Bad Heiress Day

“Okay, okay, you’re right.”

Kate was getting up. No, Kate, don’t get up. Don’t go get whatever it is now. I can’t handle this now. Kate was getting up anyway, trotting back to the car to flip open the trunk and pull out a small, official-looking box.

Don’t make me open it. Not in front of you. Not today.

Kate sat back down, plunking the box squarely between them. “Look Dar, I put the stuff from the bank into this box. I know what’s in here. There’s no body, no bloody knife or anything that looks like Colonel Mustard did it with the pipe in the library. There’s no long-lost cousin, no crown jewels. There’s two bibles, a stack of what looks like wartime love letters between your parents, some collectible-looking coins, and a letter addressed to you. And as near as I can figure it, there must be some reason you wanted to open this with me instead of Jack, and today can’t get much worse, so you might as well get it over with.”

Darcy stared at her. She didn’t get it, did she? After all she’d been through this week, and what she’d learned at the lawyer’s office, a mere letter was worth a dozen bloody knives in this family.

“Look,” insisted Kate, not letting up even though Darcy glared at her, “I got four more boxes of cookies up in the car. We have enough grease, Diet Coke and chocolate here to get over a crisis of monumental proportions.” She pushed the box over to Darcy. “You’ve been looking like you’re ready to explode for three days now. Jack told me something was up but he wouldn’t say what. I only know that he’s worried enough about you to willingly handle two kids who are jumpy and crazed because they’ve just had to sit through a funeral. Maybe it’s time to light the fuse and let it go off now before somebody gets hurt.”

Kate wasn’t being mean. She was being loving in the rarest sense of the word. Willing to stand by and watch it get ugly if it meant helping her friend through a tough time. And Kate was right—she was ready to explode. Jack had said much the same thing. It’s probably why he agreed to this little picnic in the first place. If she didn’t get it out somehow, it might—no, it probably would—come out in a way that everyone would regret.

Darcy put her hand on the top of the box. A sensation close to an electric shock pulsed through her fingers. Somehow touching it, that ordinary sensation of cardboard, made it both easier and frighteningly real. She took a deep breath and then let it out again. Kate wrapped her hand around the paper cup of Coke, settling in for a good spell of listening.

“There’s something you need to know. First, I mean. Well, you don’t actually need to know it, but I need someone besides just Jack to know and you’re elected, Miss Nosy Pushy Best Friend.”

Kate nodded.

Darcy exhaled, staring at the river. “I found out something about Dad when I went to the lawyer’s office.”

“I gathered as much.”

Darcy tried to find an eloquent way to put it, but couldn’t. She opted for blunt. This was Kate, after all. “Dad was…well, rich.”

Kate thought for a moment. “Yeah, well I knew he was well-off. I mean, he had good medical care and you weren’t getting all worried about money like any of my other friends with sick parents, but so?”

“Really rich.”

“Like Regis Philbin ‘Is that your final answer’ really rich? What are we talking about here?”

“One and a half Regis Philbins to be exact. And that’s after taxes.”

Kate gurgled unintelligibly and dropped her Coke. “Your Dad? Mr. Coupon-clipper Dad?”

This time it was Darcy’s turn to merely nod. Kate’s shock felt comforting. It made her feel more at home with the shock waves she’d been feeling since she’d known.

“No, really, Darcy. You’ve got to be kidding. There’s no way your—excuse me but you know it’s the truth—tight-wad of a dad could be a millionaire. The guy drove an eight-year-old car.”

“I know. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t get it, either. He had so much. There was so much he could have done that he didn’t.”

Kate stuffed another cracker in her mouth and offered Darcy the box. “Whoa, Dar. This is big stuff. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know yet. I had no idea Dad had that kind of money. It’s actually scary when you think about it.”

It flashed back at her before she had a chance to even name it. An avalanche of angry scenes. Dad arguing with a clerk over not getting the senior discount. Eating dinner at 4:00 p.m. to get the early bird special. A million little—okay, she was going to use this phrase—cheap impulses that used to drive her crazy back when Dad was well enough to be up and about. Buying store-brand knockoffs when what she really wanted was honest-to-goodness Oreos. Why would a man with enough money to live three lifetimes spend—no, not spend—waste so much energy penny-pinching? Her throat began to tighten. There was so much lost. She turned to Kate. “I’m mad at him for doing this. For hiding it and springing it on me like this. It’s not fair to make me deal with this now. I thought we’d cleared the air completely between us, Kate, but he kept this huge thing from me.” The words came spilling out, pouring from the open wound in her heart. “Why would he put me through this? I feel like I’m on some sort of sick, twisted game show and it’s his doing. Sure, it’s a cartload of money and I suppose that’s good. It solves a lot of problems. But it’s bad, too. I’ve spent the last week wondering what else don’t I know. Are there more secrets lurking out there waiting to do me in?” The tears sneaked up on her before she had a chance to stop them. Darcy slumped against the bench, lay her head down on Kate’s shoulder, and cried. For both the hundredth time and the first time.

