Authors: Allie Pleiter
“Ernestine?” Kate suggested.
“She’d be fabulous, but I think we’d better stick closer to home. Any ideas?”
“We can ask Ernestine to suggest someone, but I have a friend who does the spa thing all the time. The lady’s nails are perfect every waking moment. She’d know where to go.” Kate admired her own newly perfect nails.
“Okay, but not too posh. We want really nice, but not too over the top. I wouldn’t want to sit in the pedicure chair listening to a bunch of country club types talk about their latest trip to the Virgin Islands, would you?”
Kate pointed her spoon at Darcy. “Good point.”
Darcy penned a number two. She spread her hands on the table, her mind whirring. She didn’t even have words to describe the sparkling sensation in her chest. “We need a go-between. Someone to let the women know they’re receiving this gift. I think we have to do this anonymously.”
“What?” balked Kate. “You don’t want to be known as the patron saint of martyr beauty?”
“That’s a good one,” Darcy replied, laughing. “I’ll put it on my business cards. But I’m sure we need to do this without anyone knowing who we are. And we need some
one who can convince these women that this is on the level, and that it is important and worth taking the time. Someone from the hospice, like…Meredith. She’s the hospice center’s executive director. Oh, she’d be perfect. She’s got that sage-wise-woman quality about her that makes you listen to what she has to say.” Darcy wrote “Contact—Meredith?” beside the two. She looked up to find Kate staring at her. “What?”
“Business cards. Dar, that’s the first joke I’ve heard you crack in nearly three months.”
Darcy thought. “It is, isn’t it?”
“And what’s with the ‘we’? Nobody left me a fortune to give away, you know,” Kate added, hesitantly.
Darcy stopped short. She’d never even considered that she ought to ask Kate if she wanted to be involved. Perhaps that was a bad assumption. But she needed her. Badly. She looked at Kate intently. “You’re in on this, aren’t you? Kate, I can’t do this without you. You’ve
got
to be in on this.”
Kate’s smile was as rich as the mousse. “You betcha. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She held out her hand. “Partners.”
Darcy shook it, manicure to manicure. “Maybe
co-conspirators
is more accurate. But that sounds too…I don’t know…too criminal.” Darcy pondered. “What’d Robin Hood call his buddies?”
Kate narrowed her eyes, thinking. “The Merry Men, wasn’t it?”
“Ick. We need something better than that.”
“Bandits of Beauty?”
“Ugh. Even worse.”
“Drive-by Pamperers.”
Darcy laughed. “That sounds like we’re chucking diapers out of a minivan window. Definitely not.”
“I’m stumped.”
“Me, too.”
Kate folded her hands under her chin. “Well, how do you feel? What word would you give to what’s happened to you today?”
Darcy considered the question for a long moment. She finally said, “Healed. Put back together. Restored.”
“Restored. I like the sound of that. That fits.”
Without another word, Darcy put her pen to the top of the page and wrote, “The Restoration Project.”
Kate nodded in agreement. “So it is written, so may it be done.”
Darcy raised an eyebrow. “Where in the world did
that
come from?”
“
Prince of Egypt.
Jessica watches it constantly. She loves the funny camel faces.”
Darcy held out the paper. “‘So it is written.’ Massage, partner dear?”
Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait until she had it worked out better before telling Jack. Dinner had been great fun. Jack’s ogling of the “new and improved Darcy” was a terrific high. Jack took in her hair and nails and generally saucier new demeanor with manly fascination. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d surprised Jack, much less with the kind of surprise that made him look like he’d give anything to have the kids somewhere else for a few hours.
All of which went out the window when she mentioned she’d had the beginnings of an idea of what to do about the money. Darcy hadn’t realized, until just that moment, that Jack had never even considered going along with her dad’s instructions. Granted, she still felt a long way from
sure about her father’s request, but she hadn’t moved it completely from the realm of possibility—the way Jack obviously had.
What started out as a whopping pile of money was quickly turning itself into a whopping load of conflict.
Oh, great. Just what we need.
