by Jenni Moen
"Doesn't matter. I figured we needed something to haul your shit back in anyway."
I leveled my eyes at him. The truth was out. "If you're here to try to convince me to go back with you, just save your breath. It's not going to happen."
"Red Dress?" he asked.
"Maybe. Maybe not," I said, trying to sound casual.
A week ago, he might've been able to convince me to go back with him. It was probably the reason I'd been avoiding him. But there was no way he'd convince me to leave now.
He chuckled. "Well, I've got a Franklin in my pocket that says she'll be done with you by the weekend and that fancy-ass couch will be in the back of my trailer on Saturday. Until then, I'll just make myself at home on it."
I shook my head. “You might as well hand over your money now. The couch is going back to the store, and I’ll find a new apartment to rent. I’m not going anywhere.”
His eyes widened. "Oh, man. You've got it bad. That's cool. I'll just hang with Savannah while you're gone."
"Sierra," I grunted before shoving him inside the guest bedroom where I’d been sleeping and slamming the bedroom door behind him.
I pulled out my phone to call the resort to make a reservation and found another text from Celeste.
Does your brother change our plans? I'll understand if he does.
I typed out my answer, knowing it should probably be different but only feeling slightly guilty. Not at all. Don't forget to pack hiking shoes. Throw in those black heels with the red bottoms while you're at it.
She responded right away. I don't think those qualify as necessities.
Oh, but they do.
Do I need a dress now too?
No dress. Just the shoes.
I like the sound of that. ;)
HIM
"I’ve told you everything I can tell you.” Martin Marcus tapped the piece of paper resting between us on the desk as if it held all the answers, when all it had really done was raise more questions.
The banker wore a custom pinstriped suit and a golfer's tan. After only a few minutes with him, it had become clear he was not accustomed to dealing directly with something as mundane as a new account, which was something I’d just learned I had.
That wasn't to say he hadn't been nice to us. On the contrary, the bank president had been pleasant and patient, but he'd provided absolutely no information other than what the piece of paper had written on it, which wasn’t much.
I pulled it toward me and read it again.
Everyday Heroes
P.O. Box 2584
Chicago, IL
Scott Russell,
Everyday heroes are hard to find. Enjoy your new life. The money is yours to do with as you please. You earned it.
Sincerely,
Everyday Heroes
My head was swimming in facts that didn’t add up. I’d come to the bank to get answers about the motorcycle and the apartment, and instead, I discovered that someone had opened an account in my name. The situation was spiraling out of control.
“How much are we talking about here?”
I expected him to look it up on his computer or call someone else to do it. Instead, he recited the nice round number from memory. "One million dollars."
"Excuse me?" I sputtered. "Is this some sort of joke?"
Luke, who'd broken out into a sudden coughing fit next to me, pulled it together long enough to ask, "Can you please pass along that I’m a hero, too?"
I shot him a look before turning back to Mr. Marcus. "Well, I can't accept it."
The banker smiled pleasantly. "That's not an option. It's already yours. You can give it away if you like, but you can't return it. If you don't want to spend it, it will sit here with your name on it until you change your mind."
"This is crazy."
"I can't say I disagree, Mr. Russell. I’ve been in the banking business for twenty-nine years, and I’ve been this bank’s president for eight of them.” He puffed out his chest. "And I've never seen anything like this. Can’t say I’m not enjoying it, though."
“So let me get this straight. This organization, Everyday Heroes, picks random people to receive huge extravagant gifts?” I looked at the letter again. “A new life, it says. They’re giving me a new life? Why? There was nothing wrong with my old life.”
“I don’t believe there is anything random about it,” Mr. Marcus said. “Nobody’s life is perfect, and I understand you’re in a state of change right now.”
“You know this about me, yet you have no idea who I can even thank for all of this generosity?” I asked.
Mr. Marcus was feigning ignorance, but I’d already deduced he was holding back. He knew a lot more than he was letting on.
"I’m afraid I cannot. I can tell you that the money is yours to do with whatever you like. Naturally, the bank would like to keep your business, but you may move it if that is your wish."
He stood, signaling the end of our meeting. He handed me an envelope. “Your debit card is activated and ready to use. You’ll need to set up a PIN when you use it the first time. There are temporary checks in here to get you through until you receive the permanent ones in the mail.”
I matched his movement, so we were still eye-to-eye. "In the mail? To my new address that you know nothing about?”
“That is correct.”
I glared at the man. “I'm not a charity case, Mr. Marcus."
"That's certainly not my impression either. I was told you earned the money, and I have no doubt that’s true." He stuck his hand out for me to shake. "Now, I hate to cut this short, but I have a meeting to get to."
Unsatisfied, I shook my head. "Tell me how. How did I earn it?"
He sighed. "I wasn’t given that information. I was merely told you helped someone else and are now being helped yourself. If I may offer a suggestion, though?"
I nodded.
