by Meg Cabot
Please let us know if, in addition to our Relocation Preparation Package, you also wish to purchase our Resettling Package. It definitely changes the way we prepare and label items.
On a personal note, it would be a great honor to work with the Judge and Mrs. Stewart, as I’ve always sincerely admired them. I would do whatever I could to try to make this move as painless as possible for your entire family, as I understand what a difficult time this must be for you all.
Thank you for considering Moving Up! Senior Move Management Consultants.
Yours very sincerely,
Becky Flowers, CCSMM
Moving Up! Consulting LLC, President
From: Carly [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:15:19 PM EST
To: Marshall [email protected]; Reed [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
Hi. She’s taking the job (don’t ask me why). I’m forwarding the estimate. I think it’s more than reasonable.
From: Becky Flowers [email protected]
Date: March 15 2:43:27 PM EST
To: Carly [email protected]
Subject: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
Thank you for allowing Moving Up! Senior Move Management Consultants the opportunity to assist your husband’s parents in downsizing to a smaller home.
I have some pricing ready for you derived from our meeting earlier today. . . .
Carly R. Stewart | Accountant | Stewart Realty | 801 South Moore Pike, Bloomville, IN 47401 | phone (812) 555-8722 | Please visit StewartRealty.com for all your realty needs
From: Marshall [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:17:12 PM EST
To: Carly [email protected]; Reed [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
You call $20,000 reasonable???
From: Reed [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:20:02 PM EST
To: Marshall [email protected]; Carly [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
You weren’t there today, Marshall. You didn’t see what I did in the basement.
From: Marshall [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:25:19 PM EST
To: Carly [email protected]; Reed [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
I’ve been in that basement plenty of times, Reed. “Don’t touch any of it! It’s all worth millions!”—direct quote from Dad.
But fine, if you want to throw your money away, be my guest.
From: Reed [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:28:07 PM EST
To: Marshall [email protected]; Carly [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
What do you even care? It’s my money to throw.
I’ll write to Becky and tell her yes, Carly.
From: Carly [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:35:12 PM EST
To: Marshall [email protected]; Reed [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
You will? Well, thanks, Reed.
Carly R. Stewart | Accountant | Stewart Realty | 801 South Moore Pike, Bloomville, IN 47401 | phone (812) 555-8722 | Please visit StewartRealty.com for all your realty needs
From: Reed [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:40:17 PM EST
To: Marshall [email protected]; Carly [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
Of course! I said I was here to help.
And don’t worry, you two. Uncle Reed will take the girls to dinner tonight, too. You two can have a romantic evening alone, to celebrate.
We have a senior moving consultant! Everything is going to be great!
From: Marshall [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:45:11 PM EST
To: Carly [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
There’s something deeply wrong with my brother, isn’t there?
From: Carly [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:48:01 PM EST
To: Marshall [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
No. He’s in love, that’s all.
Carly R. Stewart | Accountant | Stewart Realty | 801 South Moore Pike, Bloomville, IN 47401 | phone (812) 555-8722 | Please visit StewartRealty.com for all your realty needs
From: Marshall [email protected]
Date: March 15 3:55:17 PM EST
To: Carly [email protected]
Subject: Re: Pricing for Judge and Mrs. Stewart
Oh, God. This is going to be an even bigger disaster than I thought.
From: Reed [email protected]
Date: March 15 5:06:10 PM EST
To: [email protected]
Subject: You
Dear Becky,
It seems inadequate to say “it’s been a long time,” but in this case, it’s fitting.
Thanks so much for agreeing to help my parents. I’m attaching the signed contract, and yes, we would like the Resettling Package, as well.
We’re still not exactly sure where my parents are going, or when, since for all we know, it could be prison, which I suppose will lower the bill for resettling considerably, as I suppose they won’t need your bed-making skills in jail.
But they definitely need to get out of this town, as I know you’re aware.
It’s very generous of you, considering our past history, to agree to help facilitate this.
On that note, I’m sorry if I seemed awkward at my parents’ house today. I’m sorry about a lot of things. I didn’t know you were going to be there, and I had no idea what to say to you. Seeing you like that, in my parents’ house, particularly in the state it was in . . . well, that wasn’t the way I pictured the two of us meeting again after all these years.
