by Natalie Ann
“It’s on the lake.”
Her sister managed to suck in some air, then her mother. They knew she wouldn’t be able to afford it. Not to mention only the snobs lived on the lake in her mother’s world.
“Whereabouts?” her mother asked.
“Mrs. Cotter wants to move to Florida. Trixie Miller mentioned it to Nick, so he mentioned it to Zach. It’s not even on the market right now. We might be able to get it at a good price.”
“We?” her father asked.
“Yes,” Amber said, taking a deep breath. “If we can get it for the right price, Zach and I are going to purchase it together and then rehab it. It’s pretty old and needs a lot of work. But it’s a beautiful location.”
“Guess you’re stepping up in the world like you always wanted to do,” her mother said, a touch of condemnation to her voice.
“You can’t be happy for me?”
“Do you really want to go there right now, Amber? You know my feelings on this. I agreed to dinner tonight. I didn’t know you’d be moving in with Zach,” her mother said.
“Really? Aren’t you the one who came to the apartment the other day, mad that I was looking to move at all? Then said you couldn’t believe I would consider buying a house with no commitment from him. And now I’m saying we’re possibility buying something together and that still isn’t good enough? That’s not a big enough commitment for you?”
Zach looked at her sharply. Too late, she realized what she’d said and how she didn’t tell him that part of the conversation.
“I found this house,” Zach jumped in to say. “I’m the one who said I wanted to buy it with Amber. She didn’t ask. Matter of fact, she was totally against it at first. I’m glad she is considering it now.”
Her mother just pursed her lips and didn’t say another word. Her father didn’t either, but he’d be fine once she had a chance to talk it over with him. Until then, she just wanted to get through this meal with what little sanity she had left intact.
“That wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Amber said when they got back to her apartment.
“I’m glad you think it,” Zach said. “I’m still reserving judgment.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her to the couch. “Do you mean it? Are you really considering the house?”
“I am. It’s probably stupid and impulsive and will just widen the gap with my parents, but what the hell? Maybe it’s time I give them a reason to think all the bad things they do about me.” She stopped and wiped the tears in her eyes. “Are you okay with it?”
He pulled her close and hugged her tight. “I wouldn’t have brought you there today if I wasn’t. What made you change your mind?”
“You were there tonight, right? I was leaning toward it, but what you said tonight. What you said about family being there and caring for each other. I just realized that I need a family like that. If I can’t get it from them, then maybe I can get it from you.”
He kissed her lightly on the lips, ran his hand down her back, then up her arm, her neck, and cupped her cheek. “You’ve got it from me. You always have.”
Our Hands
“The house is ours. Just say the word,” Zach said a few weeks later while he was sitting in his chair, leaning back, feet on the desk.
“Really?”
“Yep. I just got off the phone with Jeff Cotter, Mrs. Cotter’s son. He was playing hardball and not committing to their bottom line. Then he thought he was being smart and said, ‘Unless you want to do this as a cash deal with a fast close, then I’ll take fifty thousand off.’”
“What? That’s a great price.” She paused and then said, “Cash? Zach, I don’t have that kind of cash. I barely have enough for closing costs.”
“I’ve got it,” he said, waiting to hear her response.
“No. I’m buying the house. You’re paying for the reno.”
“That’s not an even split, Amber. The house is more than you could have afforded on your own. You know that. I found it, let me buy it, then you pay for the reno. It’s going to take time to get price quotes and such anyway.”
“I don’t have enough cash for the reno,” she said. “If you buy the house, I can’t even get a loan on it. And now it’s more than half in your name.”
He waited a second, then finally took a gamble. “I’ll put the house in both of our names if you want it. Then we’ll do the same with the loan. Easy that way.”
She snorted. “Easy for you. It’s like I’m not paying for anything. No way, Zach.”
He knew she’d argue. “You can make the payment on the home improvement loan. It’s going to be higher than a mortgage payment would be because it’s less years, so you’ll be paying out the same monthly amount as if you got the mortgage alone.”
He listened to the silence on the other end. “I don’t know. And how does this get done without a realtor?”
He laughed. “The realtor is the negotiator and the go-between. Once we get to this point, it’s in the lawyer’s hands. Jeff has a lawyer, so he is ready to go. I’ll take care of everything from our end. All you need to do is be at the closing. Then go do the bank things and let me know what you need from me on that end.”
“I’ll need a paycheck stub,” she said laughing.
This time he was silent. “Okay. I’ll get you what you need.”
“You’re actually going to show me what you make?”
She sounded shocked. “You’ll see my paycheck stub. You aren’t seeing my bonuses.”
She snorted. “Might need tax returns, too.” She giggled when he was silent. “Still, if you’re good with this, then I guess I am, too.”
“You guess. This is a big commitment, as you so kindly pointed out to your parents. You have to be more than guessing.”
“Are you?” she asked.
