Tripping on a Halo

by Alessandra Torre

  “My mom didn’t raise us to travel.” That was an understatement on a nuclear scale. I thought of Mom’s meltdown when she’d found out about my spring break trip, the way she had locked herself in her bedroom for three days straight, punishing me with a litany of facts about teenage pregnancies and date rape drugs. I had come back one weekend and a dozen missed calls later to find that she’d shaved her head, a result of her yanking out strands in patches.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t ever gone anywhere else.” He pushed back the brim of his baseball cap and scratched his head. “It seems like a waste of a trip, taking you to the middle of nowhere.” He glanced over at me. “Where have you always dreamed of going?”

  “I haven’t ever really thought about going anywhere,” I answered without really considering the question, but it was true. Even with Ansley and our new inheritance, we hadn’t traveled ten miles outside the Leon County line. It was like we were still stuck in Mom’s rules or would be violating her memory by stepping outside of them. Not that I felt guilty about tagging along with Declan on a sweaty and bug-filled camping trip. But if Ansley and I booked tickets to Tahiti, clinked champagne in first class seats, and read novels poolside, the ocean glittering before us—all on Mom’s dime? I would hate every second of it. I’d feel like I was dancing in high-heeled shoes on her grave.

  I tried to think of how to explain it all to Declan. But thoughts of Mom, her impressions and impacts on us… it was like a tiramisu. Horribly intricate. Sweet with an almost bitter aftertaste. Good in small amounts only. I weighed different stories to tell him and finally, reluctantly, told the most impactful one of all:

  The story of the HappyTie Corporation, and Mom’s secret fortune.

  28

  Our mother was Debra Littlefield Jones. Graduated from University of Florida in 1984 with a degree in chemical engineering, and immediately hired to work for the HappyTie Corporation.

  Declan hadn’t heard of HappyTie, which didn’t surprise me. Most people hadn’t. For us, it’d been a household name, one typically muttered as a curse. Momma had been promoted through their ranks, and eventually landed on HappyTie’s new product development team. According to her, and typically after four or five drinks, she’d invented the Happy Dye Tie, which was a head wrap that kept women from turning grey. She’d invented it, pitched it, and been shut down.

  Years later, the HappyTie Corporation fired Mom, due in large part to her increasingly hostile behavior regarding every new product rolled out that wasn’t the Happy Dye Tie. She never forgave them for it, never got over the slight, and never came in contact with an HTC product without lighting it on fire.

  “She lit them on fire?” Declan interrupted the story. Tearing open a bag of peanuts, he offered me some.

  I took a handful. “Yep. It was why we were—and probably still are—banned from Burger Kings. That one on North Monroe, just north of I-10?” I waited on him to nod. “When I was twelve, we were eating lunch there one Sunday when mom realized that the cup lids were Forth brand, which is owned by HappyTie. She snatched a lighter from a lady sitting in one of the booths and proceeded to light the entire stand of lids on fire.” I smiled at the memory, which had been horribly traumatic at the time, but had eventually faded into a comical story. “It was a mess. They didn’t light very well, and let off this putrid odor as they melted together. It was a pretty weak attempt at arson until the stack of napkins caught the flame. Then… whoosh.” I raised my hands in a re-enactment of the blaze. “The sprinkler system went off, the police and fire department were called, and Ansley and I spent two days with a social worker before they agreed Mom was a fit parent.”

  Declan had an odd look on his face, a mixture of horror and sympathy, and I waved him off. “You have to understand, for us, chaos was normal. Ansley and I protected each other. We watched out for each other. Mom’s activities… we just learned to avoid them. To do things that calmed her. To avoid things that didn’t. Occasionally… like when I went to Panama City for spring break… or when Ansley got married, one of us would act out—but for the most part, we all worked as a cohesive unit. Ansley and I were a team, and Mom was the loose cannon that we worked together to control. Or…” I struggled to find a better word than control. “Manage. Pacify.”