And despite what you may think, I have pictured us meeting again. This is embarrassing to admit, but for years I’ve had this fantasy that when I came back to Bloomville, it would be as a rich man, like Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion by Jane Austen. Do you remember him?
Captain Wentworth makes his fortune in the Navy, and returns not only to rescue the heroine Anne Elliot, but to show everyone in town, particularly her family, how wrong they’d been to misjudge him.
It was immature and pretentious of me, I know, since you were never the type of woman who needed rescuing. Even when we crashed into the pool, and you were in so much pain, you managed to get yourself out—though I swear to God I tried to rescue you then, too. I would have, if that security guard hadn’t gotten to you first, and then, of course, the EMTs.
I never would have left your side if my father—and the cops—hadn’t shown up, demanding explanations. But especially my father, who started shouting at me right then and there—in front of the police, the EMTs, and worst of all, you—about what a disappointment I was turning out to be to him, and that’s when I just . . .
Well, I’m sure you remember the rest as well as I do.
I can’t think of that night—the way I failed you—without breaking out into a cold sweat. I always swore when we met again, I’d show you how wrong my father was about me.
And now we finally do meet again, and what’s happening? My dad is a shell of the man he once was, and it’s partly my fault, because I’ve been off playing a stupid game. I can’t even enjoy telling him how wrong he was about me, because that stupid game of mine is so off, I haven’t had a win in years.
And you not only do not need rescuing, but are the only person for miles in a position to rescue me, from having to watch my parents destroy themselves.
Which makes me even more mortified about my past b
ehavior, and the way I acted today at the house. When I saw you there, I was struck speechless, not only by your presence—which of course Carly didn’t warn me about beforehand—but by what a beautiful and confident woman you’ve grown into.
Not that you weren’t always gorgeous. And God knows you never had any problem speaking your mind.
But now there’s something even more—I don’t know what the right word is—about you.
I know how cheesy all of this must sound to you. I wouldn’t blame you for hitting the delete button when you receive this.
But all I could think about when I saw you today was what a fool I was ten years ago, and have continued to be.
I know I don’t have the right to ask anything of you, especially considering how generous you’re being in agreeing to help us. But I had to get all this off my chest since it looks like you and I will be seeing quite a lot of one another in the next week or so.
So I was wondering if you’d consider being friends again. I know after the way I’ve treated you, I don’t deserve your friendship, and I’m definitely not asking for anything more. I’ve heard about this guy you’re with now, and I’m sure he must be great (you wouldn’t settle for anything less). I would never want to do anything to disrupt that relationship (not that I could), or the nice life here in Bloomville you seem to have created for yourself. I’m genuinely happy for you!
But maybe I could take you out for coffee or a drink while I’m here, just for old times’ sake? I promise I’ll do all the driving! (Ha ha.)
Let me know.
Yours, always,
Reed
Becky Flowers created chat “Reed Stewart”
Becky Flowers
17:18 PM
Look what just landed in my inbox.
From: Reed [email protected]
Date: March 15 5:06:10 PM EST
To: [email protected]
Subject: You
Dear Becky,
It seems inadequate to say “it’s been a long time,” but in this case, it’s fitting.
Thanks so much for agreeing to help my parents. I’m attaching the signed contract, and yes, we would like the Resettling Package, as well. . . .
Leeanne Matsumori
17:20 PM
OMG. If anyone ever sent me a letter like that, I’d be so thirsty, I’d have to drink an entire bottle of vitamin water.
Becky Flowers
17:20 PM
I had to drink Lake Bloomville.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:20 PM
I would have had to drink Lake Michigan.
Becky Flowers
17:21 PM
I drank out of the flask Nicole keeps hidden in her desk and thinks I don’t know about.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:21 PM
So what are you going to do about it?
Becky Flowers
17:22 PM
The flask? Or his letter? Both = nothing.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:22 PM
????!!!!!
Becky Flowers
17:22 PM
I can’t get involved with the son of my clients. It would be unethical.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:23 PM
Oh, right.
Is this because of Graham?
Becky Flowers
17:23 PM
Yes. No. I don’t know.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:23 PM
Oh, okay. So it’s not because Reed said he only wants to be friends?
Becky Flowers
17:23 PM
No. Absolutely not.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:23 PM
Because you know that’s only what he SAYS. He called you beautiful and confident. No one who wants to be friends says that. Has Graham ever called you that?
Becky Flowers
17:24 PM
No.
