The Year that Everything Changed

by Georgia Bockoven

  She stared at Marc trying to decide what to do and was bemused when she realized she didn’t have the energy or desire to make the effort to keep him there. She wasn’t going to fall apart or curl up in loneliness if he left. She’d had too much practice getting through such evenings.

  Besides, she had someone to talk to if she needed to talk, someone to see if she needed company. Someone who was just as screwed up when it came to men as Ginger was—the sister she actually liked, Rachel.

  “Well?” Marc prodded.

  “Well what?”

  “Are you going to apologize?”

  “Absolutely not.” Even that surprised her. “If anyone deserves an apology, it’s me.”

  He got up and stood over her. “I should have gone to the opera with Judy.”

  She glared at him. “Be my guest. I’m sure if you hurry, you can still make it.” Later, when she was alone and waiting for the phone to ring even knowing it wouldn’t, she would regret saying what she had. But right now it felt too damn good to let what might or might not happen bother her.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Elizabeth

  “I really have to go, Stephanie.” Elizabeth cradled the phone against her shoulder as she closed the dishwasher with her hip and made one last swipe of the counter. “I’m going to be late if I don’t get out of here right now.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you, I’m meeting friends.” She still hadn’t told anyone but Sam about her father and sisters. At times she wondered if it was a mistake excluding the kids in something this big, wondered if they would feel left out or angry when the time finally came to tell them. But she wasn’t ready to answer the questions that were sure to come, mostly because she was still asking questions herself.

  “They’ll wait. This is important, Mom. You have to talk to Dad for me. You know if I ask him for the money he’s going to tell me to get a job. This is my last summer of freedom.”

  “What about graduate school?”

  “God, must you always be so literal?”

  “I have some money set aside.” She was taking the easy way out even knowing it was a mistake. And it was wrong. It was like eating a piece of pie on a diet. The five- or ten-minute sugar high was never worth the agony of knowing there was no way to exercise enough the next day to burn off the calories. “It’s not as much as you want, but it’s the best I can do. Just don’t tell your father.” She wanted to be the one to tell him.

  “I love you, Mom. You’re the best.”

  “Yeah, yeah—I’ve heard it before.” She believed it, too. She just wished it was said more often and under other circumstances.

  “I mean it. I knew you’d come through for me.”

  “How?”

  Stephanie laughed. “You always do.”

  “This has to last you. I don’t—”

  “I have to go now. Sharon’s waiting. Love you.” She hung up before Elizabeth could say anything more.

  Elizabeth struggled to sort through her feelings. Was it so bad to be taken for granted? Wasn’t that what parents were for—to be there when their children needed them? And weren’t children entitled to unqualified emotional and financial support as long as their parents were able to give it?

  The argument didn’t work. At least not completely. Elizabeth would send Stephanie the money she’d been saving to buy something for Sam that didn’t come out of the checkbook or show up on the credit card. But she was only going to send half—not nearly as much as Stephanie wanted. If it wasn’t enough, Stephanie could damn well work to earn the rest, or ask her father.

  Elizabeth didn’t need the extra time she’d allowed to find Jessie’s house, which meant she arrived a half-hour early. There were no other cars, not even one that could have been Lucy’s, someone she had expected to be there early. She could either drive around to kill time, find a coffee shop and stoke up on caffeine, or go inside to wait and look around her father’s house—if she could manage it without getting caught.

  She decided to go inside.

  Christina answered the door dressed in flip-flops, cutoff jeans, and a tank top. A tattoo of a lizard appeared perched on her shoulder as if it were a pet impregnated into her skin. “Well, Elizabeth, how nice to see you again.” She opened the door wider, making room for Elizabeth to enter. “You’re early, you know.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “What? No nice to see you, too? How have you been? What’s new with you?”

  Elizabeth stepped into the marble tiled foyer. “Sorry. I was just surprised when you opened the door. I didn’t see your car outside.”

  “It’s in the garage. At least that’s where the car I’m using is. I’m living here now.” Responding to Elizabeth’s stunned expression, she added with a coy smile, “Daddy always did love me best, you know.”

  Elizabeth blinked and then laughed at the pure insanity of the statement. “I guess I should be jealous.”

  “Oh, please do,” Christina smiled in return. “I have an almost pathological need to feel superior. I feed on jealousy.” She pointed to a room off the main hallway and breezily added, “You can wait in there if you want. I have some stuff to finish in the kitchen.”

  Elizabeth glanced into the living room and decided to follow Christina. The room was something she imagined a decorator with an unlimited budget and illusions of grandeur would put together, more model house than home, the fabrics rich silks and brocades, the wooden surfaces shiny and labor-intensive. A television would be as out of place there as a toddler. The only thing that gave it any warmth at all was a fireplace, and even that was surrounded by a carved marble mantle.

  The kitchen was at the back of the house, the nook overlooking the backyard. It was in keeping with the architecture of the house, made to look original but filled with state-of-the-art appliances and granite countertops. Christina was at the island sink chopping celery. “Pretty spectacular, huh?” she said.