When she told him about The Restoration Project, Jack stared at her as though she’d mentioned it might be a nice idea to sell the children into slavery. He was still holding the glass of Cherry Coke halfway to his mouth, frozen in astonishment.
“You’re serious,” he said, almost under his breath.
“Well, I don’t know yet. It’s just an idea.”
Jack ran his hand through his hair the way he always did when baffled. “I never thought…”
“Yes, well,
that’s
pretty clear.” Darcy amazed herself at how her dander got up so quickly defending an idea she’d not even settled on yet.
Or perhaps she had. Her mind raced back to the sensation, the energy bolt that shot through her when the idea first came. As though someone had opened up the top of her head and poured something warm and sparkly into it. No, Darcy Nightengale wasn’t ready to say no to this, even though she wasn’t completely ready to say yes. She sure wasn’t ready to have it totally knocked out of consideration. Darcy turned, pacing the living room, groping for the words. “Jack, I don’t know what I’m going to do…what
we’re
going to do,” she corrected herself, “about this. But I have to tell you, this idea just does something to me. I’m not sure I can explain it yet. But there’s something there. Something I really want to think about.”
Ugh. She wasn’t making sense. Ah, but one look at Jack told her he was already putting things into neat
order. Usually, she loved him for his ability to take control of things. To make sense of chaos. To put life in order. He’d been the anchor that kept her from going completely over the edge during the craziness of Dad’s illness. He was Jack.
But this whole thing had defied perfect sense from the moment she opened that envelope. One of the tiny sparkles left in her chest from this afternoon kept insisting that it would never be about logic. It was a leap of faith of an altogether different kind.
Leap of faith?
Darcy had never used those words before. Those were Dad’s words.
What was going on here?
“Are you telling me you want to give the money away, Dar?” His tone was an unnerving mix of question and statement.
“No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying I don’t know what to do yet. I don’t even know what to
want
to do yet. I’m not ready to say yes to Dad’s request, but I’m not ready to say no, either. I mean, we don’t have to decide now, do we? We don’t have to decide a year from now.” She turned and looked at him. “But I really like this idea. Couldn’t I at least try it? See what happens?”
Jack was trying. Darcy could practically see his brain stretching to get around the idea of giving away some of the money. It was like watching Paula try to hug the big oak tree in the backyard—she would try mightily to get her arms around the thick trunk, but her fingers would always be just out of reach of each other. Dad’s view of the world was always just out of Jack’s reach.
Mostly out of hers, too. Until this morning.
They stood there, thinking hard, staring at each other, until Paula barreled up the stairs from the den. “Daaad! Mike keeps telling me to go away!”
Mike’s rebuttal came howling up the stairway. “I’m trying to do my homework and she’s bugging me. She wants to play with my calculator and she won’t quit it.”
Darcy glanced at her watch—eight-fifteen. Consideration of the Nightengale brand of philanthropy would have to wait. Baths and bed were a more pressing concern. Not to mention the small mountain of dishes still gracing the kitchen counters.
Little Orphan Heiress may have a new killer hairstyle, but she was still sadly lacking in maids and butlers.
Jack cracked her a smile. Something in his eyes told her he’d had the same thought. “Which do you want? Kids or dishes?”
Both might ruin the new manicure, but at least she could put on rubber gloves to do the dishes. “I’m opting for the sink and gloves, honey.” She wiggled her fingers for effect.
“Gloves, huh? Well, all right, Paula-bear, let’s get your shower started. We gotta give mom’s manicure a fighting chance at survival.”
D
arcy drew her finger around the curved edge of her coffee table. “How do I feel? I don’t know. I don’t imagine I feel anything different than any other person in this boat.”
Doug Whitman said, “I see,” in that I’m-not-going-to-comment-one-way-or-another-so-you-say-more kind of tone she knew psychiatrists were prone to use. Darcy didn’t suppose she could blame Pastor Doug; they were only passing acquaintances. Whitman liked her Dad; it was clear from both his eulogy and the string of stories he told her today. Darcy wished, though, that the guy had been less comfortable with the gaps of silence in their conversation. He hadn’t even bothered with the customary “How
are
you?” usually accompanied by a firm clasp of her arm and a polite show of concern. The kind of question that implied anything too deep in response would be unwelcome.
