Bad Heiress Day

by Allie Pleiter

“Really rich.”

  “Like Regis Philbin ‘Is that your final answer’ really rich? What are we talking about here?”

  “One and a half Regis Philbins to be exact. And that’s after taxes.”

  Kate gurgled unintelligibly and dropped her Coke. “Your Dad? Mr. Coupon-clipper Dad?”

  This time it was Darcy’s turn to merely nod. Kate’s shock felt comforting. It made her feel more at home with the shock waves she’d been feeling since she’d known.

  “No, really, Darcy. You’ve got to be kidding. There’s no way your—excuse me but you know it’s the truth—tight-wad of a dad could be a millionaire. The guy drove an eight-year-old car.”

  “I know. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t get it, either. He had so much. There was so much he could have done that he didn’t.”

  Kate stuffed another cracker in her mouth and offered Darcy the box. “Whoa, Dar. This is big stuff. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know yet. I had no idea Dad had that kind of money. It’s actually scary when you think about it.”

  It flashed back at her before she had a chance to even name it. An avalanche of angry scenes. Dad arguing with a clerk over not getting the senior discount. Eating dinner at 4:00 p.m. to get the early bird special. A million little—okay, she was going to use this phrase—cheap impulses that used to drive her crazy back when Dad was well enough to be up and about. Buying store-brand knockoffs when what she really wanted was honest-to-goodness Oreos. Why would a man with enough money to live three lifetimes spend—no, not spend—waste so much energy penny-pinching? Her throat began to tighten. There was so much lost. She turned to Kate. “I’m mad at him for doing this. For hiding it and springing it on me like this. It’s not fair to make me deal with this now. I thought we’d cleared the air completely between us, Kate, but he kept this huge thing from me.” The words came spilling out, pouring from the open wound in her heart. “Why would he put me through this? I feel like I’m on some sort of sick, twisted game show and it’s his doing. Sure, it’s a cartload of money and I suppose that’s good. It solves a lot of problems. But it’s bad, too. I’ve spent the last week wondering what else don’t I know. Are there more secrets lurking out there waiting to do me in?” The tears sneaked up on her before she had a chance to stop them. Darcy slumped against the bench, lay her head down on Kate’s shoulder, and cried. For both the hundredth time and the first time.

  Kate stroked her shoulder and let her cry, fishing tissues for her out of her purse because Darcy had gone through every one of the dozens of tissues she’d stocked her pockets with this morning.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said finally, and Darcy could hear the strain in her friend’s voice. “I think you may have been better off with something like The Princess Diaries. He should have left you queen of something. I was only joking about the crown jewels bit, but now I’m thinking…”

  “I know, I know.” Darcy laughed, glad to have her friend’s thoughts follow her own. “I was thinking I need a tiara or something.”

  “It’s gonna change your life forever, Dar. I mean, think about it. Okay, I realize his methods—” she narrowed her eyes for emphasis “—rot, but the game show metaphor isn’t all that far off. You’re loaded. Think about all you and Jack can do. Mike can go to that snazzy math academy you’ve been eyeing for all these years.”

  Kate had hit the nail on the head. “That’s just it, Kate. Mike can go to Simmons Academy now. But Mike could have gone to Simmons Academy all along! Dad knew how much we wanted him to be able to do something with his math skills. He knew we couldn’t afford to do it. How could he just sit there and not help if he had all that money lying around?” It was unkind, but it was spilling out of Darcy and she didn’t care. “One point six million is enough for three lifetimes Kate, and he knew he didn’t have much more time. He’s known for two years. Why, why, why did he feel he had to keep it from us? And you know what? I don’t even care about the dollar signs, I care that he kept such a big, huge, important thing from me. From me! I could change his bedpans but I couldn’t be trusted with his finances? Why keep secrets now, of all times?” Darcy crossed her arms. “It hurts. It hurts a lot.”

  “It rots.”

  “Yeah, it rots all right.”

  Kate kicked her legs out in front of her and giggled just a bit. “But at least it rots all the way to the bank.”