  “And watch out for her?” He glanced over at me. “You mentioned … when she was hit by the car, that you were supposed to watch her.”

  “Oh.” I fiddled with the edge of my pillowcase. “She developed dementia in the last two or three years. Possibly, she’d had it even longer. It was hard to tell, because she’d always been erratic, so there wasn’t a clear baseline of behavior to judge when she started losing her bearings. But it got to where she was wandering off. She’d leave the water running. Or the stove on. Or try to cook ballpoint pens for dinner. Her insurance provided a night nurse to watch her during the evenings, and Ansley and I would trade off days.” And it had been my day. A Tuesday. My day, and I had been too busy with selfish errands.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that back up—” He grimaced.

  “It’s okay.” I watched as we passed a hitchhiker, his thumb outstretched, a threadbare backpack hitched high on his shoulders. “It’s not like I don’t think about it.”

  “You were telling me about HappyTie,” he prompted.

  “Yes.” I let out a breath and returned to the story.

  When Mom passed, we’d opened up her checkbook to see our situation, in terms of funeral arrangements. To neither of our surprise, the balance was seven hundred and fourteen dollars—which, combined with a thousand of my money, and two thousand from Ansley, barely covered her cremation and burial. Her will, found in the top drawer of her desk, was entertaining. At some point, Mom had thrown away money she didn’t have on a thirty-two-page document, which stipulated that her belongings would be controlled in a trust until her daughters were of ‘intelligent’ age to inherit her estate. We’d glanced around the rundown two-bedroom house that was half paid off and choked back a laugh, tossing the thick document onto the desk and continuing through her files.

  We stopped laughing when we found the HappyTie files. There were twelve of them. Three pertained to bank accounts with institutions we had never heard of. Four contained lawsuit titles we were ignorant about. The rest were a collection of trust documents, patents and trademarks.

  Mom, it turned out, wasn’t so crazy after all. And HappyTie, despite her curses and impromptu fires, and badmouthing to anyone who would listen… HappyTie had never done her wrong. We sat down on the floor of Mom’s office and read through every page, every bank statement, and then back through the previously tossed-aside will.

  And then, as Forrest Gump said, I didn’t have to work anymore.

  There was a long silence, the tires thumping against the roadway, a country song ending and then another one beginning. Declan cleared his throat. “You didn’t have to work anymore,” he repeated.

  “Nope. I mean, I could. There isn’t a rule against working. I just don’t need to.” Ansley and I had been stunned. A little hurt. Confused as to why we’d spent our childhood taking two-minute showers to reduce the amount of our utility bills. Confused as to why I was paying twelve percent interest on six different student loans when there was enough in these accounts to buy our own university. Had it been to teach us the value of money? Or had she just been too damn stubborn to ever spend a HappyTie dollar?

  “So, you’re just never going to work?”

  I frowned, his tone similar to Ansley’s and Roger’s, during family dinners, when they’d glare at me across the table and want to know what I’m going to do with my life. “I scrapbook,” I said. “Plus, I haven’t really had time to work anyway, what with everything I’ve been needing to do with you.”

  “And what did you do before?”

  “I had a work-study at FSU that paid my tuition, and I babysat and waited tables at Ted’s.” I bristled a little, protective of the fact that I do know how to work. Jus
t because I quit work and danced out the door of Ted’s, swinging my apron around my head like a lasso didn’t mean that I was lazy. I’d had a job ever since I was fifteen. Spent every year at FSU working two, sometimes three different ones. Granted, I was twenty-eight, and had the entry-level résumé of a high-school dropout, but our need to watch Mom during the day had prohibited me from having a normal desk job—one that made use of my degrees.

  He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “So, when you had those bodyguards in your house, that was serious? You were going to actually hire them and pay for them to protect me?”

  “Of course.”

  His face tightened, and I struggled to understand his expression.

  “I have a lot of money,” I pointed out. “It wouldn’t have been an issue.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” He slowed down behind a semi and glanced in the rearview mirror, then over at me. “But, you don’t actually have the money. Not until you’re a certain age, right?”

