With the Father

by Jenni Moen

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m done.”

  “You’re one hundred percent sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She shifted on her feet a few times. “Well, I’m going.” She looked at me expectantly and chewed her bottom lip. It was a nervous tic of hers, one that gave her away every time. She probably thought that despite everything I just said, I would still be crazy jealous of her spending time with Paul.

  It wasn’t logical. I shouldn’t care. I’d just said that I was done with him. Still, a little part of me did care. A lot.

  “It will probably be late when we get back,” she continued. “He said we’re going to Fredericksburg first and then he has reservations at three wineries so I guess I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

  “I don’t need to be checked on.” My voice was laced with the irritation I felt.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, walking toward the kitchen. I followed her and watched her grab her keys from the countertop. I looked at her with a question on my lips.

  She didn’t wait for it, reading my mind instead. “We’re taking my car,” she said with a shrug. “More fun.” Right. Everything was always more fun with Kate around. I nodded and began the mundane task of unloading the dishwasher.

  Kate spoke from the doorway. “Speaking of steps forward. Arden called about dinner. I agreed that we could do it next Thursday.”

  “I thought we decided on a movie.” There was no way that Arden could make it through a whole dinner without gushing on and on about her beautiful, perfect kids. I didn’t think I could endure it.

  Kate shrugged. “She said she wants to catch up.” The pan in my hand crashed against the tile floor when it slipped from my hands. “Careful. You’ll lose a toe.”

  “Amputation by skillet would be about right,” I muttered.

  “Chin up. I’ll see you later.”

  I finished putting the clean dishes away and then looked for any other task that I could do to put off the inevitable for just a bit longer. When the kitchen sparkled and there was nothing left to do, I picked up the file and headed down the hall toward my dad’s office. I knocked on the cracked door and waited for him to invite me in.

  “Hi there, Graceful,” he said, greeting me by the nickname that had plagued me throughout my childhood.

  “Hey, Dad. Do you have a minute?” My grey-haired father looked up from his desk. His hair stuck out in a thousand directions from his head as if he’d been running his hands through it and possibly trying to pull it out. “I have all the minutes in the world for you,” he said, gesturing for me to sit down in the chair in front of the window. I sat down with a foot tucked under me and the file on my lap and gazed out the window at the magnolia. I had the urge to go outside, climb to the top, throw the papers in my lap up into the air, and watch them scatter in the wind.

  “What are you working on, Dad?”

  “Just paying some bills,” he said, pushing it away from him to prove that I had all of his attention.

  “That’s actually why I’m here. You’ve been getting my mail and paying my bills, right, Dad?” It was embarrassing to have to ask the question. This was the first time I’d even thought to ask. I’d just assumed that he would take care of everything while I wallowed in self-pity and remorse and wished for a different outcome for my life.

  “I have. Are you ready to take it over? There’s not much. Just your cell phone bill and some bank statements and a few other odds and ends. I don’t mind doing it.”

  “Dad,” I said, still gazing out the window and mentally mapping my path up the long draping branches of the tree. “What if after Mom died, you started finding things out about her, lies that she told, things that she kept from you. What would you do?”

  “She did lie to me. I had no idea until a few months ago that aspirin has a shelf life. Did you know that they expire?” He was trying to cheer me up. He was always trying to cheer me up.

  I managed a weak smile. “Do you need me to check all the expiration dates in your medicine cabinet?”

  “No. I’m all over it now.” His smile smoothed out into a thin, tense line. “So tell me. Is this about Jonathan?”

  “I keep coming across things. Big huge things and I don’t know what to do. I want to ask him about it. I want to confront him but …”

  His mouth turned down solemnly. “Kate told me about the affair.”

  I cringed. That made four people that knew about it. Five if you counted the woman who’d wrecked my marriage. Six if Kate had talked to Maddox, which I suspected she had. Before long the entire town would know about it. Of course, maybe then I would find out who Hope was and where she’d come from.

  But then what? Would I confront her? Would I approach her in a public place or seek her out at her home? If she had a family of her own, would I knowingly tear it apart like she had mine? Or would I be the bigger person and let it go?

  All of my life, I’d avoided confrontation. I’d been a doormat, letting anyone and everyone take advantage of me. But there was no point in confronting Hope now. The family that she’d had so little regard for was gone. The man she’d tried to steal was no longer up for grabs.

  “Yes, the affair is one of the things I’ve learned about him,” I said.

  “So there are others?”

  I nodded. “I spoke with the insurance agent from All Nation today.”

  “Oh, good. He’s been calling every day. I wish I could take care of that for you, but he’s been very insistent that he talk to you and only you.”

  “I talked to him.”

  My dad looked at me expectantly so I took a deep breath and filled him in. When I was finished, his earlier concern had morphed into something new, something venturing on rage. “So the only insurance money you will get is the value of the house and twenty thousand for …” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t say it either. It was impossible to think about accepting money in exchange for the lives of my children.

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want it.”

  “I don’t think you have a choice,” he said. “Besides, you can do better things with the money than the insurance company can. Give it to an organization that means something to you.”