"If I'd recently come into a large sum of money like this, I'd move most of it into a savings account. That's a lot of money to be sitting in a checking account where it won't do anything for you. You should think about getting a financial advisor if you don't already have one and invest some of it. Municipal bonds are reliable, solid investments if you're not a risk-taker. But at a minimum, I recommend moving anything you don't need for your general operating expenses into a savings account. At least, you'll make a little bit on the interest."
As if I needed more.
"I suppose you have someone who can help with that?"
Even if I couldn't keep it, I should safeguard it until I figured out where it belonged. Celeste would have a financial advisor or someone who handled her investments. I would ask her when the time was right, but I wasn't sure I wanted to share this new piece of information with her quite yet. After our heated conversation this morning, she’d made it perfectly clear she wasn’t responsible for the apartment and bike.
"Roseanne, my assistant, will take you downstairs and get you set up with our manager of new accounts. He'll help you move some over to a savings account if you’d like." He walked us to the door. "I do have a favor to ask, though, Mr. Russell."
I looked at him curiously and began to carefully fold the Everyday Heroes’ letter, touching it only where I had to. "Yes?" I asked, as I slipped it into the envelope he’d given me.
"If we could keep the details of this quiet, I would appreciate it. I'm sure you can appreciate how unorthodox this is. We don't typically open accounts at the request of someone other than the account holder. Only under the most exceptional and rarest of circumstances."
"I would imagine a few federal laws were broken today, Mr. Marcus."
His gaze hardened. "Spend it wisely. Spend it unwisely. No one's watching. I’m sorry, but I have another meeting to get to." He directed us to his secretary’s desk and then closed the door between us.
An hour later, Luke and I sat in a diner around the corner from the bank, hashing over what we knew and what we didn’t still know. It all amounted to a whole lot of nothing. I�
��d searched the internet on my phone for Everyday Heroes and found absolutely nothing. No website. No social media accounts. No articles discussing previous recipients of gifts. The organization was either brand new or non-existent.
"Well, money bags, what do you want to buy first?" Luke asked.
"I can't spend the money. Are you crazy?"
"The hell you can't," Luke said. "You heard the man. You can't give it back, so you might as well enjoy it." He leaned forward. "Dude. You have a million dollars. One. Million. Dollars. What I could do with one million dollars. I'd buy a restaurant, that's what I'd do. My own Wolfe range. Or maybe a Thermador."
My phone vibrated on the table. I swiped my finger across it to find two new texts. The first was from Trevor, who I hadn't talked to since Friday night. I hope you’re getting settled in. Give me a call.
I thought I just might.
I now realized what a pickle I’d gotten myself into. I wasn’t sure why I’d thought I could straighten all of this out before I left town. When Celeste was standing in front of me, I seemed incapable of acting rationally. It had become painfully clear, though, that I wasn’t going to have anything straightened out before I left with her.
I knew I should cancel the trip and keep digging. Maybe spend some quality time with my brother. Fix my shit, so to speak. But her incoming text message waged another war against my common sense.
The shoes are in the bag. I found something to go with them that will help make up for my behavior last night.
I typed out a response. How about a sneak peek?
I think you should wait for the real thing. I’ll make it worth it.
I looked up to find Luke watching me, a smug smile on his face. "Red Dress?"
"Her name is Celeste, but since you can't remember the name of the woman you slept with last night, I guess I can't really expect you to remember my girl's."
His eyebrows rose. "My girl's? Oh, man. You really do have it bad."
I shrugged, noncommittally. "I don't know her well enough to say yet."
"Hmm. Well, I know you well enough, so let's put some odds on it." The need to quantify everything with a number was a trait that ran deep in the Russell family. "What's the over-under?"
"Maybe thirty-five percent," I offered.
"I'm definitely taking the over on that. I think, based on that dopey look on your face just now, that you're sitting at a good quality sixty-six percent and you haven’t even banged her yet."
“Banged her?” I shook my head in disgust. "I just met her. Besides, she’s a mess, Luke. You think I have hang-ups? I’ve got nothing on her.” I started listing everything I’d put together about Celeste. “She blames herself for her husband’s death when it was clearly an accident. Her house looks like she’s bleached it of his memory, yet she can’t let go of his old apartment. Which I still don’t understand, by the way. She talks in circles. She’s completely unpredictable. And that’s when she’s sober! She was so blasted last night she didn’t remember not having sex with me.”
“Could be worse. She could’ve not remembered having sex with you.”
I looked out the window but didn’t see much beyond my own confusion. “I don’t want to want her. She’s like a storm I can see coming, but I’m just standing in the front yard like an idiot, waiting for her to suck me up and spit me out somewhere. I can’t seem to stay away from her. Even when I’m not looking for her, she’s there. What’s worse, I don’t even want to try. And that is stupid and crazy.” I looked back at him. “This morning, we were screaming at each other, and all I wanted to do was shove her up against the wall and fuck her until she forgot him. It’s not normal. None of it. Normal people don’t have conversations like ours after knowing each other for two days. I told her that, too.”
Luke rolled his glass of soda between his hands. “So don’t be normal. If you ask me, she sounds like your kind of crazy. If anyone understands obsessively hanging on to the past, it’s you.”