  God bless Kate. Darcy knew she’d done the right thing in telling her. She bumped Kate playfully with her shoulder and sighed.

  “You have no idea why he’d do this? Hide this from you?”

  “Not one. Not a one.” Darcy stuffed an entire graham cracker in her mouth.

  “Well, at least now I understand why you weren’t in any hurry to open that box. You’ve got a license to be gun-shy on this one.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You know, Dar,” said Kate, pulling up one knee to sit facing Darcy on the bench, “you’re forgetting something.”

  Darcy turned to look at her friend.

  “What if the why is in the letter?” she offered. “What if it’s not a time bomb, but an explanation? Mr. Lawyer Guy said you were to open the box shortly after your dad’s death, right?”

  Darcy nodded, her brain straining to put the pieces together. What if there was some kind of reasoning, some explanation in the letter? Darcy wasn’t sure she was ready to see it. But another part of her began to give in to the curiosity. Knowing why would help the coping process a lot more than chocolate graham crackers.

  “You know what?” Kate offered suddenly with a smirk. “I was wrong. We don’t have enough chocolate to deal with this. It’s gonna take a whole gallon of Graeter’s mint chocolate chip to cope with this baby.” She began gathering up the food and wrappers. “And on the way, you can tell me what Jack said about all this.”

  Chapter 2

  The Twelfth of Never

  “Four more spoonfuls and then I’ll open it. I’ll save the rest of my ice cream sundae for the aftermath.” Darcy was feeling better bit by bit.

  Kate counted down Darcy’s spoonfuls and added a drumroll to the last one for effect. There, in the front seat of Kate’s car in Graeter’s Ice Cream Parlor parking lot, she took a deep breath and pulled the lid from the box.

  Kate was right. It did look ordinary. She didn’t know if she expected some hand to come out and grab her like something from The Addams Family, but it looked tame enough. She started with something safe, like the coins.

  “Gold,” Darcy said as she pulled one from the wax paper envelope that held it. “From Africa. At least I think it’s gold—it’s heavy enough. I’ll have to take them someplace to have them appraised. Dad told me he got these when I was born.” There were four of them, two pairs of different kinds. Okay, safe enough. Nothing shocking there. Good. She laid them gently back into the box.

  The first Bible was soft and worn, the aged leather flaking off a bit in her hands. It was a woman’s bible, with swirly lettering stamped on the elegant beige of the cover. Her mother’s. Darcy realized she’d never seen her mother with it. She imagined it tucked in a nightstand drawer next to a velvet jewelry box and hankies.

  Mom. Her death in 1982 seemed like ages ago now. As a shy seventeen-year-old, it had been so hard for Darcy to come to grips with the automobile accident that had taken her mom’s life. Actually, it hadn’t taken her life, just made her give up on the life she had until it ebbed right out of her.

  Maimed.

  Darcy had always thought that was an odd choice of words for people to use. Her mother’s left hand looked just as it always had, but it was rendered lifeless. Limp and useless. Her mother had survived all the other bumps and bruises, and had lived for years after the accident, but never gave a hint of ever recovering. Or even wanting to. Clara Hartwell had been a violinist, and life without a left hand didn’t seem worth living. “But it’s just a hand,” Darcy remembered thinking, even arguing with her mother.

  All arguments
, all pleading, all encouragement had proved as useless as Clara’s fingers. It had been a hideous, awful time.

  “Mom’s,” Darcy offered to Kate, surprised by the lump in her throat when she spoke. “I’ve never seen it before.” She ran her hands through the impossibly thin pages, fingered the faded red ribbons that were meant to mark pages. Each ribbon left a pale-pink line on the page it had sat in over the years. Darcy ran her fingers across the monogram gracing the bottom corner before she laid it back in the box.

  She recognized the second Bible. Hard-bound, it was tattered and dirty. This was the small Bible her dad talked about carrying through the war. The one he carried for years until he wore it clean out and Darcy gave him a new one for his birthday. Thumbing through it, Darcy saw hundreds of tiny scrawled notes in the margins. Names of people. Question marks and exclamation points with arrows to particular verses. “Harry—forgive him” was one, with an arrow to a passage in Luke which read “But he who hath forgiven little loves little.”

