They sat at the kitchen island to eat, the radio playing.
“Is the shelter move still on for next week?”
He nodded as he finished chewing, then swallowed. “Yeah. That’s what my call was about. I’m going to try to get some press to come down and talk to the director, my mom, maybe some of the other volunteers and even people who stay at the shelter.”
“It would be pretty hard to claim that Chris Younge, who has no affiliation with the shelter, knows more than everybody who does.”
“You would think.” Will sighed. But then all of Younge’s claims had little proof and seemed easily believed.
“Hey!” Elizabeth said as a new song started on the radio. “We danced to this at the wedding, didn’t we?”
“I think so. No idea what it is, though.”
Elizabeth laughed. “It’s ‘Amazed,’ by Lonestar. Was really big the year before we met, I think. Jane was obsessed with this song. She had the CD, but this was the only song she’d listen to. It drove me crazy after a month or two.”
“I can’t believe you lasted a month! Ana does that too, listens to a song on repeat until I pretty much hate it, even if I liked it before.”
“It’s a good song, now that Jane’s old CD has long since broken.”
“Broken?” Will raised his eyebrows. “How do you know it’s broken, as opposed to lost in some old CD wallet?”
Elizabeth blushed. “I may, uh, have had something to do with it. Accidentally, of course.”
“Lizzy!” he exclaimed. “I’d say I can’t believe you would do such a thing, except that I absolutely can. But poor Jane!”
Elizabeth laughed. “She got over it and went on to play a Donna Lewis CD until that one got jelly on it. And before you ask, no, that wasn’t me—that was all Lydia.”
Will shook his head. “I’m starting to get a better picture of what it must have been like to grow up with four sisters instead of just one. I have all-new sympathy for what Jane went through.”
They smiled at each other, and then on impulse, Will said, “Want to dance again?”
“Here? Now?” Elizabeth looked around the kitchen.
“Why not?”
She smiled and stepped obligingly into his arms. Just as she rested her head on his shoulder, the song ended. They laughed and pulled apart slightly, but a new song started almost immediately, and they sobered. Will couldn’t pull his eyes away from hers as they swayed slightly, tracing a slow circle in his kitchen. Her warm brown eyes met his, and it was as if his heart gave a little peaceful sigh.
“Lizzy,” he said softly, and stepped closer. She stopped dancing and tilted her face up to meet his. He kissed her tenderly, sweetly, asking without words whether she was ready to try their relationship again.
She smiled against his lips, then kissed him back fervently, her hands sliding around his neck and curling in his hair to pull him close. Will closed his eyes and let himself sink into the kiss, pulling her close and reveling in her intoxicating nearness. Oh, how he loved her.
“Hey, Will!” a voice said loudly from behind them, making Elizabeth jump. Will spun to see Richard leaning against the fridge, a huge grin on his face. Charlotte stood in the doorway behind him, looking far more uncomfortable at the invasion than Richard was.
“Richard! Where did you come from?” Clearly he couldn't be trusted with a key.
Richard laughed. “We didn’t mean to interrupt. Not that I’m sorry I did, because you,” he said, pointing at Elizabeth, “totally deserve it for dating my cousin over me. What’s up with that?” He belied his affront by holding out a fist for her to punch.
Charlotte folded her arms and glared at Richard. Will wondered if there was something going on between the two of them, but he’d never ask. After all, he didn’t really want Richard asking exactly what was going on between Will and Elizabeth.
“Sorry, he’s just that much better-looking,” Elizabeth quipped, punching him back. She gave Richard a wink. “And I’m into the strong, silent type.”
Charlotte snorted at this and stepped farther into the kitchen to give Elizabeth a hug.
“Silent, I’ll give you.” Richard pulled a magnet from the fridge and flipped it around in his hands. “But if you want strong, you should have looked this way.” He flexed a muscle. “I could take him one-on-one any day.”
“Richard?” Will said. He reached out and grabbed the magnet from his cousin.
“Yeah?”
“Get out.”
Elizabeth laughed as Richard put his hands in the air and backed towards the door.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Am I included in this eviction?”
“What’s that saying about lying down with dogs again?” Elizabeth nodded towards Richard.
“Fine!” Richard called from the doorway. “We’ll go. But you’ll never find out whether I learned anything new about Chris Younge.” He stepped into the hallway, followed by Charlotte.
Will sighed. “All right, all right. Did you?”
Richard poked his head back through the door. “Nope, not yet. Good night!”
Will threw a potholder at the door as Elizabeth laughed again. Will loved her laugh. Maybe there was at least one benefit to keeping Richard around.
Collecting Evidence
November 2016
Did you get in touch with The Journal? Elizabeth’s text message came through just as Will was getting ready for bed later that week.
Took a few tries, but yes. She’s agreed to come on opening day. They had decided to keep the new shelter on schedule after several meetings of the Board of Trustees. The board had initially discussed delaying the shelter opening due to the bad publicity, but in the end, Mom and several others had advocated for moving as planned. After all, the community it served was ultimately more important than the opinion of people who probably hadn’t even known it existed before Chris Younge’s false claims.