  It was actually a pretty good idea. If I had to accept the money, I could do something wonderful with it in the name of Isabelle and Trey. I could give some to the animal shelter in Isabelle’s name.

  “But Grace?” he continued. “Since you’re ready, there’s a few things you need to know about how Jonathan left your finances.” I stiffened my back and prepared to go to battle once again with my dead husband’s memory. “You don’t have any money, dear. Your savings account, checking account, and Jonathan’s retirement account are all practically empty. I didn’t want to bother you with it because it’s not like you’ve been in need of money, but in light of all of this other stuff, I think you need to know. There’s practically nothing in those accounts.”

  “What?” I asked incredulously. “That’s impossible.”

  “I don’t have access to your accounts so I can’t go back and trace where your money went. All I have are the bank statements that have come in during the past five months. I’d like to go further back, but you’ll need to go down to the bank and add me to the account.”

  Everything was wrong and I was no longer sure of when it had happened. I thought I knew the exact time and place that everything imploded on me, but clearly my life had been collapsing long before the fire.

  I had been living in an artificial bubble of happiness. If I’d paid more attention to what Jonathan was doing - I might have been miserable – but at least I wouldn’t be learning now that my entire life had been a lie.

  “Thanks Dad. But I’m going to take care of it myself. It’s time to pull my head out of the sand.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself. I wish I could help more, but aside from your trust, Jonathan and I didn’t discuss money at all. According to your account statements, there’s only a couple of thousand dollars in each of your
savings and checking accounts.” He turned in his chair and picked up a small box that was pushed up against the wall. He sat it on the desk and then pushed it toward me.

  A couple of thousand? What the hell had happened to all of our money? Jonathan always kept no less than ten thousand in our checking account. ‘Because you never know when you’ll get in a bind and need it,’ he said. And our savings account always looked like a savings account should, like we were saving for something … big.

  This was madness. Sheer madness.

  I picked up the box and turned to leave the room.

  “Grace?”

  “Yeah Dad.”

  “You’re not destitute. You know that, right? He didn’t touch your money,” he said, referring to the trust that had been in place since my mother’s parents had died fifteen years ago.

  “You mean, he couldn’t touch my money.”

  “Right. He was only the successor trustee.”

  INTOXICATION

  KATE

  I glanced at Paul in the rear-view mirror. He’d chosen to take the backseat so his friend could sit in the front. Actually, his wrinkly, decrepit friend probably couldn’t get into my tiny backseat if he wanted to, and if he did, we might never get him out.

  Paul’s ‘friend’ looked like a deflated Santa Claus, complete with white beard and rosy red cheeks. The obvious weight discrepancy was the only reason I wasn’t currently making out my Christmas list. That and the fact that the man obviously lacked a Mrs. Claus since he was also a priest. Unlike Paul, who I was becoming accustomed to seeing in jeans and a t-shirt, Father Russell Schmidt was decked out in the whole uniform today: black shirt, black pants, conspicuous white collar, and tight-lipped look of consternation.

  Paul looked up and caught me watching him in the mirror. “So when are you going to consider us good enough friends to tell me the story behind that scar?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t told you about the scar?” Father Russell asked. “From the way he talks about you, I thought you probably knew all of his stories.”

  “Is that right?” My heart thumped erratically in my chest. The thought of Paul talking about me to Father Russell made me giddy. I waggled my eyebrows at the Paul in the mirror. He held my gaze, the slightest smirk playing on his lips, neither admitting nor denying the allegation. “Fess up then. I want to hear about the scar.”

  Without so much as a blink, Paul deadpanned. “Knife fight.”

  I chuckled and glanced to Father Schmidt whose solemn expression seconded Paul’s answer and wiped the smile off of my face. “Paul had a very exciting childhood,” he said.

  “I guess so.” I said, continuing to alternate looking at him and the road ahead.

  He looked out the window for a few seconds. When he spoke again, he was looking at Father Russell rather than me. “I was seventeen and living on the streets of Roxbury. I was a very low man on a very tall totem pole, and a deal went bad. Somebody had to take responsibility for it, and that person was me. But shortly after that, I met Russell and he saved my life.”

  He didn’t offer any more. However, this tiny little glimpse into his life only spurred my curiosity. I didn’t know how it could even be possible, but I was even more fascinated with him than before.

  I was becoming borderline obsessed with the man – something that hadn’t happened to me since my freshman year of college when I’d briefly dated a guy three years my senior who’d taught me some hard lessons about the difference between love and lust and a relationship and a booty call. The brief affair had left me with a bruised heart and a battered ego, and I had a feeling that this one wasn’t going to end any better for me. After all, relationships never work out when the infatuation flows in only one direction, and the man I was now fascinated with had all but admitted to being in love with my sister.

  Oh, and there was that tiny little fact that he was a priest. That, too, didn’t weigh in my favor. The fact that he wasn’t dressed the part today didn’t make it any less real. And the reality was that he was off limits.

