Bad Heiress Day (13 page)

“Oh, Jack.”

“Yeah, well, I think you should do this. I think you
need
to do this. I understand it, sort of, but even if I don’t, there seems to be a part of you wrapped up in it.” He seemed to want to say more, but couldn’t quite find the words. “You’re not done, yet, though, open the others.”

The second silver case made Darcy laugh out loud. Its cards read Kate Owens, Vice President, The Restoration Project.

“Oh, Jack, she’ll love this. I love this. Thank you.”

The cream-colored envelope held a small note that read in Jack’s efficient script:

I
YOU

I.O. TRP $2K

It took her a moment to unscramble the alphabet soup of his wording, but she smiled when she did. It was pure Jack. He’d found a way to offer his approval in a bits-and-pieces approach that his CPA soul could handle. She almost loved him more for his transparent honesty than if he’d told her to give the whole inheritance away. That would have been wrong for him. This meant, to her, that he was taking it very seriously. And that was wonderful.

“Take your two grand and run with it, Dar. Let that pilot project idea of yours fly. Then we’ll come back, evaluate and see where we go from there.”

She had envisioned the moment when Jack would give his approval. She’d thought of herself jumping with excitement, whooping with victory, even. Instead, what she found was a simple, quiet, almost pure joy. The perfect, silent sound of a plan snapping into place. Of a God engineering all the details to a marvelous outcome. What had Glynnis called it? Exceeding our expectations.

Oh, He’d surely done that.

Way to go, God. Thanks.

She imagined herself high-fiving The Lord Almighty.

Then, better yet, she could picture her father doing the same.

D
arcy sat in Ernestine’s salon, fresh from a trim and touch-up on her hair. She paged through the November edition of
Good Housekeeping,
scanning for Thanksgiving recipes while she waited for Kate to finish her “regularly scheduled maintenance.” They’d piled in the car for a celebratory appointment this morning after Darcy had presented Kate with her new business cards. Darcy wasn’t sure it was ethical to send up a prayer for openings in a stylist’s schedule, but God had evidently granted her some leeway: Ernestine had been booked, but she’d squeezed in “the comfortably drastic girls” as she called them, as a favor.

The magazine’s food section served up a stunning-looking turkey with orange-sage dressing. Darcy smiled. To her father, stuffing had always been the whole point of Thanksgiving. He had seven different “secret family recipes.” Paul hadn’t been an especially good cook—he had kept to the three-ingredient-ground-beef-based ba
sics like most single men—and as Darcy had been in high school when her mother died, he had mostly cooked for one.

On Thanksgiving, however, all bets were off. Paul bought one of those deep-frying contraptions long before cooking turkeys in that fashion became the fad. The man lived to, as he called it, “cook The Bird” every November. But more than that, he lived to concoct the perfect assembly of ingredients to stuff that bird to perfection. Hartwell stuffing was, as Dad liked to put it, “the stuff of legend.”

Two years ago, Paul wasn’t in perfect health, but he was well enough to make a turkey worthy of his legend. Darcy had offered to help with the side dishes, and they’d had everything at her house—it helped to claim that they couldn’t all fit at Paul’s small dining table anyhow. Sure, it had been altered a bit, but most of it felt like the traditional Hartwell holiday.

Last year, he’d quietly handed her all seven of his stuffing recipes with a pained look in his eyes.

Jack, God bless him, had gone over to Paul’s house, hauled out the deep fryer, pulled the cooking instructions off the Internet (Dad never did keep the manuals to anything), and “cooked The Bird.” Dad was bundled up in the mud room on a recliner they’d put there just so he could “supervise.”

The realization that this year would be different—that forever would be different—burned in her chest like hot oil.

Thanksgiving without Dad.

Christmas without Dad.

Life
without Dad.

Even though she’d gone two weeks without crying, the tears came fast and uninvited. Could she stand the sight
of the turkey fryer sending up smoke off the back deck? Would it be a welcome memorial, or a reopened wound?

“Hey, you okay?” Kate’s voice came over her shoulder and a hand touched her arm.

“Sort of.”

“Not sort of.” Kate glanced at the magazine, understanding dawning on her face. “It’s going to be different this year. Hard. But you’ll make it. You’ll make a new kind of Thanksgiving.”

Darcy looked up, suddenly feeling like she was five years old. “I don’t want a new kind of Thanksgiving.” She wanted to stick her trembling lip out and pout.

“I know.” Kate pulled a tissue from the box that sat on a table behind her and handed it to Darcy.