Can I come? Or would I be in the way?
Come. Please. He was excited to show her everything they’d done. But I might be a bit busy. He’d need to help with the reporter and line up people to give interviews, along with all of the usual shelter stuff.
Just let me know where I can help. Good night, Will!
Good night, Lizzy. He started to type, I love you, but then thought better of it. It was too soon, wasn’t it? He deleted it and sighed. “Good night, Lizzy,” he whispered into the darkness of his room. “I love you.”
Will got a call from the school on Wednesday, telling him his records had arrived, so he and Elizabeth stopped by the school to pick them up at the front desk.
“That’s odd,” Will said, paging through them. “I should have had dozens of addresses listed. But there’s only one. My mom used the same home address for my entire time at Breckinridge.”
Elizabeth frowned. “That explains why you were always at Breckinridge. I thought the area near the park was districted for Parkdale.”
Will nodded. “I might have had a shorter walk, but there are a lot of kids in downtown Talbot and enough schools in walking distance that I never realized it.”
“So what’s this address?” Elizabeth asked, frowning at the page. She plugged the address into Google Street View on her phone and showed it to Will.
The apartment complex was familiar. Very familiar. Will swallowed. “That was my grandmother’s place. I haven’t seen it in over twenty years, but . . . I recognize it. Isn’t that crazy?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “From what you’ve told me of your childhood, it sounds like the most stable place you lived. So maybe you thought back to it over the years.” Suddenly, she put down her phone with a gasp.
“Will, I just thought of something. Maybe this is crazy, but . . . grandmas take lots of photos, don’t they? Are you sure yours never took any? Where’s her stuff, anyway? Surely there were things in her apartment when she died.”
Will hadn’t thought about that. When Grandma died, he and his mother hadn’t been living with her anymore, but
he remembered going back and looking through her stuff. His mother had looked under the mattress and in the file cabinet and all the kitchen drawers, looking for money. She hadn’t found much and had grumped a lot. Had she taken anything else out of the house?
If she had, would she have brought it along during their many moves? And what about when she was in jail? He didn’t know. But she’d definitely had things, even at the homeless shelter. What would have happened to all of that? He’d have to ask his parents if they knew.
He squeezed her hand. “It’s a good idea. I’ll have to check with my parents. And I should give the private investigator Grandma’s address, in case there’s anything useful there. I don’t know if my mom was living with Grandma when she got pregnant with me.”
Thanks to Elizabeth, Will had several pieces of information to hand over to the private investigator. He should arrange a meeting for this afternoon, but all Will could think about was that he would have to cut short his time with Elizabeth.
“I know you probably need to go meet with the investigator,” Elizabeth said, “but do you have time to get lunch first?”
Will smiled. Maybe she wanted to be with him as much as he wanted to be with her. “Sure,” he said, hoping it wasn’t obvious how his heart had started to beat quicker at the idea.
They ate silently at first, their conversation centered on the food. Their relationship had changed, and they both knew it. The kiss was part of it, but not all.
When they’d known each other as kids, they’d intentionally avoided talking about their home lives. At the time he hadn’t really noticed that Elizabeth didn’t talk much about hers, or at least he hadn’t thought much of it. Mostly he hadn’t wanted to ask, because he didn’t want her to ask him.
But it was odd, now that he thought about it, that they had spent so much time together after Elizabeth’s injury, and yet talked about so little. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t talk, but they had talked about friends, about the activities, about their preferences for food and colors and hobbies, even a bit about what they wanted from the future. But they’d talked very little about the past. Their conversations had been lacking a certain intimacy that came, he thought, from knowing where a person was coming from and where they were going.
Now, though, things were different. They had both admitted to their past struggles, and the walls between them had broken down. Without quite knowing how the conversation had gone from opinions about feta cheese, he found himself opening up to Elizabeth.
“It’s been completely overwhelming,” he said. “I was doing okay, I think, when I was just COO. It was a big step, and I wasn’t really prepared for it in some ways, but I guess in others, I’d been preparing for it for years. You’ve heard of people saying that they were being ‘groomed to take over’ or things like that? I think my dad had been grooming me for years at that point.”
“But then the accident.” She reached across the table and put her hand over his. He turned his over and clasped her hand. Her eyes met his, and he could see the sympathy in them.
Will sighed. “Yeah, the accident. I’d had a year as COO and had become reasonably comfortable in the position, but I was not ready to take over as CEO. Especially with my dad still in the hospital and doing so poorly. I look back at that now and wonder what the board was thinking.”
Elizabeth frowned. “It is odd, if you think about it, that they didn’t recommend bringing on somebody more experienced. The only thing you really had going for you was the fact that it was your father’s company.”
“Morbidly, some of it may have also been that, if my father hadn’t made it—and for a while it was uncertain whether he would—I would inherit the company. After all, as owner, I would have the right to choose a CEO myself. They’re a board of advisors, not directors, so ultimately, as owner, my father has the final say and, I suppose, I have it in his absence. But in the midst of the situation, I just stepped into his position without a second thought.”