  “Right. I have fourteen months to go. And there are a lot of hoops I have to jump through first. Like a quarterly meeting with a shrink. But I get an allowance now. And honestly, it’s really all that I need.” It was almost hard to spend money. With a paid-for house and my scant wardrobe, my expenses were limited to Declan-surveillance activities and safety gear. I’d considered buying new furniture for the house, but Mr. Oinks just broke all of the old stuff in. With the exception of life-saving measures, I was still stuck in Mom’s tight-fisted thinking, and the thought of throwing money away on crap just because I had it … didn’t make much sense.

  Declan studied me for a long moment, before refocusing on the road, and it was strange, but it seemed like he was sad.

  29

  He shouldn’t be upset. It was dumb to be upset, especially over something like this. He cared about her. He should be happy that she was financially stable and didn’t have to worry about money. So, why was he suddenly pissed?

  It was idiotic of him, to take her to a rundown cabin in the middle of the woods, with a cooler packed with homemade sandwiches, and expect to woo her there. He’d taken her to Tony’s Subs, for shit’s sake. How had he not realized from the expensive heels she’d abandoned downtown to the paid-for home they’d found on the tax rolls, that she’d been rolling in cash? Hell, even her staple gun was three times nicer than his.

  She didn’t need him to provide for her. She didn’t need anyone. She had her pig, and her sister, and a bank account that must be packed as full as Scrooge’s vault, and he was an idiot to think that he had any sort of chance with her. Hell, she had all but shoved him away anytime he tried to touch her. What was he doing? Holding his safety over her head for a chance to spend time with her? How much of a dickhead move was that? Chances were, she didn’t even want to be here. She probably hated him. Right now, she was probably contemplating the easiest way to extract herself from this situation.

  “Are you okay?” She peered over at him. “You seem upset.”

  Great. His thoughts were plastered across his face. She’d probably steal his truck at the next gas stop and hightail it back to Tallahassee. He forced himself to smile. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.” She turned in her seat, facing him, her knee bumping against his thigh, and crossed her arms over her chest. “What is it?”

  Yeah, telling her the truth was definitely not an option. “I’m having some indigestion. I think it was something I had for breakfast.”

  She immediately launched into protective mode, unbuckling her seatbelt and springing across the cab toward him. “What kind of indigestion? Upper or lower intestine?” She crawled forward, examining him, and he took his eyes off the road for a split second to meet hers.

  Damn. Those deep blue eyes, filled with concern… what was he going to do with her? He’d never seen someone care about him so … intently. How could he keep her in his life? She broke eye contact and spun to the rear of the truck, bending over the bench seat and messing with her bags.

  “What are you doing?” He struggled to keep his eyes on the road, but her position was too tempting to ignore. Her torso hanging over the seat, her ass was eye-level with his, in cut-off jean shorts that were currently riding high on her cheeks. His hand tightened on the gear shift so he wouldn’t reach over and grab her.

  “Pull over.” She stretched forward, one bare leg extending to help, and he watched as a flip-flop fell off her foot and down to the floorboard. Putting on his turn signal, he changed lanes and headed to the shoulder of the road. She emerged from the backseat, her hair astray, cheeks flushed, and triumphantly held up a huge yellow book, the words MEDICAL EMERGENCIES: STOMACH AND DIGESTION.

  He came to a stop on the side of the highway and undid his seatbelt. “Look, it wasn’t really—” His confession died on his lips as soon as she knelt on the seat next to him and tugged at the bottom of his shirt.

  “Bite.” She held the bottom of his shirt in front of his mouth and waited. He obeyed, taking a mouthful of the shirt and holding it up, his abs clenching the moment she brushed her hand over them.

  “Where’s the pain?” She walked her fingers up his bare stomach, from the top of his jeans to his ribs, the pads of her fingers gently pressing into him. “Here?”

  “Lower,” he grunted, and he was officially going to hell for this.

