Thoroughly creeped out, Sean pushed them under the bed so he didn’t have to see them, then took off the sheets and threw them out.
The closet was next. After opening the doors, he stared at what hung from the wooden dowel. It was the same stuff his father had always worn. Low-price button-downs—cotton for spring and summer, flannel for fall and winter—and khakis. Off to one side, there was an old work shirt from the phone company with a patch that read Eddie O’Banyon as well as a suit with a fine layer of dust on the shoulders. Probably the last time that had been worn had been at Sean’s mother’s funeral.
Looking at the clothes, thinking about the slippers, Sean could picture his father so clearly, it was as if the man’s ghost had wandered into the room, all simmering and pissed off at being called from the grave.
To get rid of the Stephen Kings, Sean put his hand into the closet and grabbed the first thing he hit. Going on autopilot, he stripped the hangers bare then picked up the shoes from the floor and cleaned off the top shelf. He hit the dresser after that, whipping through the drawers, throwing out the underwear and socks, putting the sweaters into a box.
Final salvo in the room was the rolltop desk in the corner.
The thing was a rank, ugly, worn piece of crap that had nothing but function to offer the world. Battened down tight, with the top in place, it gave off the illusion of having something precious inside.
But only out of desperation.
As Sean slid up the cover, papers spilled out as if he’d opened some kind of wound and the POS was bleeding white.
What a mess.
Copping a seat in the hard-backed chair, he pulled over the box he was using as a waste bin and started sifting through Medicare notices and doctors’ bills and insurance-company correspondence and bank statements. Most of the envelopes were unopened and he felt as if he were on an archaeological dig. The farther he went back, the older things got.
After having turfed the balance of it into some loose organizational piles, he was able to get to the shallow drawers in the back of the desk. He found nothing much important in them, just a couple of old Ticonderoga pencils, some paper clips, a thicket of rubber bands, a bottle of Elmer’s glue that had turned into a solid. Everything smelled like the musky wood of the desk and the dry, dusty scent of time’s passing.
He moved on to the big drawers underneath…and wasn’t prepared for what he found.
He was going through what was just crap, mindlessly pitching copies ofMotor Trend from the eighties into the trash box, when he ran into the photograph.
He sat up slowly, holding the thing with care.
Black-and-white. Three by five. Torn at the corner.
He and Billy and Mac were all under the age of twelve and standing at rigid attention in ill-fitting suits. They were smiling awkwardly, the pained expressions worn with the same graceless forbearance as their Sunday clothes.
His mother had taken the picture and her handwriting, her beautiful cursive handwriting, was on the back: the date, the place and his and his brothers’ names.
Staring at the old ink, it dawned on him that in all the packing he’d done he hadn’t found any photographs of her. In fact, there was nothing of hers in the apartment at all. Sure, his father hadn’t been sentimental in the slightest, but wouldn’t something have survived?
He turned the picture back over and tried to remember what his mother had looked like on the other side of the camera.
When he couldn’t call an image to mind, he thought of Lizzie.
He wanted pictures of her. Lots of them. He wanted one at his penthouse by his bed. And one on his desk at his office. And one in his briefcase. And one stored digitally in his BlackBerry.
As if having all that would ensure she didn’t disappear when she wasn’t with him.
Sean put the shot of him and his brothers facedown on the top of the desk and vowed to go out and buy a camera. Like, tomorrow.
The piles of envelopes got his attention and he figured it was time to find out what kind of mess his father’s estate was in. God, he hoped the man’s will was in this morass somewhere, but chances were good Eddie had died intestate.
Sean started with the bank statements and got no further.
The first one he went through was from June and there were a number of checks…most of which were written to Lizzie Bond.
In her own hand.
Sean’s skin shrank around his skeleton, just tightened up on his body as if he’d been put under a heat lamp and was drying out. As his breath froze in his lungs, he let the hand holding the pale green slips of paper fall to his thigh.
When he could stand it, he looked at the checks again. His father’s signature was on the bottom of each one, a messy scrawl that just about screamed feeble and old and coercible.
Except maybe she’d just been writing them out at his request.
Sean quickly ripped open the other statement envelopes. Checks she’d filled out went all the way back for a year and the amounts varied from a hundred to five hundred dollars. There were four that were over a thousand.
When he was finished adding it all up, the total amount was well into the tens of thousands.
With a curse, he tossed a handful of checks onto the desk. As they scattered all around, he reached over to keep them from hitting the floor and caught sight of an envelope postmarked six weeks ago. In the left-hand corner, there was the return address of a local law firm.
As he slipped his finger under the flap, he got a paper cut that bled and he sucked off the sting while unfolding what turned out to be his father’s last will and testament.
That left everything to one Miss Elizabeth Bond.
Well…well…well.
What do you know.
Turned out he and his father had something in common after all. Because like Eddie, Sean had been suckered into supporting Lizzie, too.
Man, she was smooth. He hadn’t seen this coming.
Sean refolded the will and put it back in the envelope. Rage tickled the edge of his consciousness, making his head buzz, but he wasn’t mad at her. He was mad at himself.
He’d been taken for a fool by a woman again and it was his own damned fault.
***
Chapter Fifteen
Even though it had been a tragically busy night in the emergency department, Lizzie was smiling as she got out of her car and skipped up the front steps to the duplex’s porch. When she opened the door, she heard sounds from upstairs so she jogged upward.
One look at Mr. O’Banyon’s living room and she stopped dead.
Stacks of U-Haul boxes were as high as her shoulders, each marked with the name of the local Catholic church. The rug that had been under the couch was rolled up and taped. The TV was unplugged and by the door. The few pictures that had hung on the walls were down and so too were the faded lace curtains.
“Good Lord, Sean,” she called out. “You’ve worked yourself to the bone.”
As she heard him coming from the back, she smiled.
Until he walked in and she saw his face.
The man who had sent her off this morning with a lingering kiss was gone. The man who had poured her cereal and watched her eat and cleaned up her dishes was nowhere to be seen. The lover she had taken into her body and slept beside had been replaced by a hard, cynical stranger.
“Well, I’d better get packing,” he said in a clipped tone. “I’ve got to get out of your way.”
“Excuse me?”
He held out a sheath of documents. “Congratulations, your charm worked. Not twice, mind you. But at least you got the house from him plus whatever cash is left in his accounts.”
As his words spun around in her brain, Lizzie felt as if she were midway through a car accident. Everything slowed down and she braced herself for imminent impact. What she didn’t know was just how bad the injuries were going to be.
“What are you talking about?”
He pushed the papers at her. “Surely you’ve got your own copy of this?”
Putting her purse down on a box, she took what was in his hand. After she finished reading the will, she looked up in disbelief.
“I didn’t ask him to do this. I don’t want the house. Or the money.”