She gave his arm a squeeze. “I can’t imagine being under that much pressure.”
He laughed without humor. “I’d been CEO for a year and was finally starting to feel like I could handle it when Chris Younge decided to destroy my life.”
“He has a lot to answer for,” Elizabeth said darkly. “I just hope we can make him.”
They had both finished eating, but Will didn’t want things to end, and neither, it seemed, did Elizabeth. When she suggested dessert, Will jumped at the idea.
“I feel like I’ve been floundering,” Elizabeth said as they waited for their brownies. “I have a degree, but after the bookstore closed . . .” She sighed. “My dad always treated me like his favorite, you know?”
“I remember you talking about your dad sharing books with you.” Will had always thought her dad had been ‘the good parent’ back then. Little had he really understood.
“When they got divorced, I begged him to take me, but he left me with Mother, who then resented me for choosing him.” She looked up at the ceiling, blinking quickly, and now it was his turn to reach across the table and take her hand. She squeezed it back, but kept looking up and blinking until she’d regained control. She finally continued, “He said . . . he said ‘girls belong with their mothers.’ I think he just didn’t want the trouble.”
“Oh, Lizzy,” Will whispered. He didn’t know what to say about her father’s abandonment. He had some thoughts about what he’d like to say to Mr. Bennet, though.
“I didn’t talk to him much for years, but when he told me he inherited the bookstore, I thought ‘I love books! I could run it!’ I thought maybe it would be a way to bring us back together, the way we used to be.”
“And then it went under.” Will understood how disappointing it could be to hope a parent would come through and constantly be disappointed. He took his elbows off the table as dessert arrived and they both dug in.
“Yeah.” She shrugged casually and took a small bite, but he could see she was trying to contain her emotions. “Even before that, I had so many ideas that we could try to make it a success. He laughed!” She gestured with her fork, sending a crumb of brownie flying. “He thought it was ‘so sweet, but ultimately futile’ that I wanted to try to keep it afloat.”
She shook her head at the memory. “He knocked down every idea I had and metaphorically patted me on the head and told me I was a good girl.” She glared at Will as if he’d done the same, her eyes bright with tears. “That’s when I started making . . .” She trailed off, as if she’d had second thoughts.
“Making what?”
“Never mind.” She was flushed. “Something I’ll show you someday, but I’m not ready yet.”
He was disappointed, but understood. Their newfound relationship was too important for him to push her if she wasn’t ready yet.
Will said, “I understand you not wanting to sit next to him at the wedding. In fact, I rather want to go back myself and pound him for you.”
Her eyes softened, and she smiled at him. “You’re a good man, Will. I lo―I like you. A lot.” She blushed fiercely and dug out a huge bite of brownie.
He tried to hide his smile of delight. Was it the right time?
“Elizabeth, I―”
His phone rang, startling him.
“You’d better get it,” Elizabeth said when he looked uncertainly at her. “Manners or not, it could be important!”
He looked at his phone. It was a forwarded phone call from his home phone, the sender shown as “Auto Repair.”
“Hello?” But there was nobody there. He shrugged.
“Wrong number, I guess.” But the moment had been lost.
The private investigator agreed to look into his grandmother’s place and talk to neighbors, but he also had some bad news for Will.
“Have you been keeping up with Chris Younge’s YouTube videos and interviews?” Mr. Manchester asked bluntly.
“No, I’ve pretty much been avoiding them,” Will said. “Why?”
�
�He’s started to mention some personal details about your birth mother. Little things that a boyfriend or lover might know. And . . . some of them gel with things that you told me about when we talked. Like her preference for Gatorade, grilled cheese sandwiches, and opera music.”
Will blanched. “I don’t believe it. How could be possibly know that unless he really . . . is there any way that he got that information from you?”
The investigator glared at him. “Not a chance. I guard privileged information like the secret recipe for Coke. I get plenty of it, both what people give me and what I find out, and I have a safe like Fort Knox. Trust me, he didn’t get it from me. Anybody you’ve told?”
Will shook his head. “No. Nobody. I might have mentioned the Gatorade to my girlfriend once, but that’s it.”
Manchester leaned back in his chair. “That’s not all,” he said. “He hasn’t talked about everything on your list, but he has other details you haven’t given me. Did she need glasses but refuse to wear them?”
Will was about to say no when he realized that when he pictured his mother, he could easily picture her squinting. She had done that a lot, hadn’t she? Had she needed glasses and he never knew it? She’d often asked him to read street signs for her, but he’d thought she just wanted him to practice reading.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Maybe.”
“And she wore purple nail polish?”
That Will did remember. He winced. “How is he getting this stuff?” But he knew perfectly well how Younge might know all of this. He might be telling the truth, or at least a small part of it. Will was suddenly very glad he hadn’t challenged Younge publicly to get a paternity test. Although he was a little surprised that Younge hadn’t gotten one himself. Or had he? Had he gotten hold of something with Will’s DNA? He might be holding back the results until just the right moment. He seemed to like holding things back for maximum drama.
“Have you found out anything about him?” Will asked.
A Good Name: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 26
