Amy checked her reflection in the plate-glass window before entering. She had chosen her outfit carefully. Nothing too sexy. She didn’t want Ryan to infer that his old man had left a box full of money for his twenty-eight-year-old mistress. She wore a navy blue suit with a peach blouse, shoes with only a two-inch heel. No flashy jewelry, just faux pearls and
matching earrings. Sincere, but serious. She entered the double doors and stopped at the sign that said, “WAIT HERE TO BE SEATED.”
“Can I help you?” asked the hostess.
“Yes. I’m supposed to meet someone here at four. His name is Dr. Duffy.”
She checked her clipboard. “Yes, he’s here. He said he was expecting someone. Follow me, please.”
Amy gulped. He had actually come.
Most of the tables were filled, and the after-work crowd was beginning to file in for wine and locally brewed beers as well as coffee. The hostess directed her to the booth by the window. The man rose to greet her. He looked younger than she’d expected. More handsome, too. A good-looking doctor. Gram would be doing cartwheels.
“Dr. Duffy?” she said as she approached.
They shook hands. “Right. And you must be…”
She hesitated. No last name. “Call me Amy.”
“Okay, Amy.” He didn’t push for a surname.
“Have a seat.”
The waitress appeared as they slid into opposite sides of the booth. “Can I bring you something?” she asked.
“How about a decaf cappuccino?” said Amy.
“And for you, sir?”
Ryan paused. “I’ll just have coffee.”
“We have two hundred kinds.”
“Pick any you like. Surprise me.”
She rolled her eyes, jotted something on her pad, and left.
Amy took another look at Ryan. He really was handsome.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
She blushed, embarrassed that he’d caught her staring. “I’m sorry. I guess you just don’t look anything like the small-town country doctor I was expecting.”
“Well, I make it a point never to smoke my corncob pipe outside of Piedmont Springs.”
She nodded and smiled, as if she’d deserved that. “Anyway, thanks for coming, Doctor.”
“Call me Ryan. And you don’t have to thank me. I’m pretty eager to find out what this gift is you’re talking about.”
“Then I’ll just get right down to it. Like I said, I got a package a couple of weeks ago. When I tore away the brown paper wrapping, I found a box for a Crock-Pot. No return address, no card inside. I checked the serial number with the manufacturer and found out the warranty was registered in the name of Jeanette Duffy.”
“That’s my mom’s name.”
“Does she own a Crock-Pot?”
Ryan chuckled, thinking of the mounds of corned beef at the gathering at their house after the funeral. “You bet she does.”
“A Gemco Crock-Pot, by any chance?”
“As a matter of fact, it is. I was with my dad when he bought it for her.”
It was the added confirmation she needed. “Good. Anyway, I opened the box.”
“I assume there wasn’t a Crock-Pot inside.”
“No.” Her expression turned more serious.
“There was money it. A thousand dollars.” Amy watched his face carefully. She felt duplicitous, but it wasn’t entirely a lie. It did contain a thousand dollars. She just didn’t tell him that it also contained 199,000 more. Not yet, anyway.
“A thousand dollars, huh?”
“I don’t know if it was your mom or your dad who sent it. Either way, with your dad just passing away, I didn’t want to bother or upset your mom. That’s why I called you. Honestly, I’m not sure what to do.”
“Keep it.”
She was taken aback by the quick response. “No questions asked?”
Ryan shrugged. “I can’t see my mother doing something like this. So I assume it was my dad. He obviously wanted you to have it. You may not have known him, but somewhere along the line you must have shown him some kindness, or maybe he felt sorry for you for some reason. My dad was that way. It doesn’t surprise me he’d send money to someone like you. You seem nice enough. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if he sent lots of people money after he found out he was sick.”
The waitress interrupted. “One decaf cappuccino,” she said, serving Amy. “And a cup of black sludge for the gentleman.” She smirked. “Just kidding. It’s Brazilian blend. Anything else?”
“No, thank you,” said Ryan. She turned and left.
Amy emptied a pack of Equal into her decaf.
“Are you sure I should just keep it?”
“Hey, it’s a thousand dollars. We’re not talking Fort Knox here. Just don’t tell my wife I let you keep it. She’d probably sue me.”
Amy sensed an opening to the kind of personal details she wanted. “She’s fond of money, is she?”
“That’s an understatement. It’s the reason we’re getting divorced.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. Fortunately, we don’t have any children. Just money problems.”
“Too much? Or not enough?”
Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Kind of personal.”
“Sorry. It’s just a familiar story, I guess.” Amy hesitated. She didn’t want him to know too much about her, but if she told him something about herself, perhaps he’d give her the insights she wanted into the Duffy family. “You might say I’m a bit of an expert on the subject of money and marriage.”
“Is that so?”
“My ex-husband was an investment banker. Loaded. It only made him meaner, greedier, if you ask me.”
“You’re divorced now?”
“Yeah. And I’ll be honest with you. We may not be talking about Fort Knox here, as you say. But I appreciate your generosity. I can definitely use the money.”
“Your rich ex-husband doesn’t pay enough alimony, I take it.”
“Doesn’t pay any. Not a cent.”