  “The living room reminds me of the houses the robber barons built along the Hudson River in New York—meant to impress.” Elizabeth sat on one of the bar stools at the island. She and Christina would never be friends, but circumstances dictated she at least make an effort to be civil to her younger sister. “I see your jaw is unwired. How are you feeling?”

  “Great. I’m even working.” She scooped the celery into a bowl. “Gotta pay the rent, you know.”

  “To stay here?” Elizabeth said, putting the clues together.

  “What, did you think that I’d move in and—”

  “I’m just surprised that Lucy would charge you to live in your own father’s house.”

  “She didn’t. It was my idea. I pay my own way or I don’t go.” She picked up a bunch of red grapes, plucked them off the stem, cut each in half, and added them to the bowl. “Well, shit. After that I guess I have to admit that I’m not paying to use the car. But I am thinking about buying it. It’s a nineteen-sixty-five Mustang. Unbelievably cool.” She laughed. “And I thought I was through with old cars.”

  A memory hit Elizabeth as bright and intrusive as the shaft of sunlight coming through the window behind Christina. She saw her father pulling into the driveway of their home in Bakersfield, honking the horn on a shiny new car, calling her and Frank outside. Her mother came to the door but refused to go outside or let them out either. Frank grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and ran for the side door, urging her to hurry as he dragged her around to the front, shoving her in the backseat and then climbing in to sit next to their father.

  “Sweet,” he said, running his hand over the dash. “Is it mine?” You could tell by the way he asked he didn’t believe it. He was nine months shy of his license. There was no way a brand-new car was going to be dropped in his lap.

  “As soon as you can pay for the insurance,” Jessie said.

  Frank let out a whoop and turned to look at her. “Did you hear that, Lizzy? We got us a set of wheels.”

  It wasn’t the car, it was the we that etched
the day forever in her mind. She was the tagalong little sister, ten years old to his fifteen, and he’d thought to include her. No one had ever given her a better gift, no one ever did.

  The car started moving, backing out of the driveway. Elizabeth knew there would be hell to pay later with her mother if she went with them, but she didn’t care. No way was she going to miss this moment.

  She told herself to close her eyes, not to look at her mother as they pulled away, but a thought drew her. If she smiled and waved and let her mother see how happy they were she would understand and it would be all right. Instead, she saw her mother crying. The glitter of the moment turned to sand.

  “What color is your Mustang?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Dark green—with black upholstery and no air conditioning.” She tossed a grape in her mouth. “Just what you want to be driving around in when it’s a hundred degrees outside.”

  “My brother had a car like that.”

  “Oh, yeah? That’s right. I remember Lucy saying something about Jessie having a son. Did he die a long time ago?”

  “Two years after he got the car.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah—bummer.”

  “Don’t go turning hostile on me. It’s just an expression.”

  One her own kids used all the time. “I’m sensitive about Frank,” she admitted.

  Rhona came into the kitchen from a side door that led to the garage. She put a paper grocery bag on the counter and extended her hand. “You must be Elizabeth. I’m Rhona McDowell, your father’s housekeeper. Can’t tell you how pleased I am to meet you. I’ve seen your picture, of course, but you couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven when it was taken.”

  “Jessie had a picture of me?” God, now they were going to think she actually cared.

  “Would you like to see it?” Rhona asked.

  “No.” That only made it worse. “Maybe later.”

  “He had a lot of pictures of us,” Christina said. “Surprised me, too.”

  Elizabeth changed the subject. “You said you had a new job. What do you do?”

  “I work at River City Studio.” She came around the counter to sit on the stool beside Elizabeth. “Where in less than two weeks I have made myself indispensable. No one who’s worked there has ever managed to empty the trash on a regular basis or given better unsolicited editing advice. I answer phones with a sickening cheerfulness and convince clients they really can wait an extra day for their videos because the quality will be better than anything they can get without going to L.A. and paying twice as much.”

  “How did you get a job like that?” It was the kind of question someone asked to keep a conversation going, but Elizabeth genuinely wanted to know.

  “Lucy knew someone who knew someone. What about you? What do you do?”

  “I’m a home— I used to be a homemaker. I’m starting college this fall semester.”

  “Why?”

  “You mean why would I want to go back to school at my age?” It took effort, but she managed to suppress the testiness.

  “Well—yeah.”

  Rhona laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

  “I’m not that old,” Elizabeth protested.

  “So what are you studying?”

  “I don’t know yet,” she reluctantly admitted. “I’m going to get the basics out of the way and then decide. Right now I’m leaning toward a degree in library science.”

  “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Get a degree in a field that’s disappearing.”

  “Are you always this mouthy?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yep. It’s one of my more charming personality traits.” She handed Elizabeth a grape. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

  “There will always be libraries,” Elizabeth said defensively. “Maybe not as we know them now, but—”

  “Where have you been the last ten years? What used to be a sacred cow is now one of the first things to go in a budget crunch. A kid with a laptop hooked up to the Internet has access to more research material than any library on earth.”

  She was being lectured by someone young enough to be her daughter, and it infuriated her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she shot back for lack of a more clever retort.

