Bad Heiress Day

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.”

Chapter 5

The Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot

Darcy 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.”