“Amber, I wouldn’t have been working this guy over if I wasn’t. I’m ready if you are. Just say the word and I’ll call the guy back and get the ball rolling. With any luck, you’ll have keys in your hand in a few weeks.”
“Our hands. And we need to decide on the reno together.”
“Our hands,” he said. “And you’ve seen my house, do you really want ours to look like that?”
“Good point. I’ll handle most of it for now.”
“Hang on a second, my phone is buzzing in my ear. Someone is trying to call.” He pulled it back and looked at the caller, then frowned. “I’ve got to go. It’s Seth. He’s never called me before, so it might be important.”
“Okay. Let me know what’s going on when you can.”
***
After calling in some favors and throwing more money around to secure a private jet, Zach found himself pulling into a rundown apartment complex outside of Montgomery, Alabama.
Too many memories were starting to resurface, mixed in with the guilt that Seth and Bri lived here.
He found the apartment and knocked on the door. Seth knew he was coming and opened it up in an instant.
“I’m sorry to call you, Zach,” Seth said. “But it’s been four days since Mom has been home and now she isn’t answering her phone.”
Bri stumbled out of a door leading into a hallway. “What you are doing here? Why did you call him, Seth?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. It was several hours past midnight at this point.
“Because we don’t know where Mom is.”
“He doesn’t care,” Bri said.
“Bri’s right. I don’t care where our mother is. I do care about the fact that you two have been left alone for four days without any parental support.”
“Please,” Bri said. “We’ve been left alone before.”
“Never this long, though,” Seth said. “And she always told us where she was. We could always reach her.”
“Where’s your father? Does he know?” Zach asked, wondering how bad things really were.
“He knows. He’s working. He got a job working nights. He dropped money off for us two days ago so we could get some food.”
“Seth,” Bri said, her face turning red.
“What?” Seth said. “He has a right to know. Why are you protecting Mom? I don’t get it.”
“I’m not protecting her,” Bri argued.
“Then what?” Zach asked. “Why didn’t you at least call Grandma?”
Bri crossed her arms and pressed her lips together, but the stare Zach was sending her finally made her speak. “Because then we might be taken away. I don’t want to be put into foster care. I don’t want to leave or move. I just want to graduate. It’s less than two months.”
“None of that is going to happen,” Zach said. “I’m not going to let it happen.”
“What can you do about it?” she asked stubbornly.
He looked around the dingy apartment. “The first thing I can do is get you two out of here. Pack a bag, we’re going to my hotel.”
The next morning while both kids were still sleeping, Zach sent a text to his mother. He figured he’d get a response rather fast, and he did.
When his phone rang, he got up and walked into the hallway to answer it.
“Where are you?” he asked his mother.
“Why, what’s going on?” Jody asked. It was always Jody to him.
“What’s going on? What’s going on is that I’m in a hotel with Seth and Bri right now. Where are you? Where have you been for the last several days while they’ve tried to reach you?” There was silence on the other end. After about ten seconds, he finally said, “Forget it. Wherever you are, get your ass back by tonight. We’ll talk then.”
He didn’t give her a chance to say another word. Instead, he went back into the room and decided to let the kids sleep in. They could miss school for the day at this point. He needed more information and he was only going to get it from them.
Around four o’clock, the apartment door opened and in walked his mother, all high and mighty. He hadn’t seen her in years, avoiding her as much as he could.
She hadn’t changed much. She could be pretty if she took better care of herself, and he wondered why that thought even crossed his mind. It always bothered him he looked so much like her, nothing much like the father he’d never met.
“I appreciate you coming to look after the kids,” she said. “Their father should have been keeping them in line.”
“I spoke with him. He was upset over everything,” Zach said coolly.
“He should be. It was his week to have them.”
“Really? Why were they at your apartment and not his house, then?”
“I dropped them off at Scott’s house,” she insisted.
“Five days ago?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes. I don’t know why they ended up back here.”
“Maybe if you answered your phone when they tried to call you, you’d know he got a job and he was working the entire time. That as far as he knew, he only had them for the weekend and brought them home on Monday. Where they should have been so they could get the bus for school.”
She wouldn’t make eye contact with him, just proving she was lying to him once again.
“They’re fine. I don’t know what the big deal is. They’re responsible kids.”
“Kids!” he yelled. “That’s right. They’re kids. You’re their mother and you should be there for them. Where were you? With some guy?”
“That’s none of your business,” she snapped back.
Which proved he was right. “You haven’t changed a damn bit. Nothing in all these years.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you came around more, you’d know I’m not the kid I was when I had you. But you couldn’t be bothered to show your face after you graduated from Harvard. After you got your big career and life. You acted like we didn’t even exist. That I didn’t even exist.”
That was laughable to him and he was too far gone to even care right now. “You really want to go there? Really? How about all those times you ditched me when I was a kid? You know, never mind, let’s move forward to when you were twenty-one and I was four. Then you’re an adult. A legal adult. We’ll skip past the years that you just left me with Grandma and Grandpa and went out partying. No need to rehash that. Or the fact that when I was with you—the times you were forced to spend time with me—you completely ignored my existence.”