Kate stroked her shoulder and let her cry, fishing tissues for her out of her purse because Darcy had gone through every one of the dozens of tissues she’d stocked her pockets with this morning.

“I don’t know,” Kate said finally, and Darcy could hear the strain in her friend’s voice. “I think you may have been better off with something like The Princess Diaries. He should have left you queen of something. I was only joking about the crown jewels bit, but now I’m thinking…”

“I know, I know.” Darcy laughed, glad to have her friend’s thoughts follow her own. “I was thinking I need a tiara or something.”

“It’s gonna change your life forever, Dar. I mean, think about it. Okay, I realize his methods—” she narrowed her eyes for emphasis “—rot, but the game show metaphor isn’t all that far off. You’re loaded. Think about all you and Jack can do. Mike can go to that snazzy math academy you’ve been eyeing for all these years.”

Kate had hit the nail on the head. “That’s just it, Kate. Mike can go to Simmons Academy now. But Mike could have gone to Simmons Academy all along! Dad knew how much we wanted him to be able to do something with his math skills. He knew we couldn’t afford to do it. How could he just sit there and not help if he had all that money lying around?” It was unkind, but it was spilling out of Darcy and she didn’t care. “One point six million is enough for three lifetimes Kate, and he knew he didn’t have much more time. He’s known for two years. Why, why, why did he feel he had to keep it from us? And you know what? I don’t even care about the dollar signs, I care that he kept such a big, huge, important thing from me. From me! I could change his bedpans but I couldn’t be trusted with his finances? Why keep secrets now, of all times?” Darcy crossed her arms. “It hurts. It hurts a lot.”

“It rots.”

“Yeah, it rots all right.”

Kate kicked her legs out in front of her and giggled just a bit. “But at least it rots all the way to the bank.”

God bless Kate. Darcy knew she’d done the right thing in telling her. She bumped Kate playfully with her shoulder and sighed.

“You have no idea why he’d do this? Hide this from you?”

“Not one. Not a one.” Darcy stuffed an entire graham cracker in her mouth.

“Well, at least now I understand why you weren’t in any hurry to open that box. You’ve got a license to be gun-shy on this one.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You know, Dar,” said Kate, pulling up one knee to sit facing Darcy on the bench, “you’re forgetting something.”

Darcy turned to look at her friend.

“What if the why is in the letter?” she offered. “What if it’s not a time bomb, but an explanation? Mr. Lawyer Guy said you were to open the box shortly after your dad’s death, right?”

Darcy nodded, her brain straining to put the pieces together. What if there was some kind of reasoning, some explanation in the letter? Darcy wasn’t sure she was ready to see it. But another part of her began to give in to the curiosity. Knowing why would help the coping process a lot more than chocolate graham crackers.

“You know what?” Kate offered suddenly with a smirk. “I was wrong. We don’t have enough chocolate to deal with this. It’s gonna take a whole gallon of Graeter’s mint chocolate chip to cope with this baby.” She began gathering up the food and wrappers. “And on the way, you can tell me what Jack said about all this.”

Chapter 2

The Twelfth of Never

“Four more spoonfuls and then I’ll open it. I’ll save the rest of my ice cream sundae for the aftermath.” Darcy was feeling better bit by bit.

Kate counted down Darcy’s spoonfuls and added a drumroll to the last one for effect. There, in the front seat of Kate’s car in Graeter’s Ice Cream Parlor parking lot, she took a deep breath and pulled the lid from the box.

Kate was right. It did look ordinary. She didn’t know if she expected some hand to come out and grab her like something from The Addams Family, but it looked tame enough. She started with something safe, like the coins.

“Gold,” Darcy said as she pulled one from the wax paper envelope that held it. “From Africa. At least I think it’s gold—it’s heavy enough. I’ll have to take them someplace to have them appraised. Dad told me he got these when I was born.” There were four of them, two pairs of different kinds. Okay, safe enough. Nothing shocking there. Good. She laid them gently back into the box.

The first Bible was soft and worn, the aged leather flaking off a bit in her hands. It was a woman’s bible, with swirly lettering stamped on the elegant beige of the cover. Her mother’s. Darcy realized she’d never seen her mother with it. She imagined it tucked in a nightstand drawer next to a velvet jewelry box and hankies.

Mom. Her death in 1982 seemed like ages ago now. As a shy seventeen-year-old, it had been so hard for Darcy to come to grips with the automobile accident that had taken her mom’s life. Actually, it hadn’t taken her life, just made her give up on the life she had until it ebbed right out of her.