by Lynn, JB
“What do you mean?” I gasped. “I thought you wanted your art space.”
She put her hands on her hips and continued walking. “I’m not moving here,” she stated again, “I’m going to stay at Lawrence’s.”
I took a second to digest that information. What she was declaring actually made a lot of sense. They were newlyweds, why would they want to come live in a compound full of her crazy relatives? I wondered if Griswald was behind this idea or if it was Susan’s alone.
“I understand,” I said softly. And I did understand—I just didn’t like it. With Susan gone, playing referee would turn into a full-time job for me. I wasn’t sure I was up for the task. I knew I sure as hell didn’t want to do it.
Susan placed her hand on my shoulder as we walked. “Thank you,” she said warmly. “I think you’ll be the only one who understands. I’m so impressed with how I’ve seen you mature.”
Uncomfortable with her compliment, I looked away.
She shouldn’t be proud of me. After all, I’d turned into a criminal, just like my father, Archie, who she always despised. I couldn’t tell her that, though.
“Have you told the others?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I wanted to talk to you about it first. I’m not going to tell anybody until the meeting.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” To me, it sounded like she was going to lob a grenade into the room.
“I don’t want anyone to think they have undue influence over me,” Susan explained. “I think that what would be most fair would be to tell everyone at once.”
“But you’ve told me,” I said, a little confused about the logic of her plan.
“That’s because I’m going to need your backup,” Susan said.
I halted. “What do you mean backup?” My voice cracked with anxiety.
“When everyone starts piling on, I’m going to need you to plead my case,” Susan said.
I stared at her. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not? You just said you understand.”
“I understand why, as a newlywed, you want to make a life for yourself with Griswald,” I said slowly. “But what I don’t understand, considering all of the trauma that this family’s been through, is that you’re choosing to abandon us now.”
Susan blinked, obviously surprised by the intensity of my response. “I’m not deserting you. I’ll be around.”
“Well, that’s how it feels to me,” I told her. “And I’m sure it’s going to feel even worse to your sisters.”
We stood there for a long moment, an awkward silence stretching between us.
I could sense she wanted me to change my mind, but I wasn’t backing down. I’d sacrificed a lot for this family, too, and I wasn’t thrilled that she was getting to go off and live her life while I would be stuck cleaning up the fallout for who knows how long.
Before either one of us spoke, a car came barreling down the driveway toward us.
“Oh good,” Susan said. “Darlene is here.”
I forced myself to smile and wave at Darlene’s car as it stopped a few feet from us.
My sister had been acting strangely even before the Bed & Breakfast blew up. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was only here to deliver even more news that would upset the family further.
Darlene got out of her car and walked over to us. I shook off the feeling of disappointment when I realized that my niece Katie wasn’t in the car with her. I missed the little girl and made a mental note to visit her at Darlene’s home as soon as possible.
“I have to tell you something,” Darlene started.
“Déjà vu,” God warned from his hiding place in my hand.
My aunt and my sister both looked at me strangely, and I held out my palm showing off the lizard. “He has a lot to say,” I told them.
Darlene rolled her eyes and Aunt Susan shook her head.
“I’m not moving here,” Darlene announced.
I dropped my hand back to my side just as God announced, “There’s a shocker.”
“But what about Katie?”
“She’s welcome to stay with me,” Darlene said coolly, the hard look in her gaze challenging me to protest.
“But you have to live here,” Susan said.
“Who’s she to make that argument?” God asked.
I was thinking the same thing, but I didn’t say anything.
“I like being away from the family drama,” Darlene told Susan defensively.
Susan shook her head and glanced sideways at me, as though waiting for me to blurt that she, too, wasn’t moving into Herschel’s compound, but I kept my mouth shut. I had matured. I knew when to hold my tongue. Sometimes. Not always, sometimes I got myself into a heck of a lot of trouble, but once in a while, like in this moment, I knew to stay quiet.
When I did speak, my comment was addressed to Darlene. “The family’s not going to like it.”
Darlene shrugged. “I have other concerns.”
I flinched at her cool, disinterested tone and out of the corner of my eye I saw the corners of Susan’s mouth turn down.
I fought the urge to ask Darlene if that meant her concerns involved Ms. Whitehat, since I didn’t want Susan to know her nieces had gotten involved in a shady organization.
Susan glanced at her watch. “We should go. It’s almost time for the voting.”
The three of us slowly headed toward the main house. I didn’t have a good feeling about what was coming.
16
You would have thought that the family was gathered for a funeral from the expression on everyone’s faces. Loretta and Leslie were on opposite sides of the room, glaring at each other. Marlene was perched on Doc’s lap, worriedly twisting and untwisting a piece of string around her palm.
Sensing her stress, DeeDee ran up to Marlene’s string-wrapped hand and nudged it with her snout.
Armani and Herschel were huddled in a corner, whispering away to each other. Templeton stood staring out the window. I had the distinct impression he was searching for a way out.