  Darcy looked up. “Dad’s.”

  Kate said nothing. There wasn’t anything for her to say, really. Except maybe “So, open the letter.” Darcy was glad she didn’t say it.

  There it was. Sitting in the corner of the box. Small and thick, with “Darcy” in her father’s handwriting on the front. His handwriting the way it used to be, before his letters got sloppy and shaky from weak hands. This penmanship was strong and careful.

  Darcy felt Kate’s hand on her shoulder. “You know, if you want to be alone, I could go get more ice cream or something. Maybe you need to do this in private.”

  Darcy swallowed hard. “No. I think I need you here. I’m not going to read it aloud or anything—at least not yet, but I don’t think I want to do this by myself. You just sit over there and polish off that fudge, okay?”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay. I’m gonna do this.”

  “I’m right here, kiddo.”

  Darcy counted to five and then slid her finger under the back flap. The paper was still strong, the seal still solid. Darcy guessed it was written about two years ago. Just about when her dad’s diagnosis was finalized.

  She pulled up the flap and slid the papers out. Five sheets—filled on both sides—appeared. Small, stationery-size—the kind nobody used much anymore because it didn’t fit into computers, and who even wrote letters anymore?

  Unfolding the pages carefully, she let her eyes travel up the lines of dark-blue ink until they hit those fateful words: “Dear Darcy,”

  All right then, here we go.

  Darcy read the letter.

  Dear Darcy,

  I’ve been wondering, as I sit down to write this letter, just how upset you will be when you read this. If you’re holding this paper, it means I’m gone now, and you’ve been to see Jacob. And you’ve learned the one piece of my life I’ve kept from you. And, I assume you’re not happy to learn I kept such a thing from you. I had reasons, and you will learn them before this letter is done.

  I’m not feeling sick yet, but I know I will be. I know, too, that you will have been there, for you’re that kind of person. They tell me the end won’t be pretty, but I will step out in the faith that I have in you and thank you now for sticking by me when it got messy. I wonder if I will have even known, when it is time, everything you have done on my behalf. If I didn’t, and somehow didn’t recognize or acknowledge your care in the end, forgive me. I know it now, and I’ll take these lucid moments to thank you. The words hardly seem sufficient for what I can only imagine is coming, but I have no others.

  Darcy’s chest heaved in a sob. How she had longed for that last, clear, look of acknowledgment from her dad in those final hours. It had never come. He was far away and already lost to her and looking frightened. She ached from his death all over again. For the body now reduced to ashes, the spirit long since left. She forced herself to continue reading:

  I worry about you now. I’d have never said it before, but I worry about you and Jack through all this. The strain is sure to be huge. Jack’s so independent, and our tiny family is about to become as dependent as it gets. Know that I have prayed for you and Jack and your marriage. And I will continue to send down blessings and prayers after I am gone, because I have a feeling that’s when things will be the worst. I’m not kidding myself to think I’m not making things harder by what I’ve done.

  All right, little girl, I’ve sidestepped the issue long enough. This letter, as I said before, is to tell you why I’ve done what I’ve done. No doubt by now you know the extent of my financial assets. I’m sure you’ve eaten a gallon of Graeters—if you’ve not eaten three by now…

  Darcy laughed at her father’s foresight. It helped to stem the tears lurking like an undertow just beneath the surface. “He’s betting I’ve eaten Graeter’s already.” She offered the explanation to Kate just to break the aching silence.

  “He knew you” is all Kate replied, her eyes tearing and her sundae untouched.

  …and I’m sure you’re in shock. Probably mad, too, for we never kept secrets from each other. Wondering, if I know you, what else you don’t know about me. Let me put your mind at rest, Darcy, and tell you this letter is all there is. There are no other secrets. I didn’t like keeping this one much, but I had reasons.