Darcy blew her nose. “Can we just cancel the holiday season this year? Go straight to something harmless like President’s Day?”

Kate plopped down on the seat beside her. “I’m not so sure Mike and Paula would go for that. Especially since they have the Grand Lady of Great Gift Giving as their mother. Christmas is your prime season, girl.”

“Yeah, well everyone may just get department store gift cards this year, I’m warning you.” Darcy reached across Kate’s lap to snag another tissue.

“Hey,” Kate’s voice was soft and suddenly serious. “No one would blame you.”

There was a stretch of silence. Darcy sighed, feeling the tears subside. “I suppose.”

“Just take it slow. Think of Thanksgiving as a warm-up. Do what feels good, and give the rest the boot. Keep the stuff you like and that helps you to remember, and forget anything that feels like it’ll hurt too much. Cut yourself some slack.”

“You’re right.”

Kate took a deep breath. “Yeah, well I have just two words for you.”

Darcy looked up.

“Extra crispy.”

Darcy smiled. “Mmm. I like the sound of that.” She folded the magazine back into her purse.

Kate pulled Darcy up out of her chair and hummed “Hail to the Chief” all the way out the door.

An hour later, they were pulling off the exit ramp toward home. “Man,” Darcy sighed, “I love this little car. It’s such a terrific break from the mom-in-a-minivan existence. I can’t remember the last time I was in a car with less than ten cup holders.”

“Don took the van to work today. He’s stopping at Home Depot on the way home.”

Darcy let out a moan of recognition. “What now?”

“New garage shelving.”

“Our garage doesn’t even
have
shelves, much less new ones.”

“Ah, the joys of being married to Mr. Home Improvement.” Kate rummaged through the bucket for another drumstick. “You got the sports guy, I got the power tool guy.”

Darcy passed her a napkin. “Thanks again for your idea. I’d have never dreamed up the basketballs without you. It was just…wonderful.”

“My pleasure.”

“Speaking of wonderful, are you free Friday morning? I want to set a meeting with Meredith to pick the test group. I thought I’d invite Doug Whitman, too.”

“Whitman? The Pastor Whitman from your dad’s church?”

“Yes. I think he can help with the families and he works with Meredith a lot. I haven’t told him yet, but I think he’ll really buy into the idea.”

“O-kay,” Kate drew the word out in a skeptical drawl. It didn’t take Mike’s mathematical mind to see she wasn’t keen on the idea.

“Kate, he’s an okay guy. And he seems to have a pretty good take on this whole weird setup Dad handed me. I mean, nobody really knew what Dad was doing, what he had in mind, but I think Doug comes close. I trust him.”

Kate deposited another drumstick bone in the paper sack. “This is the guy who didn’t instantly ask you to fund the new church nursery, right?”

“Yup, that’s him.”

Kate was thinking, biting her lower lip in that way she did when she was frustrated or uncomfortable. After a moment, she said without taking her eyes off the road, “This isn’t gonna get all churchy, is it?”

Well, now, that was the question of the hour. If God was behind this idea…
wait.
Darcy’s own internal dialogue made her stop and question herself. She thought God was behind this, didn’t she? Really, truly? But was she sure? Could this be just some emotional response to her father’s death, his secrets and her desire to make things add up sensibly?

No, there were no doubts. She knew. She knew it down to her toes, even though the knowledge both surprised and scared her. God had exploded into her life, surrounded her, and camped out on the doorstep of her soul until she cracked the door open and finally let Him in.

If faith was supposed to be a comfort, this was the most uncomfortable faith she’d ever known.

But it was also more alive, more captivating and more irresistible than she’d ever imagined. It pulled the rug out from underneath her, but it also sent her soaring.

This God was nothing like she’d remembered. Surely nothing she had expected.

She imagined He rather enjoyed that.

All of which made it rather hard to answer Kate’s pointed question. Dear friend and coconspirator that she was, Kate didn’t really have an understanding of the spiritual side of what Darcy wanted to do. For goodness sake,
Darcy
didn’t even have an understanding of the spiritual side of this crazy endeavor. It hadn’t started that way, but God’s hand in this was becoming unmistakable. Unignorable.

Would Kate understand?

Was Darcy even ready to try to make her understand?

Darcy settled on the truth. “You know, I’m not really sure.”

