He stands and brushes off his hands. “No way. Those cards aren’t replaceable. They… they’re important to me. Please?” His eyes turn pleading. “Will you please help me look?”
I don’t know why he’s so obsessed with something he’s managed to live without for ten years, but I don’t have the heart to continue arguing with him. And honestly, if he keeps pouting with those puppy dog eyes of his there’s no telling what I’ll do to please him.
“Fine,” I say, totally caving.
God. What is it with this guy?
“Awesome.” He smiles. “The baseball cards are in a green box about this big”—he holds his hands out in a shape of a square—“with a red ribbon around the lid.”
I nod and we begin our search. Though it’s not a very efficient search, since we’re, you know, in handcuffs and can’t split up to cover more ground. And our movements are awkward as hell as we move from room to room, each of us trying to go in different directions. We’re not smooth at all, especially once we reach the kitchen.
As we walk past the cabinets, the handcuffs snag on a drawer and cause Daren to lose his balance. He knocks into me, I knock into the table, the table knocks into the wall, and then a picture falls off the wall as I topple toward the floor. Daren quickly grabs my waist and pulls me upright but the framed photo crashes to the tile and shards of glass skid everywhere.
Not. Smooth. At all.
“Wow,” I say slowly. “That was like something out of a cartoon.” I jingle our handcuffs. “We’re not very coordinated with these things, are we?”
“Not in the slightest,” he says with a quiet chuckle. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I realize he’s still holding me and the tips of his fingers suddenly feel hot on my hips.
I casually slip out of his grasp and try not to make eye contact with him. Instead I look at the kitchen floor. Shattered glass splinters out from the busted picture frame, leaving a photograph bent and buried beneath the rubble. I carefully retrieve the fallen picture from the glass.
It’s a photo of me with my parents at one of our family picnics. My mom is dressed in all white with an orange scarf in her hair and pink lipstick, and I’m in a polka-dot dress with a pair of Mary Janes, holding up a white rose.
White roses were a common item my dad would ask us to find on our mother-daughter scavenger hunts because they grow wild all over Copper Springs. Mom would always pick them so I wouldn’t prick my finger on the thorns. Then we’d bring them back to my dad and he would cut off every thorn before handing them back to me to keep. I inwardly smile. I loved those scavenger hunts. They always started the same way: with the first clue written on a small piece of paper tucked into an envelope, just like the ones in the blue suitcase…
My heart skips a beat.
No. No way.
My father wouldn’t stage a scavenger hunt to collect the inheritance money… would he?
No. That would be preposterous.
Shaking my head with a sigh of relief, I gaze down at the photograph and run a finger over my parents’ happy faces. I’ve seen this picture a thousand times, but now that the happy people in the photograph are gone, it means so much more to me. I glance at the wall where a square of paint, slightly darker than the rest of the wall, shows where the frame used to be. I’m surprised my dad kept this picture hanging up all these years.
When my mom left, she broke my dad’s heart. He was careful never to bad-mouth her when I’d come stay with him during the summer, but I wasn’t blind. I could see the hurt on his face whenever he’d mention her.
My mom was no angel. She was smart and friendly, but she was terribly selfish. She said my dad was too good for her and that’s why she left him. That he treated her like a queen and it put too much pressure on her. While that was probably all true, I think the real reason my mom left is because she didn’t want to be tied down to a nice guy in a small town. She wanted drama in a big city.
She got it.
“Polka dots,” Daren says, leaning over my shoulder as he looks at the picture. “Nice.”
I hurriedly tuck the photo into my purse. “I don’t think your baseball cards are in the kitchen. Let’s move along.”
We spend the next hour riffling through my dad’s house and all his things. It’s a weird feeling, being back in the place I grew up. Nothing much has changed. The furniture is still in the same place. The mail is still piled by the back door. And pictures of my mother and me still hang on the walls. Like we still live here. Like he never cut us out of his life.
I’m not sure if this breaks my heart or infuriates me. Either way, it’s an enormous contradiction to his behavior these last few years.
After we’ve ransacked all the bedrooms, Daren and I move down the hallway and into the study. The study was my father’s special place to work and think. It was his favorite room in the house and mine too.
It looks exactly the way I remember. The walls are still lined with books and the large globe I used to spin around and around as a child still stands in the corner, now coated with dust.
And of course the study still smells like smoky vanilla.
I try to ignore the burning behind my eyes as I sift through my father’s personal belongings, but it’s almost too much. The pictures. The vanilla. The lingering presence of all my happy memories.
Daren opens the top drawer of my dad’s old desk and freezes. Then he looks at me. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
I wrinkle my brow. “What?”
He pulls a stack of papers from the drawer and drops them on the desk with a thwack. Dust flurries go flying from beneath what looks like a collection of bank statements.
He clucks his tongue admonishingly. “Kayla Turner, you little fibber.”
“What are you talking about?”
He points to the top of the page where it reads KAYLA TURNER TRUST FUND in bold letters and my jaw drops.
“What?” I say in a near whisper as I scan the first few pages in disbelief. It does indeed look like I have a trust fund set up in my name. Or had a trust fund.
The statements show a series of withdrawals over the past few years, some large, some small, with the last one being two years ago. The trust fund now has a balance of zero.
Beside me, Daren lets out a quiet whistle. “Wow. You burned through that pretty fast.”
I blink rapidly, staring at the statements in complete and utter confusion. “I didn’t… I can’t…”
“In the future,” he says, scratching his cheek, “if someone asks you if you have a trust fund, the correct answer is yes. Even though yours has no more money in it. Fibber.”
I look at him. “This isn’t right.”
“Don’t get me wrong. You’re a hot fibber.” He grins. “But you’re a fibber nonetheless. Not that I blame you. My entire identity is built on fibs—”
“No. You don’t understand. I’ve never seen this before in my life.” I hold up the papers. “I never had a trust fund. Hell, I barely had a bank account. My dad must have set this up and used it himself.”
He squints at one of the pages in my hand. “Then why were all the withdrawals made in Chicago?”
He points and I follow his finger to the location details for each withdrawal. Every single one reads CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
“What? This makes no sense.” I shake my head.
He studies me. “You really didn’t know about this trust fund?”
“No! My father never mentioned it to me. Not once.”
He frowns. “Then who made all the withdrawals? Your mom?”
“I guess…”