Ryan kidded, “Do you have the name of his lawyer?”
She smiled, then turned serious. “Ted didn’t need a lawyer. After I filed for divorce, he threatened to hide a bag of cocaine in my truck and get me arrested, then use the drug conviction to keep me from getting custody of our daughter. I wasn’t sure if he meant it, but I couldn’t take the risk. We settled. I got what was important to me — my daughter. Ted got what was important to him: he pays no alimony and hardly enough child support to cover the monthly food bill.”
“Sounds pretty tough.”
“Actually, I’ve never been happier in my life.” She smiled, though it was another half-truth. Taylor was a total joy, but going to law school solely for the money made her feel like a hypocrite.
She raised her coffee mug. “A toast to your new life as a redneck.”
“A redneck?”
“It’s an acronym. Sounds like redneck, but it’s R-D-N-K. Recently Divorced, No Kids.”
Ryan smiled. “Never heard that one before.”
“I made it up. Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
She caught him watching her over the rim of his cup. The sudden silence could have been uncomfortable, but his eyes put her at ease. She blinked, reminding herself to stay on the subject. “Getting back to this money thing.”
“Of course. The money.”
“I was pretty nervous about it at first. Now that I’ve met you, it’s almost embarrassing to say what I was thinking. I was just afraid to keep it until I had some assurance that your dad was on the level.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I was having all kinds of crazy thoughts. Maybe your dad was a notorious bank robber or something.”
Ryan smiled. “We’re talking about Piedmont Springs. The last time we had a bank robbery, I think Bonnie and Clyde were the prime suspects.”
She laughed lightly. “You’re a hard one to figure out, you know that?”
“
How’s that?”
“A doctor who doesn’t worship money and hasn’t lost his sense of humor.”
“I guess I get that from my dad.”
“Were the two of you a lot alike?”
Ryan thought for a second. A week ago he would have given an unqualified yes. Now he hedged. “I think so. It’s funny. I was looking through some family albums after the funeral. Some old pictures of my dad really struck me. He looked almost exactly the way I look now. Put him in some modern clothes, change the hair a little, he probably could have passed for me.”
“That’s eerie, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. We’re all like our parents in some ways. But when you see such a strong physical resemblance, it really makes you wonder how much of what you are is predetermined.”
Amy got quiet. She’d often wondered that as well, the spitting image of her mother. “I know what you mean.”
“Now that he’s gone, I’m almost mad at myself for not getting to know him better. I’m not saying we weren’t close. But I never asked him the kind of questions that might help me better understand myself.”
“Sometimes we just don’t have the opportunity,” she said, thinking more of her own situation.
Ryan sipped his coffee. “Wow, this is getting kind of deep, isn’t it? You probably think I need a shrink or something.”
“Not at all.”
They talked casually for another fifteen minutes. Conversation came easily, considering the awkward circumstances. It was feeling more like a date than a meeting about money.
“Refills?” asked the waitress, sneaking up on them.
They exchanged a look. The meeting could easily have been over, but neither seemed to want to end it.
“I don’t have to be anywhere,” said Ryan.
Amy checked her watch, then made a face. “Yikes. Unfortunately, I do. I have to pick up my daughter.”
He looked disappointed. “Too bad.”
“I guess I didn’t think this would take very long.”
The waitress laid the bill on the table. Ryan grabbed it. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry I have to run off like this.”
“No problem.” He took a business card from his wallet, then jotted a number on the back. “Let me give you my home number, just in case any other questions come to mind. About the money, I mean.”
She took the card, rising. “Thanks.”
There was humor in his eyes. “I would tell you to look me up if ever you’re in Piedmont Springs, but I’m sure you know dozens of people there already, and I’d be way down on your list of people to call.”
“Of course. Paris. London. Piedmont Springs. I have that problem wherever I go.”
“I figured. Maybe I can send you another thousand dollars and see you again sometime.”
She smiled, but her gut wrenched. Little did he know he had already prepaid for another 199 visits. She was suddenly flustered, not sure what to say. “You never know.”
He shrugged, as if the response were a brush-off. “Well, it was very nice meeting you.”
She stood and waited for a second, wishing it had ended on a different note. But it was hard to come back from a remark like You never know. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it, wasn’t sure how to fix it. “Nice meeting you, too, Ryan.”
They exchanged one last smile, sadder than the others. She had an empty feeling of missed opportunity as she turned away and headed for the door.
13
From the Mile High City to the plains of southeastern Colorado, the ride was all downhill. Appropriate enough for a guy whose marriage was in a death spiral. Ryan drove the entire way to Piedmont Springs in silence, no stops and no radio, arriving at dusk. He was so consumed by his thoughts that he automatically turned on River Street, toward the house he and Liz had shared in their final years of marriage. Two blocks away, he realized his mistake. He didn’t live there anymore. This afternoon had made it clear he never would again. He pulled a U-turn, heading back to his parents’ house. Mom’s house, actually. Dad was dead. Mom got the house.
Ryan got the headache.
