“Why?” Christy wondered. “How much do they cost?”
Moira answered without looking up, “As much as a Mercedes convertible.”
“Oh, okay.” Christy’s blithe reaction earned a tight-lipped sigh from Moira.
“That’s why we hired you,” I said.
“I understand.”
She arranged everything over the next couple of weeks. She paid off Christy’s old credit cards and gave her a new one. Then she put her on a strict allowance. My jaw dropped when she told her the amount, but Moira acted like it was nothing.
“But I need to warn you,” she told Christy, “this is all you get for the month. You won’t get any more once you reach your limit, even if it’s still the first of the month.”
Christy normally would have argued, sulked, or simply “forgotten,” but she actually listened to Moira.
“Oh my gosh, Paul,” she said later, “she was so disappointed when I spent too much on the car.”
I barely controlled my reaction. I’d done the same thing! Why hadn’t it worked for me?
Do you really wanna know? the little head asked wryly.
Oh, shut up! No one asked you.
Christy still had a checking account and debit card for household expenses, but she stopped overspending with them too. At first I thought she must’ve balanced her checkbook, but she’d never done it before, not in the twenty-plus years I’d known her.
The answer was simpler, which made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of it. Moira had taught her the trick of calling the bank’s automated number to find out the balance. She’d even programmed the number into her cell phone for her.
Our lives improved dramatically once Christy had her own bank account. I still thought she spent too much, but I kept it to myself. It was her money, after all, and it made her happy. Besides I benefited from most of it, especially the lingerie and jewelry.
Looking back, I wish I could’ve frozen our lives at that point, the summer of 2002. Christy and I were both happy. Our marriage was healthy, and our careers were going well. She’d been sober almost a year and was determined to stay that way—she and Rich went to regular AA meetings at their church. The girls were happier than they’d been in a long time. Even the dogs seemed content.
Then we received a phone call from my mom.
* * *
We headed to the airport the next day. My parents were already at the private terminal when we arrived. Trip and Wren were too, along with their kids. Our girls popped their seatbelts as soon as the SUV stopped moving, and Laurie and Emily opened the doors.
“Whoa! Take your bags with you,” I told them. “Dad’s taxi doesn’t do luggage.”
Laurie immediately reached into the back, but Emily looked like she wanted to argue. She saw me watching and grinned sheepishly. Then she retrieved Susie’s backpack and handed it to her before she grabbed her own.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Laurie start to run toward the terminal before she realized that Davis would be watching. She was more self-conscious around him lately, and she slowed to a ladylike walk instead. Davis was thirteen and just like his father—tall, good-looking, athletic, and popular. He and Laurie had grown up together, almost brother and sister, but she’d begun to look at him differently.
Susie slammed the car door with the force of a gorilla. Then she and Emily raced past Laurie without a second thought. They didn’t care about Davis or boys or any of that mushy stuff. They just wanted to compare Bratz doll outfits with Missy.
I sighed. “This is just a big adventure to them.”
“They’re young,” Christy said. “No one close to them has died before.”
“Nana C.”
“She was old already. Besides, they remember 9/11 more than the funeral.”
“True.”
“What about you?” Christy said after a moment. “Are you okay?”
“No. But yeah.”
We talked for another minute before we headed inside with our suitcases. My mom had been crying, but I barely had time to hug her before my dad and Emily interrupted. She wanted to fly copilot, and he was fine with it.
He could handle the plane by himself, but two pilots were always safer. Emily had sixty hours of student flight time, but never in a plane as big as the King Air.
“Are you sure?” I asked Dad.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “She handles the radios and nav better than you do.”
“Gee, thanks!”
“Come on, Short Stuff,” he said to her. “Let’s go do the preflight walk-around.”
We boarded the plane about twenty minutes later, and I was glad I didn’t have to fly. I sank into a funk and didn’t snap out of it until we landed. The flight could’ve been one hour or five, but I wouldn’t have known the difference.
“Are you really okay?” Christy asked as we drove to the hotel.
“I will be,” I said. “We just have to get through the next few days.”
“Mmm. Why don’t I take the girls swimming before dinner?”
That made me smile. “You just want to go swimming yourself.”
“So sue me. You could come too. It might take your mind off it.”
Trip and Wren and their kids joined us at the pool, and we spent the rest of the afternoon acting like a couple of families on vacation. We weren’t, of course, but we pretended anyway.
We ate breakfast with my parents the next morning and then returned to our rooms to get ready. The memorial service was scheduled for eleven, and we wanted to arrive early.
Emily and I were dressed and ready by ten, but we were the only ones, as usual. Christy was putting on her makeup and Laurie was still in the shower. I wasn’t sure where Susie was, so I went looking for her. I found her in the corner in the adjoining room, staring out the window. She was dressed except for her shoes, although she hadn’t fixed her hair.
“Hey, Suse, it’s supposed to be hot,” I said. “Do you want to put your hair up?”
She didn’t react.
“Suse?” Nothing. “Susie?” Still nothing. “Hey, Boo,” I called, a little louder.
She blinked and looked away from the window. “What?”
I repeated my question in a normal voice, “Do you want to do anything with your hair?”
She shrugged. “I suppose.”
“Want some help?”
“Yes, please.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, and she moved to stand in front of me. I took a brush from the nightstand and pulled it through her dark hair. It was the same color as mine, but thick and naturally wavy, like Christy’s. Her eyes were Christy’s too, while the rest was all me, including her tendency to brood. At least I knew how to deal with it.
“Britney Spears?” I asked, shorthand for pigtails.
Susie shook her head.
“High pony?”
Another headshake.
“Okay. Then… how?”
“Hillary Duff, please.”
“Chopsticks?”
She nodded.
“Can do.”
I brushed for another minute before I pulled her hair into a ponytail-bun. She tugged a hairband from her wrist and handed it over her shoulder without a word. I snapped it around the ponytail and reached for the chopsticks. They were made to be hair ornaments, with little rhinestones on the thicker ends. I stuck two of them at right angles through the ponytail and then fluffed it out.
“Check in the mirror?”
Susie shook her head.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded, although she was working up to something.
“Dad…?” she said at last. “I’ve been thinking… about my name.”
“What about it?”
“I think you should call me Susan now.”
“Why, sweetie?”
“Because she’d like it. Susan, I mean. Up in heaven.”
* * *
Four days earlier, Susan MacLean had been sitting at a red light when a Ford F150 rear-ended her Cherokee. The other driver had been distracted by his cell phone. The impact knocked Susan’s car into the intersection. An oncoming tractor-trailer didn’t even have time to swerve. It slammed into the Cherokee on the driver’s side. Susan survived the second impact, but she died from her injuries before the medevac helicopter arrived. She was sixty-two, still so young.