I gave him a pointed look.
“Do you still have the box?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he shook his head in disappointment. “My advice should probably be different, but frankly, I'm looking forward to meeting this woman. I was beginning to think I'd never see the day."
I rolled my eyes and made a move to get out of the booth, but he grabbed my arm, pulling me back down. "No, I have something to say, and you're going to listen. You owe me that much.”
“I owe you?” I asked.
“Yeah, you owe me. I drove all the way from New York yesterday only to find out you're leaving town today. And I haven't even complained about it. Do you know why?”
During the past twelve years, my brother had visited exactly twice. The fact that I'd chosen a woman I barely knew over him wasn't exactly cool, and I knew it. "I'm sorry. It’s an asshole move to leave town with you here."
He leveled his eyes on me. "Don't apologize. I couldn't be happier about it. Look, Elena fucked you over good, but let’s be honest—you wouldn’t have been with her if you weren’t already pretty fucked up yourself. She did you a favor by letting you go, but you’re not suited for the single life. It doesn’t fit you."
I took some offense to that. "I've done all right. Melinda was good for me."
He harrumphed his disagreement. "She was safe because she let you get by without actually feeling something. So did Elena, if we’re being honest. I think this might be the first time in twenty-six years that you’ve let yourself actually feel something. So maybe it’s crazy, maybe she’s all wrong for you and it’s going to be a big fucking disaster in the end, but I’m inclined to say go with it.”
“That’s your advice? Go with it?”
He shrugged. “You’re never going to be happy unless you’re trying to fix someone.”
“And what if she can’t be fixed? What if I can’t? It’s highly likely that when this is all over, I’m going to be more screwed up than I am now. She might be too.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist. Shove her up against a wall and see what happens.”
I shook my head. “You’re as crazy as I’m afraid she is.”
“Maybe.” The grin on his face slipped a little. "Listen, since we're being serious, we need to talk about something else. Saving your stupid ass from yourself isn’t the only reason I'm here."
"Something other than me moving back to New York? Because that’s not going to happen."
He shook his head. The unusually grave look on his face caused me to cross my arms across my chest almost as if I could protect myself from whatever he was about to say.
He wiped his hand down his face, another Russell trait, and one I recognized well as a sign of distress. "No, it's Pop,” he said.
I knew immediately what was coming. I gripped the sleeves of my shirt and waited for my life to come to a screeching halt for the second time in five years.
"The cancer's back." My burly brother's eyes misted over. When it came to my parents, the six-foot-four behemoth turned into a big ball of mush. We both did, really. Family was our Achilles’ heel.
"Why didn't they tell me?"
"Well, for one thing, you haven't been returning anyone's calls. But Ma didn't want to tell you over the phone. That's why she sent me."
"So what kind of treatment is he going to get?"
"He says he's not going to fight it this time. He says they're tapped out."
Our father had retired from the NYPD five years ago and found out he had bladder cancer a week later. In the year that followed, our family had learned cancer is a formidable and expensive adversary. The financial ramifications had nearly ended my parents even when the cancer hadn't. They'd sold their cars and taken out a second mortgage on their house. They had only recently recovered from their first round with the disease and were now being hit with it again.
"How's Ma?"
"She won't make it six months without him, and you know it."
"Is she trying to talk some sense into him?"
"Of course, but
you know Pop. He's made up his mind. He said he's not leaving her with more debt."
"And if he fights? What's the prognosis?"
"About the same as last time. Maybe a little worse. It's in his liver, too, but his doctor said it’s treatable."
I pushed my plate farther away. The burger and fries I'd just inhaled felt impossibly heavy in my stomach. "He survived it once. He can do it again."
"Not if he doesn't fight."
"We’ll make him fight. We can pull together the money."
Luke leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest. "Well, now that's the thing, Scotty. It seems to me that you're in a unique position to help now, aren't you?"
The meaning of his words settled around me. "The money?"
He nodded. "You can pay off their house. Pay for his treatments. And still have a shit ton left to spend on yourself and Red Dress."
I shook my head and grimaced. "But it's not right. It's not my money."
"I don't give a shit if it's right. You can save him. Give the rest to charity if you want. I really don’t care."
I thought about it for all of five seconds. Even if I didn’t accept the money, I could take a temporary loan out against it until I figured something else out. "I'll make some arrangements and call them this afternoon."
"Good," he said with approval. "Now, let's get out of here. You need to pack, and we need to see what we can find out about Everyday Heroes."
“Does it even matter if I’m not accepting the money?”
He cocked his head and gave me a look that said he wasn’t buying my nonchalance. “So you’re just going to let it go then?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so, which means we’ve got work to do and very little time to do it.”
We walked to the register to pay for our lunch, and Luke handed me his ticket before stepping aside to let me take care of it all. I gave him a sideways glance. "Seriously?"
He clapped me on the back. "Thanks for lunch, moneybags,” he said before walking away.
He was on his phone when I stepped outside. "Good deal, doll. Call your boss and see if you can get the time off. We'll be there in fifteen."