  “I’ve been doing voice-overs for political ad campaigns for the past six years. It’s kind of a hobby of mine to see how many of the politicians keep their promises once they’re elected and discover there isn’t money to fund dying, antiquated institutions.” She pinned Elizabeth with a stare. “How many politicians’ careers do you follow?”

  “Libraries are not dying, antiquated institutions.”

  “Maybe not university libraries—” The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it.”

  With that the conversation ended, saving Elizabeth from strangling Christina. She glanced at Rhona.

  “Times and ideas change,” Rhona said. “People, too. Christina’s a smart one. She has a lot of anger bottled up inside, but give her some time. She’ll come around.”

  “Honestly? I couldn’t care less whether she does or not. Once this is over I doubt that any of us will ever see her again.”

  “With all due respect, I believe you’re wrong.”

  Was ten million dollars really worth putting herself through this for six months?

  To her shame, she didn’t even hesitate with the answer. It was. Plainly she wasn’t the pillar of moral certitude she’d believed herself to be.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Elizabeth

  The first tape ended just as Jessie was meeting Elizabeth’s mother, a woman, a girl, Elizabeth didn’t recognize. She’d only known her mother as an angry, bitter old woman who spouted venom whenever she talked about Jessie Reed. What had gone wrong? Why had Jessie abandoned a woman he’d fallen in love with at first sight, a woman he believed to be the most beautiful woman in the world? And where was the rancor in his voice now at the way the marriage ended?

  “There’s a second tape,” Rachel said, looking inside the envelope. By tacit approval Rachel had become the organizer of their disparate group, the one Lucy had instinctively given the tapes and instructions to. Seemingly, as the oldest, the job should have been given to Elizabeth, but she preferred the spectator role. Something she had no doubt that Lucy had detected. Elizabeth was as wary as she was impressed with her father’s attorney. She didn’t know what prompted the wariness, only that she was convinced Lucy Hargreaves was more deeply involved in her father’s life and in his estate than she wanted any of them to know.

  “Does anyone need a break before I put it in?” Rachel asked.

  “I do.” Ginger grinned apologetically. She was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, her back propped against the damask-covered sofa. “Too much tea.”

  “Down the hall and to the left,” Christina said.

  Elizabeth had taken the chair by the fireplace, straight-backed and incredibly uncomfortable. She looked longingly at the second chair of a pair of upholstered Bergères opposite the sofa, but to move would put her next to Christina. With an inward sigh, she got up and moved.

  “You lasted longer than I thought you would,” Christina said.

  “That chair is a relic from the Inquisition. Another ten minutes and I would have been on my knees confessing.”

  “Oh my God, you do have a sense of humor,” Christina exclaimed.

  “What is it with you two?” Rachel asked.

  Christina reached for the tea pitcher. “Oh, you know how it is with sisters. But then maybe you don’t. You and Ginger seem to be hitting it off okay. What’s with that?”

  Rachel appeared unfazed by Christina’s aggressive posturing. “You want me to explain why I like Ginger?”

  “Sure. Maybe it will make me like her a little, too. Just don’t tell me it’s because she’s beautiful and sweet and wants to work for world peace.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of the fall from such a high horse?” Rachel asked.

  “Not at all. I�
��m an excellent rider.”

  Rachel kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs under her, settling deeper into her corner of the sofa. “She is beautiful, but so what? I can’t see that it’s gotten her anything the rest of us don’t have—except hostility for winning the genetic gene pool. She’s open and honest and isn’t carrying the shitload of emotional baggage the rest of us are. Which, in my book, makes her an ideal companion.”

  “You forgot about the happy homemaker over here,” Christina said. “She comes across as pretty solid.”

  “Are you?” Rachel asked Elizabeth.

  “Keep me out of this.”

  “Come on,” Christina prodded. “Tell us something about yourself. I promise we won’t bite. Well, I won’t.”

  Ginger appeared in the doorway. “Me either.”

  They were all looking at her expectantly. Elizabeth wasn’t about to open a vein for them, but she’d give them something, if only to show she wasn’t the isolationist Christina portrayed. “If I’ve seemed distracted, it’s because I did something this morning that I wish I hadn’t and it’s been bothering me since.”

  “So tell,” Christina said.

  Elizabeth hesitated. “It’s my daughter’s last summer at college—or could be if she decides not to go to graduate school—and she decided to spend it with friends in New York.” She left out the rather than coming home part, fearing it would sound needy. Besides, it was missing the point. “Her father told her that if she ran out of money she wasn’t to come to us for more. She did of course—this morning. It was either send her some money I had set aside and tell her not to tell her father or wind up in the middle of a huge fight with the two of them going at each other and me getting it from both sides. I’m mad at Sam for not understanding how important this summer is to Stephanie, and I’m mad at Stephanie for putting me in this position.”

  “I would have done the same thing,” Ginger said.

  “Me, too,” Rachel added. “It’s just not worth all the crap you’d have to take in the middle. So what’s a couple hundred dollars if it buys a little peace?”