“Your dad’s faith was a big part of his life,” came Kate’s soft reply. It was an odd, noncommittal response. Not really a response at all, actually. The tiny car grew a bit tense. They had never talked about this kind of thing. It felt like very foreign ground between two friends who shared just about every detail of their lives with each other. Darcy grasped for a comfortable way to broach the subject.

“I’m coming to understand some things. Get a sense of what it is that my dad believed so strongly in. Glynnis has been teaching me a lot.” Did Kate tense up at the mention of Glynnis, or did she just imagine that? “Other stuff has just sort of—” she groped for the right verb “—dawned on me on my own.”
Eeek, Lord, I’m drowning here. A little help, please?

“Does it help?” Kate’s question was sincere, not judgmental.

And, it was a really good question. Perhaps the most important of all. One, thankfully, with a solid answer. “Yes. It does. A lot.”

Kate didn’t reply.

Come on, Lord, I can’t just leave it like this.

Darcy tried again. “Look, it’s true that faith is becoming a bigger part of my life. I’m not one hundred percent used to it yet, but it means a lot to me. And…and I won’t deny that it hasn’t become wrapped up in this whole project—but I think that’s a good thing. I know I’m supposed to be doing this.” Darcy looked at Kate. “I know
you’re
supposed to be doing this.”

Kate got that I’m-not-so-sure-I’m-ready-to-be-dragged-into-this look. Darcy touched her arm. “I’m pretty sure, too, that no one’s going to part the Ohio River so we can wander in Kentucky for forty years or anything like that.”

Kate laughed. Darcy was glad for it. The tension lifted. “I’m still here,” she continued. “We’re still us.”

“Yeah, only with better hair.”

“Well, we’ve got to practice what we preach, don’t we?”

Kate shot her a look. “
Are
we preaching?”

“I have no idea,” was Darcy’s completely honest answer. “But I imagine we’ll find out.”

“D
arcy, I think it’s an extraordinary idea. I can’t think of a better use for the money.” Doug Whitman looked like he really meant it. Underfunded nursery and all.

“Thanks. I appreciate your support.”

“I had a feeling there needed to be an unusual, creative end to this. That your dad had more in mind than you whipping a check off to some charity.” Whitman’s face lit up in a warm, reminiscent smile, as if remembering some great joke Paul Hartwell had told him. “I think this is exactly what he had in mind. He’d be proud, Darcy.”

Darcy thought of her father smiling down on the tumble of circumstances that had been her life since September. The image caught in the back of her throat like tears. “Yep,” was all she could choke out.

Kate handed Darcy a tissue. Kate was always handing Darcy tissues. It was a good thing in life, Darcy thought, to have someone by your side, ready to hand you tissues.
“We’re still not in the clear yet, this is only a test run. Of course, we know the results will be irrefutable evidence for a full-scale project, right?” The four people in the room chimed in their affirmation. Kate smiled. “Just so we’re all ready.”

Ready? How can someone be ready for something like this? Willing, yes. Able, well, that remained to be seen. Ready? Darcy felt she was both born ready to do this, and that she couldn’t be ready for this in a hundred years of preparation.

Meredith produced a sheet of paper, handing copies to each of them. “I’ve taken the liberty of going ahead with Darcy’s request, and identifying five candidates. They are a variety of ages and situations, Darcy, just as you asked. Three of them are from the Center, the other two are members of Doug’s church who have ill family members living at home.”

“At home?” Kate asked.

“Far more people are dealing with end-of-life care within their own homes than have access to hospice centers like this one. It makes for some unique issues, and in many ways the stress is even greater without a medical staff continually present.”

“You’re right, Meredith, I hadn’t even thought of that,” Darcy replied. “I’m sure glad you guys are in on this.”

“We’ve got the salons and spas onboard,” added Kate. “Three of them, actually. It was an easy sell—they all think it’s a great idea. As a matter of fact, each of them threw in services gratis so that TRP funds will go even farther. Two of them have packages that already include coffee and lunch, so we’re good to go.”

Darcy ran her eyes down the page. Five lives, five tragedies, spread themselves out before her.

Anne Morton was caring for her father-in-law who was in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s. An eighty-seven-year-old man who could carry on a lucid conversation one hour, then be found standing in the garage in his underwear the next. Mr. Morton’s other children had sent regular checks, but left the gargantuan tasks of daily care to Anne and her husband.

Jean Tinsdale was caring for a sister, Margaret, in the final stages of breast cancer. A double mastectomy and endless rounds of chemo had failed to keep the beast of a disease at bay. The endema from the operations and treatments had swelled one arm to the point of uselessness. Margaret was running out of options, and running out of time. Now in her late forties, Margaret had never married. Jean was engaged, but the wedding had been postponed twice in the faint hopes of Margaret’s recovery.

