The Last Thing He Told Me

I consider myself to be pretty unflappable. You could say that how I grew up demanded it. So, there are only two other times in my life that I’ve felt this exact way: the day I realized my mother wasn’t coming back and the day my grandfather died. But looking back and forth between Owen’s note and the obscene amount of money he’s left, I feel it happening again. How do I explain the feeling? Like my insides need to get out. One way or another. And I know if there is ever a moment I could vomit all over the place, it’s now.

Which is what I do.

* * *

We pull up to our parking spot in front of the docks.

We’ve kept the car windows wide open for the duration of the ride and I’m still holding a tissue over my mouth.

“Do you feel like you’re going to hurl again?” Bailey asks.

I shake my head, trying to convince myself as much as I’m trying to convince her. “I’m fine,” I say.

“?’Cause this could help…” Bailey says.

I look over to see her pull a joint out of her sweater pocket. She holds it out for me to take.

“Where did you get that?” I say.

“It’s legal in California,” she says.

Is that an answer? Is it even true for a sixteen-year-old?

Maybe she doesn’t want to give me the answer, especially when I’m guessing she got the joint from Bobby. Bobby is mo

re or less Bailey’s boyfriend. He’s a senior at her school and on the surface he’s a good guy, if a bit nerdy: University of Chicago bound, head of student government. No purple streaks in his hair. But there is something about him Owen doesn’t trust. And while I want to write off Owen’s dislike to overprotection, it doesn’t help that Bobby encourages Bailey’s disdain toward me. Sometimes after spending time with him, she’ll come home and lob an insult my way. While I’ve tried not to take it personally, Owen has been less successful. He had an argument with Bailey about Bobby just a few weeks ago, telling her he thought she was seeing too much of him. It was one of the only times I saw Bailey look at Owen with the dismissive glare she normally reserves for me.

“If you don’t want it, don’t take it,” she says. “I was just trying to help.”

“I’m good. But thanks.”

She starts to put the joint back in her pocket and I flinch. I try to avoid making any big parenting moves with Bailey. It’s one of the few things she seems to like about me.

I start to turn away, making a mental note to discuss this with Owen when he gets home—let him decide whether she keeps the joint or hands it over. But then it hits me. I have no idea when Owen will be home. I have no idea where he is now.

“You know what?” I say. “I’m going to take that.”

She rolls her eyes but hands the joint over. I shove it into the glove compartment and reach down to pick up the duffel bag.

“I started counting it…” she says.

I look up at her.

“The money,” she says. “Each roll has ten thousand dollars in it. And I got to sixty. When I stopped counting.”

“Sixty?”

I start grabbing the loose rolls of money that have fallen on the seats, on the floor, and put them back inside the bag. Then I zip it closed, so she won’t have to contemplate the enormous stash inside anymore. So neither of us will.

Six hundred thousand dollars. Six hundred thousand dollars and counting.

“Lynn Williams reposted all these Daily Beast tweets to her Insta Stories,” she says. “All about The Shop and Avett Thompson. How he’s like Madoff. That’s what one of them said.”

I go back through what I know—sharp, fast. Owen’s note to me. The duffel bag for Bailey. The radio report suggesting embezzlement and massive fraud. Avett Thompson the mastermind of something I’m still trying to understand.

I feel like I’m in one of those twisted dreams that only happen when you go to sleep at the wrong time, the afternoon sun or midnight chill greeting you upon waking, disorienting you—and leaving you to turn to the person next to you, the person you trust most, looking for clarity. It was only a dream: There is no tiger under the bed. You weren’t just chased through the streets of Paris. You didn’t jump off the Willis Tower. Your husband didn’t disappear, leaving you no explanation, leaving his daughter six hundred thousand dollars. And counting.

“We don’t have that information yet,” I say. “But even if it’s true that The Shop is involved in something, or if Avett did something illegal, that doesn’t mean that your father had anything to do with it.”