Only Griswald seemed unaffected by the tension in the room, his arms flung around the back of his chair like he didn’t have a care in the world. The man is a U.S. Marshal, so I have to assume he’s dealt with far more dangerous situations than my family.
I coveted his chill.
“You’re here,” Loretta declared as Aunt Susan, Darlene, and I strolled in.
“We can get started,” Leslie said.
I made it a point not to make eye contact with anyone. I didn’t want to give away what my allegiances were, or how I was going to vote. It had been predetermined that all our votes would be secret, put into a box, like ballots in a grade school election. We’d vote on one item at a time. Aunt Susan, being the most organized of the bunch, had actually typed up a ballot letting us know which questions are going to be voted on in what order.
My phone buzzed and I instinctively glanced at it.
“Everyone’s phones off,” Aunt Susan ordered. “We need everyone’s full attention.”
Normally, I wouldn’t have disagreed with her, but the text that I’d just received was from Angel Delveccio.
It said, “Need your help.”
I may have groaned aloud.
He sent another text. This one said, “Bring a gallon of rubbing alcohol.”
I was very aware that everyone was looking at me as I read my messages.
“Margaret,” Aunt Susan said in a tone that let me know that she was displeased with me.
I held up a finger to silence her.
She blinked her shock, and there was a murmur of disbelief from the gathered crowd.
Angel sent a third text with the address of a motel on the other side of town.
I looked up and surveyed my family, who were all looking at me with a mixture of expectancy and disappointment.
“I have to go,” I told them.
“You can’t go,” Loretta and Leslie said in unison.
At least they wer
e agreeing on something.
“I have a friend in trouble who needs help,” I told them as I started to back out of the room.
Aunt Susan grabbed my wrist. “You can’t leave, Margaret.”
I considered shaking her off me.
“It’s Angel,” I told the room. “He needs my help.”
Except for Herschel, everyone in the room knew and liked Angel.
“What kind of help?” Armani asked.
I shrugged. It wasn’t like I could tell them he’d just asked for a gallon of rubbing alcohol and to meet him at a motel. “I’m not sure. But he wouldn’t ask unless it was important.”
Susan released my wrist. “Go.”
“That man has done a lot for this family,” Leslie said.
“He helped bring back our Katie,” Loretta agreed.
I nodded, glad that they understood the importance of Angel and weren’t going to hold a grudge.
“But first, assign someone to be your proxy,” Susan ordered.
“What?” I asked, startled.
“We’re not putting off the family vote just because you’re going to help out a friend,” Susan declared. “Things have been in flux long enough with this family. We need to make our decisions. We need to make them tonight.”
I looked around the room. Everyone was watching me. No one was arguing with her.
“I—” I waited for someone to step in and save me, but no one did.
“Quickly, Margaret,” Susan urged. “We have business to conduct.”
I scanned the room, trying to decide who I could trust with my vote. Who in that room could I count on to do their best to carry out my wishes?
I wasn’t going to pick Loretta or Leslie, since they were already at odds; I didn’t want to choose one over the other. For the same reason, I didn’t want to choose Susan. I looked to my sisters, Marlene and Darlene. I should have been able to trust them, but I wasn’t sure that I could. They each had their own agenda.
Griswald watched me carefully. I got the impression he was more interested in what I was going to be doing for Angel than he was about how the vote was going to turn out. Especially since he wasn’t going to be living here. He was, by virtue of profession, the most trustworthy person in the room.
“I choose Templeton,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.
I don’t know who was more surprised, me, them, or Templeton himself.
He turned from the window. “Me?”
I nodded.
“Why him?” Armani asked, clearly miffed that I hadn’t chosen her.
“Because he lost as much as everybody else, and I trust him.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Griswald’s eyebrows shoot up. Like me, he no doubt knew that Templeton had some unsavory acquaintances.
“I don’t even know—” Templeton began.
“Come with me,” I told him. “I’ll tell you how I want to vote.”
He nodded, and we left the room, leaving everyone else behind murmuring amongst themselves.
I stepped outside with him. “I’m sorry for putting you on the spot.”
“I’m honored that you consider me enough of a friend to do it,” he said solemnly.
Instinctively, I wrapped him in a bear hug and squeezed tightly. “You’ve grown on me.”
He chuckled. “Likewise.”
I quickly told him how I wanted to vote on all of the issues and requested that if anything else came up to please text me whatever question he might have before voting.
He nodded and went back inside to face the family.
Piss, who had followed us outside, asked, “Are we bringing the dog?”
I shook my head. “No, but you can come along if you want to.”
“Well, I’m not going to let you go off with the reptile as your only backup,” the cat meowed, leading the way to my car.
“I heard that,” God said from his resting place in my bra.
As I walked to my car, I texted Angel back. “I’m on my way.”
I had no idea what I was about to get myself into.
17
You would have thought the request to bring a gallon of rubbing alcohol would have been relatively easy, but it wasn’t. Blame it on my terrible math skills. Rubbing alcohol isn’t sold in gallon jugs, it’s sold in relatively small bottles. I had to do the math to figure out how many bottles it would take to fill a gallon. But the problem was, I couldn’t remember how many ounces are in a gallon.