Darcy knew what it was like to put your life on hold. And on hold again.

Frances Neyburg was watching heart disease take her husband from her one day at a time. He would not live to meet their grandchildren.

Michelle Porter’s baby had endured seven surgeries in his first year of life. None had helped. When other mothers were waiting for their babies’ first steps, Michelle was steeling herself for her baby’s last breaths. Alongside a husband who was not, by any means, coping well with the tragedy.

The last candidate was the most surprising. Noreen McDylan and her husband Ian were a couple in their fifties who had no children of their own, but spent their days caring for a succession of gravely ill foster children. Life had not handed the McDylans this cruel card; they’d taken it for themselves. Darcy couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of person could have the strength to do that.

Meredith must have followed Darcy’s eyes, for she caught Darcy’s wrist. “I know, can you imagine? The McDylans are angels, pure and simple.”

Doug Whitman piped in. “They’ve been doing this for seven years. I honestly don’t know how their hearts can stand the constant loss. You’d think they’d earn admiration—well, this year they’ve earned a cutback in their support funding, so that now they’re just scraping by. Ian’s diabetes has been acting up, and they’re trying to find enough funds to meet all the medical expenses for both the children and themselves.”

Darcy sat there, staring at the profiles, and begged God to make this thing fly.

“To top it all off,” Doug continued, his voice sharp with the injustice of it all, “Ian had a nephew who worked in the Pentagon. It took five of us to cover for them so they could both attend the funeral.”

“This is really heartbreaking,” said Kate, obviously affected. “Talk about trauma. There’s a whole year’s worth of
E.R.
episodes on this one page.” She looked at Meredith with a sort of awe. “How do you handle it? Day after day?”

Meredith shrugged. “Not everyone can.”

Kate tapped the page with her hand, “No one gave them a choice, did they?”

Darcy clenched her fists. These people needed to know their toil was noticed. That they were human beings, deserving of rich lives of their own, not just caretaking machines who could give and give and give without cost.

She was about to voice her conviction when her cell phone went off. Her speed dial recognized the number as Paula’s school. Darcy snagged it out of her purse and ducked into the hallway to take the call.

Two minutes later she popped her head back into the room, snapping her flip-phone closed in disgust. “Paula just threw up in gym. Excuse me, folks, seems I have a little trauma of my own to take care of.”

In a single, swift arc, Meredith popped open the door of the credenza behind her, reached back, and sent an object flying in Darcy’s direction. She recognized the industrial gray color and shape immediately, and caught it midair with a chuckle.

Kate looked confused. As Darcy headed out the door, she heard Meredith’s amused voice explaining what an emesis basin was, and why anyone worth their salt here at the center could produce one of the “vomit pans” at a moment’s notice.

Welcome to my world, ladies and gentlemen, Darcy thought as she left the pair in Meredith’s capable hands.

On day three of crackers, ginger ale and ice pops, Paula was just about returning to human state. Mike, however, had let it slip over breakfast that he wasn’t feeling so hot. It was 2:00 p.m., which meant that he’d made it through the school day, which was good, because Darcy didn’t cherish the idea of stuffing pale little Paula into the van to go fetch Mike from the nurse’s office. Darcy calculated Mike would make it until about four o’clock, and then the festivities would begin all over again. Good thing she’d asked Jack to pick up more soda, crackers and half a dozen videos at the store on the way home this evening. At least it was Friday.

Better now than at Thanksgiving, she tried to encourage herself. It wasn’t really working. And it didn’t really matter that it was Friday, she suddenly remembered, because Jack had to go into work tomorrow. Sometimes it
was hard to decide which was worse, the poor souls who got laid off, or the bedraggled souls who had to hold down an oversize workload.

Bedraggled.
That was the word for it. She and Jack were both bedraggled.

Darcy kissed Paula’s sweaty little forehead. At least Paula had finally fallen asleep, even if it did mean Darcy had lost the circulation in her left arm as Paula slept against it. At last, a respite from another
Arthur
episode. She could practically recite the dialogue, she’d seen it so many in the past three days. And she was getting ready to pledge a second time to her local PBS station just to get those perky pledge drive people off the air faster.