The kind she’d heard a dozen times a day in the week since Paul Hartwell slipped his mortal shell and upgraded
to Heaven. No, Pastor Doug went straight to the
real
questions, the ones that required
real
answers.
“How do your days feel?”
Like hours. Like nanoseconds. Like endless blank journal pages.
Darcy wasn’t sure which answer would get Pastor Doug off her back, and off her couch, and out the door fastest.
“Feel?”
“Yes. What is it like for you to get through the day this week? Hard? Easy? All of the above?” Doug kept trying to poke his straw through the lemon floating in his ice tea. The effort he put into the pursuit was almost amusing.
“I don’t know. They feel…plain.” She took a drink while she searched for the right answer to satisfy him but not open up a deeper conversation. Doug clearly wasn’t going anywhere until he’d either speared his lemon or “connected” with her somehow. She made a mental estimation that it would be eleven sentences before the word Jesus came up in conversation. “Empty, I suppose. I’ve spent so much time in crisis mode that it feels…well…odd to be doing normal stuff. Good, but odd. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, then I stop myself and realize it already has.”
Doug shuffled a bit in his seat. “Was there anything about Paul’s death that surprised you?”
Now, there was a loaded question. How much to reveal? If Darcy spoke of the inheritance, would Pastor Doug kick right into Building Campaign oh-but-we-need-that-new-nursery-wing mode?
“No.” The minute the word left her mouth, Darcy knew it had too much bite. Now there was no way the good pastor was going to back off his ministries. She took out her regrets on a Mint Milano, biting the crispy cookie rather than indulge the urge to bite off her own tongue.
He reached for a cookie himself, far too comfortable with the silence. His eyes took on just a shade of a faroff look—was he
praying
for her? Getting God’s permission to pry further? Did he
need
permission? Wasn’t prying an occupational skill for reverends?
“Darcy…” he began.
Darcy anticipated the patronizing tone of voice, that politely compassionate edge that colored nearly everyone’s attempts to “comfort,” ready to jump down his throat the minute she heard it. “
I understand how you must feel…Time will ease your pain, let me tell you about the time my…I’m sure your children are such a comfort to you….”
Darcy’d heard it all—and believed about two percent of it. She could smell it coming a mile away by now.
“…are you surprised at how angry you are at Paul for leaving the way he did?”
What?
“I think I would be. Hospice is never as peaceful as we imagine it will be. The dying leave us long before they’re dead. I’d be weary and bitter, and probably more than a little ticked off if I were in your shoes.”
Darcy nearly choked on the cookie. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, “Are you
supposed
to say stuff like that?”
Doug inspected the chocolate inside his cookie. “I’m not
supposed
to say anything. I mostly try to figure out what’s true, and go from there. Near as I can tell, the truth very rarely turns out how we think it’s supposed to be.”
A sharp, white-hot crack split through Darcy’s chest. Yes, she was angry. Livid. And everyone was so busy giving her permission to grieve, to cope, that she hadn’t realized until this very moment that no one had given her permission to be royally ticked off. Except for Jack, who
seemed to be ticked off enough for the both of them, forcing her into defending Dad’s indefensible actions. No, nobody had given her a chance to spout off. Like it had at the park, the anger erupted out of her, unbidden and unstoppable. Darcy didn’t really want to be so exposed in front of this man, but the force of what he’d started was more than she could stem. Half in self-defense, she sprang up off the couch to pace the room.
“Yes.” That one word opened the gates full force. “I am. I’m
really
mad. I did everything a good daughter’s supposed to do. I turned my life inside out to take care of Dad. And I
wanted
to—I didn’t do it out of some weird only-child obligation, I wanted to take care of him, to keep him comfortable.”