Quite literally, his head was pounding. Throughout the trip home, his mind had replayed today’s clash with Liz. It was a strange coincidence, the way her lawyer had cooked up the allegation that Ryan was hoarding huge sums of cash, keeping it from Liz. If they only knew.
His pulse quickened as he pulled into the driveway. Could they know?
They couldn’t. Liz was so angry today, she surely would have said something. Her only demand was that Ryan start earning money in a high-paying practice. In no way did she lay claim to a secret stash in the attic.
He killed the engine and stepped down from his Jeep Cherokee. His thoughts turned to Amy as he headed up the sidewalk. He still couldn’t figure what had gone wrong at the end. He thought he’d sensed a connection, seen something in her smile. For a while, she had him feeling not so bad about getting divorced. She seemed like a woman he’d like to get to know. But at the mere mention of possibly seeing each other again, it had all fallen apart. He couldn’t help but wonder what was really going on. As recently as Tuesday night, Liz was still talking about his father’s deathbed promise that “Money will come soon.” Maybe this Amy was a friend of Liz, someone that sneaky lawyer had sent just to pump financial information from him. Or maybe she really did receive some money, but she was being nice just to wiggle even more cash out of the Duffy family.
Ryan fumbled for his key to the front door, thinking. Extortion money in the attic. Cash gifts to strangers. Promises to Liz. What the hell were you trying to do to me, Dad?
He glanced to the west. The afterglow of the setting sun was fading behind the mountains in the distance. He assumed there were mountains out there somewhere. He couldn’t actually see them. From the dusty plains of southeastern Colorado, even fourteen-thousand-foot peaks were well beyond view. The utterly flat horizon reminded him of a late afternoon he and his dad had shared on the porch, just the two of them. It was a long time ago, when Ryan was small and his father chain-smoked the cigarettes that would eventually kill him. The sky had been unusually clear that day. On a hunch, his dad had brought out the binoculars, thinking rather naively that perhaps Ryan could get his first glimpse of the mountains to the west. Even on the clearest of days, however, they were still too far away. Ryan was disappointed, but he listened with excitement as his father described in detail the grandeur they were missing.
“Why don’t we live there?” he had asked eagerly.
“Because we live here, son.”
“Why don’t we move?”
His father chuckled, puffing on his cigarette. “People don’t just move.”
“Why not?”
“They just don’t.”
“You mean we’re stuck here?”
He looked toward the horizon. There was sadness in his voice. “Your roots are here, Ryan. Five generations on your mother’s side. Can’t just pull up roots.”
Thirty years later, Ryan recalled the tone more than the words. Complete resignation, as if the thought of sunsets and mountains glistening to the west were a constant reminder that everything beautiful was outside the reach of tiny Piedmont Springs.
Thinking about it now, he could see why Dad and Liz had gotten on so well. He used to think it was because father and son were so alike. Maybe it was because they were different.
Ryan unlocked the front door and stepped inside. The sun was completely gone, leaving the house in darkness. He flipped on the light, then called out, “Mom, you home?”
No reply. He crossed the living room into the kitchen. A note was stuck to the refrigerator. It was the way the Duffys had always communicated. Civilization might have evolved from the beating tom-tom to e-mail, but nothing was more effective than a note on the freezer door. Ryan read it as he grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. “Went to dinner and a movie with Sarah,” it read. “Be back around ten.”
He checked the clock on
the oven. Eight-thirty. It was good that Mom was getting out. Even better that she wasn’t home to ask him how things had gone with Liz. He twisted off the cap and sucked down a cold Coors on his way to the family room. He switched on the lamp, then froze.
The furniture had been moved. Not rearranged in an orderly fashion. Moved. The couch was angled strangely. The wall unit had been pulled a few inches away from the wall, several drawers hanging open. The rug was curled up at one end. Clearly someone had been here. Someone who had been searching for something.
Someone, he feared, who knew about the money.
14
Stupid. That was how Amy felt. After all the mental preparation for her meeting with Ryan Duffy, she hadn’t really accomplished what she’d set out to do. Her only objective had been to find out why Frank Duffy had sent her the money. She came away with no clear picture. Stupid, was all it was.
Not that it was so great to be smart all the time. She’d learned the downside of brains long ago, as a child. If you were stupid, no one blamed you. But people were suspicious of intelligence, as if you had done something wrong just by virtue of being smart. That reaction from others had bred shyness in Amy, a trait that had surely contributed to her blunder with Ryan. She didn’t especially like that about herself, which was precisely the reason she could recall the very day she had begun her transformation from an outspoken little girl to a kid who was beyond humble, almost embarrassed by her own extraordinary abilities. A couple of years before her mother’s death, she had tagged along to the doctor’s office for her mom’s annual checkup. Her mom sat on the table, so pretty, looking much like the woman Amy would become. Amy watched intently as the nurse rolled up her mother’s sleeve and checked her blood pressure.
“Very good,” said the nurse, reading from the gauge. “One-twenty over eighty.”
“One and a half,” Amy volunteered.
“One and a half what?” her mother asked.
“One-twenty over eighty. That equals one and a half.”
The nurse looked up from her chart, almost dropped her pen. “How old is that child?”
“Six,” said her mother. “Well, almost six.”
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