  She slid her fingers lower, his abs tightening from the touch. Her bare knees were against his jeans, her hair brushing his shoulder as she bent over him. She turned away, flipping open the book and consulting an image of a dissected torso, different areas highlighted in various colors. She ran her fingers farther, hitting the top of his jeans. “Down here?”

  “Yeah.” The shirt fell from his mouth as he spoke.

  She lifted her head. “Do you feel comfortable undoing your belt?” She was close enough to kiss. Her eyes were big and luminous, and her pale pink lips just begging for contact.

  “Sure.” He reached for his belt, undoing it and unbuttoning the top button on his jeans.

  “And hold your shirt up so I can use both hands.” She sat back on her heels, flipping through the book. “Are you having gas pains also?”

  “Maybe?” He needed her hands back on him. He stretched his legs out and held his shirt up. “Should I take my shirt off?”

  “Nah…” she said thoughtfully, running her finger over a column of text as she read, completely missing the view of his clenched abs that he was struggling to maintain. “You know,” she said, looking up from the open book. “It might just be a stomachache.”

  “I’m having a little bit of a stabbing pain also,” he said, desperate.

  “Really?” She set the book to the side. “Where?”

  He nodded toward his right side, and her hands followed the indication, her warm palms settling back on his skin, gently probing the area. “A little lower.” She slid her fingers under the loose gap of his jeans, following the plane all the way to his hip.

  “Here?” She looked up at him, and if he was ever going to kiss her again, now was the best time. She was so close, so concerned, her hands down his pants, and God, she smelled good. Like flowers. He dropped his shirt and reached for her, his eyes closing as he moved forward and completely missed her lips altogether.

  He opened his eyes, surprised to see her settling back in the passenger seat, her phone out, staring down at the screen as she stretched the seatbelt across her chest and locked it into place. “I think we should get you to a hospital.”

  “No,” he protested, his dick wilting and taking his self-confidence along with it. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “Probably nothing?” She snorted. “Do you know how many cemetery plots are filled each year over probably nothing?” She tapped out a string of words on her phone. “Look, there’s a hospital in Lake City. It says it’s eight miles away.”

  “I’m not going to the hospital,” he said loudly. “I’ll stop at a gas station and get a Tums. If it doesn’t go away in fifteen minutes, then I’ll go to
a hospital. Okay?”

  “According to the book, your pain is near the beginning of your large intestine.” She glared at him. “What if it’s ruptured?”

  “I don’t have any abdominal distension or vomiting,” he countered. “Put your phone away and relax.”

  “You’re the one who mentioned stabbing pains.” She slumped against the seat. “I’m just trying to take care of you.”

  “Which I appreciate.” He thought of the last time he had thanked her, and the way she had launched herself at his mouth in response. “Thank you,” he said, hopeful for a similar response.

  “Uh-huh.” She looked down at the floorboard, stuffing her feet back into her flip-flops. “I’ll be sure to remember that when I’m giving your eulogy.”

  Apparently, that was a one-trick pony. He zipped his jeans back up and buckled his belt, letting out a groan at the missed opportunity. Reaching for the gear shift, he moved the truck into drive.

  “Seatbelt,” Autumn chimed in.

  Despite himself, he started to smile. She was… just… everything.

  30

  The camp really was in the middle of nowhere. We pulled off I-10, took a smaller county road for fourteen miles, then stopped at a big metal gate with a padlock. Declan entered the combination, left it unlocked, and we pulled through. We took that path for another ten minutes. Twice, we had to drive over fallen trees, the truck barely making the climb over the trunks. Both times I looked to Declan in panic, and both times he reassured me with the words “four-wheel drive,” like that meant diddly squat to anyone. One thing was for sure—there was no way an ambulance could get back here. Any emergencies would require a helicopter pickup, assuming there was a convenient landing pad in this forest of trees.

  When we finally pulled up to the first cabin, I was relieved to see no other vehicles, my fears of armed strangers disappearing. He parked in front and nodded at me to get out.