She ran her hand along the fireplace mantel, half gripping it, half wanting to knock things off it. “But he wasn’t comfortable. He was delirious and drooling, and pulling his bedsheets off in fear of something and choking and making sounds like he was drowning and…it was awful. It wasn’t supposed to
be
like that. He was supposed to have a peaceful end. Meeting his maker and all. Going home to Jesus. But no, it was just
nuts.
People were running everywhere and everyone was freaking out because of the terrorist attacks so it was like no one even
noticed
he was dying. Noticed he was
gone.
”
She stopped, her back to Doug, catching a sob. Her mind replayed the sound of his last breath. The halting, broken rasp. Then, the trailing, endless exhale.
It had been so far from what she expected, what she wanted.
It
all
had been so far from what she expected.
“How could he let me go through all that and then do what he did? How could he let me do all that disgusting
stuff, handle all of those medical—” she searched for the word, trying not to be graphic “—
indignities,
and then hide his checkbook? How could he not trust me with this? How could he spring this on me and live with himself!”
The illogic of her last phrase, the way death kept winding itself into her speech like some sort of mean joke, stung Darcy.
She turned to look at Doug, half surprised that he wasn’t reaching for his coat and eyeing the door.
“Am I mad? Yes. I’m furious!”
Again, he said nothing, just looked her straight in the eye. No judgment, not even surprise, just looking.
Embarrassed, Darcy plopped back down on the chair, snagging a tissue on the way around the end table. She tried to blow her nose as politely as possible, dabbing her eyes. “Well,” she offered, “you asked.”
Doug folded his hands. “Yes, I did. And I’m glad you answered. You need to talk about this kind of stuff. It will eat you alive if you pretend it isn’t there. It isn’t disrespectful, it’s just human.” He looked up, and for an awful moment Darcy thought he was going to clasp her hand or some other pastory thing, but he simply continued. “Look, Darcy, if Paul left you with debts, we have some people who can offer you some good counsel in that area. It happens. You wouldn’t be the first to find out how expensive it is to die.”
The fiscal cat was practically out of the bag now. Might as well tell it all. Even if it did end up as the Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot.
“No, it’s not that. Actually,” Darcy added, almost laughing, “I think that would be easier. There are no debts. Just the opposite. I went to a lawyer just after Dad died—Dad told me I had to, you know, back when he was still…
with
us mentally. The lawyer told me Dad had a whole bunch
of money he’d never touched. Tons of it. And, well, now they’re
my
tons of it.”
Darcy looked up to check Doug’s expression. He looked genuinely surprised. That somehow made her feel better. “Well,” he offered, “that
is
big.”
“Yeah, you’d think. But evidently it wasn’t big enough for Dad. He had to take it a step further.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “Now, not only do I have one point six million shiny new dollars, I have to decide if I’m going to do what he says to do with it.”
Doug paused a long while before he asked, “What
did
he tell you to do with it?”
Darcy hedged. The Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot and Hospitality Wing played across her vision. But Pastor Doug didn’t seem to be waxing predatory in front of her. She was gaining a sense, unfounded or not, that she could trust him. After all, Dad had.
Well, to a point. Which was as much as he’d been with her. Why not tell him?
“He told me to…he
asked
me to give it away. It was money won from a lawsuit over my mom’s accident. He didn’t want the money, but he’d promised her he’d keep it. It’s complicated. Anyway, he promised he’d keep it, but since I never made a promise like that, he says I can give it away like he always wanted to.” Darcy felt an odd, nervous laugh slip from her lips. “Death’s a good way to pass the buck, it seems.”
She felt stupid for laughing, uncomfortable at revealing something he could so easily pounce on. Darcy waited, watching for dollar signs to appear in his eyes like some Looney Tunes cartoon. But he kept looking at her.
At
her. Not mentally calculating the tax benefits of a major donation, just looking at her. It was the weirdly warm smile
on Pastor Doug’s face that stumped her most. “Literally,” he quipped.
He
quipped.
Darcy was so surprised, it took her a full thirty seconds to get the joke. A joke. Not at her, but
with
her.