  Where did it all come from? That’s a painful episode in your mother’s and my history that I hope we’ve successfully shielded you from. There were discussions—arguments really, and bad ones—after your mother’s accident. I knew, just by how she was talking and acting, that Clara had no intention of continuing to live. Some people are strong enough to recover from a tragedy like that. Clara wasn’t one of them. No amount of convincing from the doctors could change her mind. They even had some lady with two prosthetic legs come and talk to your mother, but she wouldn’t hear it. To her mind, her body had been so badly damaged that she didn’t want to be in it anymore. I was angry with her for wanting to leave me, to leave you, over her one hand. But you know Mom and her music, and what it did to her to have that taken away from her. Clara needed someone to pay for the awful thing that happened to her.

  In truth, I began to as well. Clara just plain stopped being my wife and your mom when her hand stopped working. We argued all the time—I hope you don’t remember how much.

  Drivers didn’t have to have car insurance back then. So, when we won the lawsuit against the driver who hit Mom’s car, it cleaned the poor guy out. Our $250,000 award meant he had to sell his house, his car, everything.

  Clara was glad we ruined his life for hers. I was, too. But even all that money couldn’t bring your Mom back to us. I woke up one day, after she was gone, and realized I hated how much her vengeance had become such a part of me.

  I should have realized earlier and tried to talk her out of it. In truth, Darcy, I suppose I didn’t want to stop her from doing the one thing she seemed to feel was left on Earth for her to do. I suppose I thought it might keep her with us for a bit longer if she felt she still had some purpose. I loved my wife and was blinded by grief into letting her do anything to keep her alive.

  I told her once, in a moment of anger, that I would give it away. The money, that is. I wanted to, after I realized it didn’t help. Having lots of money never meant much to me, anyhow. My experience has been that money never solves problems, only makes new ones.

  Well, Clara went so hysterical she ended up back in the hospital and almost died. So there, with her life on the line, it seemed, she made me promise not to give it away. On my honor. Before God.

  Even Clara never got what she wanted. Despite taking everything Harry Zokowski had, we ended up with only $150,000. But that was still a lot of money back then. To me, though, it was just a reminder of how vengeful I’d become, and I wanted it far from my hands. The life insurance and casualty insurance more than paid for her bills anyway, what use did I have for one lonely old man’s life savings in exchange for my lost wife?

  By now you’ve been to see Jacob, and you can trust
him—even if he is a lawyer. Jacob has kept the money for me, and seen to its wise investment over the years. Over time, he convinced me to let him take some of the interest off the money for when things get expensive with all those medicines and nurses I’m sure I’ll need. I didn’t much like it, but it made sense to me, because it means I won’t be a financial burden to you and Jack. Jacob has the authority to draw off funds whenever he needs to ensure that my accounts have enough to pay the bills. That’s why you’ve only seen the accounts you’ve seen. At least up until now.

  So now, if I guess correctly, you’re looking at something over $1.5 million. Can you believe it? It feels like a fortune, but it’s not. It’s not, Darcy, and don’t fool yourself into thinking that it is.

  I could never give it away, Darcy, I promised your mother. But you can.

  I don’t know what your life will be like in my last years, so I won’t require you to do this. I won’t command you to do anything. I don’t have that right after all I’ve just put you through.

  But I can ask you to. Give it away, Darcy. Do this for me. I know that sounds crazy to you right now, there’s so much you and Jack could do with that kind of money, but don’t keep it, honey. Take your Dad’s advice this time. It’s ill-gotten money, no matter what the legal system says. Keeping it will keep you from moving on. I’m not sure I can explain it, but the cost is dear. You’ve already lost so much in this life. Don’t let this money take away anything more. Whatever you think it will buy you is an illusion, anyhow.

  I don’t expect you to understand this right away. Please don’t do anything yet. Just talk to Jack, talk to people you trust and who are right with God, seek His wisdom, and know I am praying for you every moment. Now I can mean it when I tell you I’ll love you forever. Remember when I used to sing to you “Until the 12th of Never, I’ll still be loving you”? Now it’s true, and never forget it. God loves you, Darcy. Loves you still. Your faith will always lead you to the right decisions in life. That’s the best treasure I can leave you.