I asked God, but he was sulking and refused to answer.
Which meant I had to look it up on my phone. So, there I was, standing in the aisle of the drug store, trying to buy ridiculous amounts of rubbing alcohol, and having what looked to be a one-sided conversation with myself.
“What do you think he needs this for?” I asked as I piled the bottles into my arms because I hadn’t thought to get a shopping basket and was too lazy to walk to the front of the store to get one.
“Maybe he’s going to clean some windows,” God suggested from his hiding spot in my bra.
“You think he’s going to clean the windows at the motel?” I asked.
Balancing the bottles precariously, I slowly walked toward the front of the store so I could pay for them.
“True,” God agreed. “That wouldn’t make much sense. Perhaps he wants to clean the toilet, instead.”
“Again,” I said. “You think he’s going to clean the toilet at the motel?”
“That’s not so ridiculous, can you imagine the people who have touched those things.” I could hear the revulsion in the lizard’s voice. “Can you imagine the bodily functions they’ve done on those things…?”
I didn’t want to think about those things. “Quiet,” I ordered as I approached the cashier.
The bored teenager didn’t seem to notice that my chest had been squeaking just a moment earlier.
I dumped the bottles on the counter. If he thought it was unusual to be buying this many, the kid didn’t indicate it. He calmly rang it up and waited for me to insert my credit card into the machine.
I fought the urge to make up an excuse for my purchase. We conducted the entire transaction in complete silence. He handed me my two-yard-long receipt, and I took the double-bagged bottles out to the car.
Piss was on the passenger seat, curled up. She opened her good eye when I opened the car and peered in.
“Did you find what you needed?” she asked.
I nodded.
God skittered out of my bra and down my arm and took up his place on the dashboard.
“Maybe he wants to erase something,” he said.
“Who wants to erase what?” Pissed asked, thoroughly confused.
“Maybe Angel needs to erase something,” God suggested.
“He didn’t have me buy erasers,” I reminded him.
“If Patrick is right, maybe they wrote the plans for the bank robbery on a mirror in the motel room. They can either break the mirror and have seven years bad luck, or they can use rubbing alcohol to erase it off the glass,” God said as though that made much more sense than anything else we’d previously discussed.
I decided not to engage him any further on the matter. We drove in silence to the motel.
“You seem tense, sugar,” Piss remarked.
“It’s out of character for Angel to ask for help,” I said.
“But if you’re going to get someone to help you,” God said in his best game show announcer voice, “ask Maggie Lee. She can do anything for anybody!”
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to make me laugh or just making fun of me.
I didn’t get to ask him because my phone rang. I answered it through the car’s speakers. “Hello?”
“It’s your proxy,” Templeton announced.
“Is all the voting done?” I asked.
“The voting hasn’t even yet begun,” he said. “But another issue has been raised.”
I gripped the steering wheel tightly and forced myself to take a deep br
eath. “About what?”
“They’re trying to decide if Mary should have a proxy vote, too.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea of my crazy mother having a vote. “Whose brilliant idea was that?”
“Herschel’s,” Templeton said wearily. “He wants all of his children involved. And grandchildren,” he added hurriedly.
“Well, if that’s the case,” I replied, “Ian should get a vote, too.”
“I heard that!” Aunt Loretta called from in the distance.
“Are you eavesdropping on my conversation with Maggie?” Templeton asked, his tone irritated.
“Is it a crime that I was coming to look for my fiancé?” Loretta countered.
“You were eavesdropping,” Templeton accused.
“She has a point about Ian,” Loretta said, side-stepping her fiancé’s accusation.
I didn’t hear what Templeton mumbled to her.
“I couldn’t make that out,” I said, pulling into the lot of the motel.
“I’m going to have to call you back,” Templeton said tensely.
Before I could protest, he disconnected the call.
I slowly drove along the length of the rundown and dirty motel. It looked like the kind of place where rooms could be rented by the hour. I’ve killed people, but I’m not going to lie, the idea of getting out of my car at night at this place made me nervous. Very nervous.
Once again, I realized I’d ventured into a potentially dangerous situation without a weapon. I tried to reassure myself with the thought that Angel would never put me in danger. He was a good guy who always looked out for me.
I squinted at the doors, searching for the room number that Angel had indicated. It was at the very end. I parked my car and stared up at the room on the second floor.
“Maybe you should text him,” Piss suggested.
“Excellent idea!” God agreed. “You don’t need to walk in and startle any would-be bank robbers.”
“We don’t know that Angel is a would-be bank robber,” I told him testily.
Still, I agreed with Piss that it was a good idea to text him. Maybe I could just hand over the gallon of rubbing alcohol and be on my way. Maybe that was all he needed from me. Honestly, I was feeling stretched so thin between trying to do the job for Delveccio, the job for Whitehat hanging over my head, and balancing my family drama that I really didn’t need one more problem.