Yes!
she thought, another person who found the situation absurd enough to joke about. Maybe Doug wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps the Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot and Hospitality Wing and Community Baptismal Pool wasn’t such a bad place to dump a fortune. Maybe it wasn’t so bad he knew.
He pulled his hands down over his chin, shook his head a bit, and chuckled. “Your dad was a surprising man. Every time I was sure I’d figured him out, he’d throw me a new curve. I have to admit, though, this is a good one—even for him.” Doug looked up at her. “Darcy, I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’d do in your place. What are you thinking you’ll do?”
I’m sure I know what I’d be doing if I were in your place,
Darcy thought.
I give it ten minutes tops.
“Well, Jack and I have been discussing the issue practically nonstop. Everybody seems to have an opinion. And there are a lot of options.”
Doug pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he got a “Say, I’ve got an idea” look on his face. This guy was good. Not even three minutes, and it looked genuinely spontaneous. Darcy decided she didn’t really blame him. He probably had a furnace on the brink of death, stained nursery carpeting, two dozen committees to fund and all those poor hungry souls to feed.
“Darcy, I have an idea for you.”
Darcy smiled. Not even a month into Little Orphan Heiress and she could smell ’em coming already.
“We have a couple in our church…”
…Who feed tribes in Africa and teach them fractions,
Darcy finished in her head.
“…who deal with this sort of thing every day. They are quite wealthy, but they seem to know how to handle it well. Ed’s a self-made man—grew a fortune going from selling newspapers to buying printing companies. I can’t help thinking you’d like them. And I’m sure they’d like to meet you. Maybe they can help.”
Darcy fought the urge to shake her head. “Huh?” was all she gulped out.
“Okay, it was a bad suggestion. I’m sorry to pry, I was just thinking—”
“No, wait, back it up a minute. You just…um…surprised me. Who are these people again?”
“Ed and Glynnis Bidwell. A couple—an older couple, actually—from our church. They have sizeable financial resources, but in my estimation they seem to know how to keep it in perspective. It was just a hunch…I’m sorry if I—”
“He’s not Chairman of the Contributions Committee or anything?”
“Ed? No, he’d never—Wait…Darcy, did you think I was going to ask you to give your dad’s money to the church?” He was putting the pieces together right in front of her. Astounding. Truly, the idea hadn’t entered the guy’s head yet. What kind of pastor
was
this guy?
Darcy shut her mouth, realizing that it was hanging open. Do you tell a white lie to a pastor?
“Ugh. Of course you did. Why wouldn’t you? Oh, Darcy, I’m so sorry I gave you the wrong impression. I don’t know what your dad told you about me, but in truth I am the most abysmal fund-raiser in history. Please, please
believe that I knew nothing about what he left you. Oh, I’ve botched this.”
“No, really,” Darcy said, just because he looked so mad at himself.
“No, I should have said something right off the bat when you told me. I was just so…so…dumbfounded.” Doug stood up, pacing the room. Honestly, he looked like he was going to walk over to the wall so he could pound his head against it. “No, look, Darcy, I want you to know—
right now
—how I see things. If Paul had wanted our church to have that money, I know he’d have told you so. Paul himself used to lecture me about how I need to be more aggressive in seeking funds for the church. No, Paul’s got something else in mind for you. He’s—he
was
—a man who never left things to chance when he had an idea. If he didn’t tell you where to donate the money, then I truly believe he wants
you
to go through that decision process. And, even though my Stewardship Committee would probably boil me alive if they heard me say it, I’ve a good guess that it’s not Ohio Valley.”
“I don’t really know what I’m—we’re—going to do yet. Really.”
Doug sat back down. “I don’t think you
can
know what to do yet. That’s a huge, broad issue. Darcy, I really think the Bidwells could be helpful to you. Will you let me give them your phone number? If you don’t like them or they’re not helpful, you can never see them again, but I don’t think it will go that way. You’ll really like Glynnis. Please, Darcy, will you let me do this for you? After I’ve been such a jerk?”