  “Life’s funny like that,” I said. “Sometimes it seems that after you’ve been dealt its hardest blow, something or someone will come along that changes your perspective on everything. And you have no choice but to take a step backwards and realize everything you’ve been doing up until now is inconsequential and that this is the moment - the moment when you start to do it right.”

  Father Russell clapped his hands together and grinned his Kris Kringle grin. “Exactly. There’s purpose in all things. We must move forward even if it means changing our view of how things are supposed to be.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he’d turned in his seat and was talking to Paul rather than me.

  _________________________

  We were at our third winery. We’d taken the tour offered at each one and had been amply warned to sip rather than gulp. I’d joked that I had super human strength and had never once experienced a hangover. When Father Russell commended me on my avoidance of gluttony, I’d assured him that I was immune only to hangovers, not gluttony.

  We were now planted at a small bistro table under a pagoda covered in grape vines. Paul had stepped away to use the bathroom and return a call, and Father Russell took the opportunity to jump on me. “I wish you’d brought her. He’s quite smitten with her, you know.”

  “I’m pretty sure that she couldn’t have hung with us today. Plus, she and my dad had some things to take care of this afternoon.”

  “It’s great that she has such a supportive family.”

  “My dad is a very special man.”

  “Paul says that you look a lot like Grace. He finds it a little unnerving, actually.” I’d been hearing that my entire life. Because we were so close in age – only eleven months apart – we’d been asked constantly if we were twins.

  “The funny thing is we’re not even sisters.” After too many ‘tastes’ of wine, my lips were looser than normal. The fact that Karen and Frank weren’t my real parents was something I rarely talked about. Not because it was something that I had trouble accepting, but because they were all I’d known. Talking about the fact that I was adopted felt like stabbing the only parents I could remember in the back.

  “Is that right?” Paul asked, sliding back into his chair.

  “Yes. My mom and dad are actually my aunt and uncle. We’re a modern American family,” I said, shrugging to show my acceptance of it.

  “Families have to be amorphous these days,” Father Russell chimed in. “Paul knows something about that.”

  Paul clasped Father Schmidt on the shoulder and looked at him with utter appreciation. “Absolutely, old man. Ab-so-lutely.” He turned to me. “Can I ask?”

  “About my real parents?” I asked. “Sure. They were killed in a car accident when I was five.”

  Paul looked sorry that he’d asked.

  “I was young when it happened. I don’t even really remember them. The few memories that I have … I’m not even sure they’re real. Sometimes I wonder if my memories are nothing more than my imagination bringing to life something someone told me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Kate.” He shook his head sadly. “I would have never guessed. You really do look like her,” he said, echoing Father Russell from a few minutes before and confirming what I feared most. When he looked at me, all he saw was my sister.

  During my childhood, I’d hated looking like Grace. I hadn’t wanted to be a carbon copy of my do-gooding, almost sister. However, as I’d alluded to earlier, recent events had changed my perspective on just about everything. I’d come to realize that sharing any characteristic with Grace was a good thing. Beautiful inside and out, she put everyone else before herself. If I were blessed with just a piece of her beauty even if it was only the superficial, less important part, I wouldn’t complain. “Our mothers were identical twins and apparently our fathers had very diluted DNA.”

  Father Russell, who’d also had too many tastes of wine, let out a belly laugh that I was sure caused t
he far too small tire around his waist to jiggle like a bowl full of jelly.

  “And what about you, Paul. Tell me about your – what did you call it, Father Russell – amorphous family.”

  “My entire family is sitting at this table,” he answered. For a mere second, I wondered if he was including me in that statement. However, that thought was a crazy one. I’d known Paul for all of two weeks. We’d had dinner once, run together once, and spent one day hunting for treasures and taste-testing wine. Though I felt like I’d known him for much longer than that, the truth was that we barely knew each other. Maybe it would be more appropriate to hope that some day he’d consider me to be a part of his family.

  Paul was that kind of guy. The kind that you want to infiltrate your life and turn it upside down because you know going in that you are going to be a better person for it.

  “Remember, Russell rescued me from a life of crime,” Paul continued, pointing again to the scar on his cheek. “He took a dangerous, angry teenager into his home with no expectations. His only requirement was that I be honest with him. He saved me from myself.”

  “You would’ve found your way, kid.” There was a gleam in his eye. I could tell that Father Russell was proud of the man that Paul had become though he had referred to him as a ‘kid’ all day. It was a term of endearment that I now suspected was rooted in the fact that Paul was, by choice, Father Russell’s son.

  “How old were you?” I’d taken my turn at show and tell earlier, and I figured that if he could dish out the questions, he could also answer them.

  “I was seventeen. Russell found me hiding in one of his confession booths. I was eating a grinder and hiding out in an effort to protect all the digits on my hands. I’d skimmed some money off the wrong pot, and some of my former business associates were looking for me. When Russell discovered me, I ran, of course, but he ran after me. He was younger then,” he said with a wink, “and could keep up. I think it shocked the both of us.”

  “And so you just went home with him.” I nodded like that was the end of the story because I could totally see where someone would want to go home with Father Russell.