She just walked out of the room and into the kitchen, completely ignoring him again. So he followed her. After she’d opened a can of soda, she turned and asked him, “Where are Seth and Bri now?”
He shook his head. “The mall. I gave them money and dropped them off and told them to buy anything they needed.”
“If you’d done that more often, they wouldn’t need anything. I wouldn’t need anything.”
“Paying for this apartment for six months wasn’t enough? While you’re out sleeping around, rather than trying to find a job to support them.” When she glared at him, he said, “Yeah, they told me. Since they visited over the Christmas break, they’ve been telling me more. You didn’t know that though, did you?”
“They’re at that age where they don’t want much to do with me,” she complained.
“I’m sure it’s not the age that has anything to do with it. But you know something? I’m going to lay it all out to you nice and clear. We’re both adults now, so no excuses on your part. This is the last time I’m coming here. You want to know why I don’t want anything to do with you? Let’s start adding things up. So you’re twenty-two—an adult—and what do you do? You go the store with me, my backpack on, and you start stealing things. Do you put them in your purse? Nope, you put them in my backpack while I’m wearing it. Didn’t think I knew that, did you? Didn’t think I’d remember that?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, walking out of the kitchen, her back to him.
He grabbed her arm. “Look at me. I’m not stupid. Even if I didn’t remember it being done, even if I didn’t remember you getting caught and telling me not to tell anyone when you were pulled into security, I remember you bragging about it to your friends one night. About all the things you managed to get away with.”
Her face turned red. “It was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, it was. One of the wonderful memories I’ve got about my mother. So let’s move on. Multiple guys in and out of your life. Their names are all a blur. All I remember was they were more important than me.”
“You were closer to my parents than me,” she argued.
“It’s no wonder why. At least they cared about me. At least they loved me.” She couldn’t be this cold, but she was.
“What’s your point, Zach?”
“My point is—you’ve never been there for me. Not one day in my life. Not when you married Scott, then moved away with him. Not when you decided another family was more important than the one you had years before. Not when I graduated from high school. Not even college. When did you decide I was good enough to be a part of your life? When I bought Grandma and Grandpa that house and moved them by me. When you saw what I’d made of myself and realized maybe it was time to cash in on that ticket.”
“A lotta good that’s done me. You’ve hardly given me anything.”
“You’re damn right. And it’s not going to change. But what is going to change is this. I’m going to talk to Bri and Seth and figure out what to do for the rest of this school year so they can finish the next few months up. Then next year, if they want to come back to Richmond, somehow I’m going to make it happen. And if it’s not Richmond, then I’m taking them back to Lake Placid with me.”
“Lake Placid?” she asked. “What’s there?”
“Don’t you wish you knew?” he said. “But I’ll tell you this. I’m going to get the kids at the mall now. And I’m going to have a long talk with them. We’ll tell you our decision. Not ask, because you don’t deserve that, but we’ll tell you. And you’re going to accept it, because you’ve got no choice in the matter.”
“I’m their mother,” she argued, b
ut it was half-hearted at best. “Their legal guardian.”
“Do you think the courts would want to know what their mother—their legal guardian—has been doing in the last year? Do you have the money to fight me in court? Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
He grabbed his jacket and walked out, slamming the door behind him. In his eyes, the past was over with. He’d said what had been eating at him for his whole life. Things he’d never said to another person.
Now he could move on. Now he could move past it, hoping he’d be free from her forever.
Be There
The next morning, Amber was still waiting for word from Zach. Last she knew, he was flying to see Bri and Seth, that they’d been left alone for days. But nothing more. He’d said he’d call her, or send her a message, and she hoped everything was fine.
She was just getting ready to send him a message when her phone started ringing and she saw it was her father. What could he be doing calling this early in the morning?
“Hi, Dad. What’s going on?”
“It’s your mom. Something isn’t right,” he said, his voice urgent.
Amber grabbed her purse and jacket and started to move toward the door. “Tell me what’s wrong. What do you see?”
“She’s slurring her words and she’s panicked over it. Like she doesn’t realize they’re coming out slurred.”
“What else?”
“She’s having trouble moving her left arm. She can lift it a little but not move her fingers.”
“Hang up and call 911. It sounds like she’s having a stroke. I’m on my way to the hospital now. I’ll meet you there,” she said, disconnecting the call and running out the door.
Several hours later, Amber was sitting in the waiting room with her father while more tests were being run on her mother. Preliminary findings were pointing to a mild stroke. The question was why.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” her father asked her.
“She’s stubborn enough to be,” Amber said.
She didn’t know what else to say at this point. All their fights and disagreements had to be put aside. This was her mother. And though they didn’t agree on much and barely got along, she still loved her.
