’s not like she scribbled out all of her original provisions and did something crazy. I was the testator and there was also a witness for every revocation and amendment.”

  “Who was the witness?”

  Clay reached for a pair of bifocals and, after he had settled them on his nose, regarded Adri over the top of the lenses. “I don’t intend to tell you that until I know if you are willing to carry out your duties as the executor of Victoria’s will.”

  Adri paused. “If I don’t . . . ?”

  “Your appointment may be revoked by the probate court on the grounds that you’ve breached your fiduciary duty to the estate. If a hearing determines that there is cause for removal, another administrator will be appointed in your place.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “That’s none of your business, young lady.” Clay’s tone was flinty.

  Adri squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to stay. To take her place as the counterfeit daughter of a woman she had stolen so much
from. It was true that Adri had never intended to hurt Victoria, but isn’t that exactly what she had done? And now, this. It felt wrong on many levels.

  “She wanted you, Adri.” Clay seemed to read her mind. “This is my personal observation, not a legal assessment, but I believe she wanted you to do this for a reason.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But I think you owe it to her.”

  The tea was lukewarm and no longer enveloping Adri in a cloud of comforting steam. She set the cup on the edge of Clay’s desk and shoved down the panic that boiled and foamed its way up her throat. It blistered and singed, but that didn’t stop her from nodding, once. “I committed to this the second I got on the plane.”

  Clay nodded, too. “Then let’s get started, shall we?”

  Although Adri had half expected a public reading of Victoria’s last will and testament, Clay assured her that there would be no such Hollywood theatrics involved in the disbursement of the late Mrs. Galloway’s estate.

  “Nobody does that,” he said, sliding the envelope across the desk to Adri. “Urban legend has it that public readings date back to an era when many people were illiterate and couldn’t read the document for themselves. I’m assuming we don’t have an issue there?”

  Adri managed a wan smile.

  “Good. This copy is yours. I have documents ready for distribution to the other beneficiaries, but I wanted to go over everything with you first.”

  “Other beneficiaries? What do you mean? I’m just the executor.”

  Clay ignored her. “If you’ll open the envelope . . . ?”

  Adri stared at him for a second before pulling the slim package toward her and fumbling with the clasp. There were only four sheets of paper inside, all thick, creamy stationery that bore the logo of the Foster Family Law Group and were held together by a small paper clip. She took a deep breath and tried to listen as Clay walked her through the preliminary declarations and the stark notations that told Victoria’s sad story in three short lines: I revoke all prior Wills and Codicils. I am not married. I do not have any living children.