Darcy couldn’t get up off the couch—no sense risking that until Paula was more soundly asleep. She couldn’t reach the TV remote, not that she wanted it on now anyway. Scanning the room for something within reach to pass the time, her eyes landed on the coffee table drawer. The little side drawer nobody ever opened. She angled her body just so and caught the knob, pulling the drawer open. She couldn’t see into the drawer, but her hand found what she knew was in there, her father’s letter and his Bible. The other contents from The Box had gone into the fire safe downstairs, but for some strange reason she’d wanted these things up here, close by. Even though she’d not opened the drawer since she put those articles inside nearly three weeks ago. Now, with Paul Hartwell’s namesake asleep in her arms, the time seemed right to bring them back out.

It still astounded her how five slips of paper could turn a life inside out. Why keep the lawsuit settlement such a secret? Why go to such extremes? If Paul couldn’t give
the money away, how could a man of his emotional and spiritual health not handle life enough to make good use of the money? It wasn’t as if it were mob hit money or anything—the courts had declared that money justifiably his. Why treat it like such a poison when it had the capacity to do so much good in their lives? The questions buzzed around her brain. She’d never know the answers. Only God knew what had been going on in her father’s head.

Darcy fumbled a bit to open the Bible, limited as she was to the use of only one hand. She wandered through whatever pages fell open, wondering if she could interpret it like a family cookbook: you could always tell the favorite recipes by how dirty the pages were and where the book fell naturally open. It didn’t seem to work. Some pages held notes and comments from her father, while others looked untouched. She found several more references to forgiving someone named Harry, similar to the one she’d found when she first pulled the Bible from The Box.

Why it hadn’t come to her before this, Darcy would never be able to explain. It was so obvious. Harry. Harry Zokowski. The man who had hit her mother.

Forgive Harry.
Dad never spoke of Harry Zokowski. He was a faceless, nameless villain to her. She’d always hated him for what he’d done.

As a matter of fact, now that she rolled the name over and over on her tongue, she did remember Dad saying that name. Cursing that name. Long-buried memories of Dad, raging in anger downstairs when he thought she was asleep, swearing vengeance on Harry Zokowski, came floating to the surface of her recollection.

They’d taken him for everything. Without insurance, Harry Zokowski lost his home and savings in the lawsuit.
Yes, she remembered the victory they’d made of it. Harry paid dearly for what he’d done.

Forgive Harry.
Had that been Dad’s private battle over the years? Why the settlement money seemed so corrupting to him? Darcy was struck by how little she really knew about that dark episode in her father’s history.

She’d never know. Even Harry Zokowski was dead now. No family, either. She’d never know the rest of it. The reality stuck its sharp edges into her chest. She was alone. No Dad. No more answers, no more advice. No more Grandpa for Paula and Mike. No more world-class stuffing. So much “no more” everywhere.

Life would be so much nicer if Little Orphan Heiress had a different middle name.

She ceremoniously flipped through the Bible one more time. Her dad—and Glynnis, for that matter—always talked about how the Bible “spoke” to them, how passages would practically jump off the page into their heart for a moment of unquestionably divine intervention.
Come on Lord, show your stuff. Let me see what it is everyone keeps talking about.
Feeling stupid, wondering if the aforementioned was even a legal prayer—wasn’t there something about not testing the Lord Your God?—she planted her finger on the next page. Darcy took a deep breath and looked down.

It was the next verses, however, that made Darcy nearly jump.

Darcy sucked in her breath and looked around, half expecting to see someone playing a practical joke on her. This was far too weird—the hair on the back of her neck was standing on end. How many times could the word
orphan
possibly appear in the Bible? Surely not that many, and surely none in the context of this verse from—she had to look a second time, too stunned to notice the first time—John 14.

Yes, she was orphaned, but she had not been
left
orphaned. Darcy knew, at that moment, that the words were for her. The living nature of the Bible, that missing umph that her father, Glynnis, and others she had heard talk about had finally revealed itself to her. Sure, there were lots of
yes, knoweths
and
dwelleths
in the way, but the message came through loud and clear.

I will not leave you orphaned. I will come to you.

The message was for her. To her, feeding her. Filling a particular hole in her heart that had been aching since September 12. God
had
come to her. She knew it. She’d known it all along, actually, but it was somehow more true now. It was almost something she could feel and taste. It had force and strength. It had life.

She sat there a while, stunned. Suddenly, Darcy realized that the parts of her life collided right here in her lap: Paula breathing softly on her left, Paul’s Bible and its liv
ing, breathing message on her right. Her past and her future, intersecting over her heart.