But Graham has other good qualities. Such as owning a business in the same town as me and not having a rescue complex or having abandoned me for ten years without a word.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:24 PM
OK, you read the letter, right? He explained all that. At least to my satisfaction. I’m not saying you should go running to him with open arms, but you could have a measly cup of coffee with the man.
And I like Graham, too, but wine and cheese are all he ever talks about. Maybe it’s because I’m lactose intolerant and also can’t process alcohol, but he seems a little dull. Does he even read Jane Austen?
Becky Flowers
17:24 PM
He reads Bon Appetit magazine. And he could find cheeses for you that are low in lactic acid that you could easily digest.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:25 PM
Believe me, I know. Every time I hang out with you guys, he tells me all about them.
And I will admit, he looks good in the photos on his timeline.
Like the one he posted on the Authentic Facebook page the other day, of him lying on that blanket with no shirt on and his baby niece next to him. He tagged it Baby Bliss.
Becky Flowers
17:25 PM
Oh, right, I saw that one. Graham likes babies.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:25 PM
Babies are nice. Babies are something I don’t think golfers have a lot of time for, so that’s another point in Graham’s favor. You know, if you were doing a pro/con list of them both. Which I know you aren’t.
Becky Flowers
17:26 PM
I’m definitely not. But you seem to be.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:26 PM
Well, I have a lot of time on my hands, since I’m sitting in the airport.
Becky Flowers
17:26 PM
What? Where are you going?
Leeanne Matsumori
17:26 PM
I told you before, I’m coming home. I’m not going to let you go through all this without me. I grabbed the cheapest flight I could. It’s going to take me 24 hours, and I have to change planes in New York and Chicago before I get to Indianapolis, but I’ll get home eventually.
Becky Flowers
17:26 PM
Oh, Lee! That’s so sweet of you!
But you didn’t have to. I’m fine.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:27 PM
I know you’re fine. I read all about how you don’t need rescuing. You got out of that pool at the country club by yourself with a dislocated shoulder.
But you haven’t even seen that Reed’s parents aren’t the Dumbasses of the Week anymore.
Becky Flowers
17:27 PM
They aren’t? How can there be a new Dumbass? The week isn’t over yet.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:27 PM
I think there’ve been an extraordinarily high number of people acting like dumbasses lately.
Here look, here’s the new one. I think it’s someone Reed knows. I think we can add to the list of Reed’s cons that he knows and/or is related to a lot of Dumbasses:
DUMBASS OF THE WEEK
It’s sad when a good man goes bad.
But that’s exactly what appears to have happened to Number 1 ranked professional golfer Cobb Cutler.
After posting a sweet message of goodbye to his wife, Russian model Ava Kuznetsov, upon signing their divorce papers, Cutler then posted the unthinkable:
The death of my marriage to you, Ava, is more painful than the death of my own father, and even the death of my old dog, Blue.
Who can forget the tragic death of Cutler’s beloved Golden Retriever, Blue, who, while accompanying Cutler on a fishing trip off the coast of Southern California, was attacked by a freakishly aggressive dolphin that leapt from the sea and delivered a fatal blow to the head of the eleven-year-old canine?
A grieving Cutler met Kuznetsov online just a few months later. The two wed within the year, though friends whispered that the
pair had nothing in common.
The marriage was notoriously troubled from the start, with Kuznetsov preferring her fast-paced Manhattan lifestyle, and Cutler his more laid-back ways out West.
“It’s very painful to see him dismissing Blue’s memory in this way,” said Joyce Kilpatrick, president of the Golden Retriever Club of America. “But dog lovers all over the world are quickly realizing that Cobb Cutler’s not the man we once thought he was.”
When you publicly call your divorce from a woman with whom you barely lived more painful than the death of your own father AND your canine best friend, that makes you:
NY JOURNAL’S DUMBASS OF THE WEEK!!
Your reaction?
LOL
Fail
WTF
35
510,972
317,459
Becky Flowers
17:28 PM
Wow. That is depressing.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:28 PM
I know, right? Men.
Becky Flowers
17:28 PM
Men? What about dolphins?
Leeanne Matsumori
17:28 PM
Seriously. Who knew? Assassins of the sea. And dolphins were my spirit animal!
Becky Flowers
17:28 PM
You should consider rethinking that.
Leeanne Matsumori
17:28 PM
I will.