Lucy went still. “I…ah…I don’t have it.”
“What?” Mia looked at her as if Lucy had said she’d forgotten her hands. And, in a way, that was true. Since she was sixteen, Lucy had walked around with a little notebook in her back pocket or her purse, ready to sketch something when inspiration struck.
But it had been so long since inspiration had knocked on her door, she’d stopped carrying the notebook.
“What the hell is going on with you, Lucy?” Mia demanded. “Last I heard you were doing great, the jewelry business was doing great, and the next thing I know you’re hiding out here.”
“It’s just a notebook—”
“Bullshit, Lucy. It’s one thing if you want to lie to everyone else, but it’s another thing lying to me. I know something’s wrong.”
Lucy sat back in her chair and studied her hands. “Is it so strange that I might want to do something else? Design, art, jewelry—it’s all I’ve ever done. Can’t I be tired of it?”
“Sure. If you really are.”
Lucy laughed, bitter and dark. Tired of it? Sure. Terrified and destroyed—those too. “Trust me, I really are.”
“So...what? You’re going to do something else. For good.”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yeah. It is. You’re my sister the jewelry designer.”
“Well, now I’m your sister the parole officer, taxi driver and gardener. At least for a little while.”
“You’re pulling up half the vegetables.”
“I didn’t say I was good at it,” she snapped, and Mia held up her hands in surrender.
“You know I support you. We all do. We just want you to be happy.”
Happy, she thought, feeling as if she were suddenly drowning. Suddenly without air or chance of air.
She wasn’t even sure if she could be happy again. Failure had done that to her. Her own mistakes suffocated her.
“You know I’m here if you ever feel like telling me the truth.” Mia put her ball cap on her head and pulled her ponytail out the back. “See you later.”
Lucy nodded and listened to her sister’s footsteps walk out through the mudroom. In the silence of the dining room she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and cradled it in her hands like a secret.
She pushed two buttons, leveled her heart rate, found the center of herself and pushed aside everything else.
“It’s about damn time,” Meisha said when she answered.
“That’s not how accountants talk.” Lucy closed her eyes. “Tell me.”
“Twenty thousand dollars. That’s the penalty for backing out of the contract.”
Twenty grand. “Is that all?” she gasped, trying to force her lungs to work. “I thought they’d want a kidney. My first born.”
“Very funny,” Meisha said. “But you have options. You can declare bankruptcy.”
“And then what?”
“And then...you have no debt, but you also have no credit. You’ll need a cosigner for any loan.”
“What are my other options?” she asked, her eyes still closed.
“You can sell your condo. The market is shit, but...you might get enough to clear the debt, or at least take out a good chunk of it.”
“We’ll sell the condo,” she said, making the decision in a heartbeat. Declaring bankruptcy seemed like an awful big shadow over the rest of her life.
“Your mother—”
“I’ll figure out what to tell my mom.” Another lie. More lies. One after the other.
“Lucy—”
“She’d just worry. And I don’t need her worry on top of mine. I’ll call my real estate agent.”
“All right. Keep me posted.”
Lucy opened her eyes only to look right into Walter’s watery baby-blues. Watery baby-blues full of reproach.
Her blood turned to sludge in her veins.
She stood, the chair screeching over the stone of the floor.
“You’re selling your mother’s home?” he asked.
“It’s my condo.”
“Where she lives.”
“You don’t judge me.”
He looked at her for a long time, his face immutable. He was made of freaking stone and her failures were like knives in her skin the longer she looked at him.
“Don’t say a word to her,” she spat.
He shook his head and quietly left. Limping toward the back patio and the cushioned deck chair he sometimes sat in.
Once he was gone, she stood there and shook.
Wednesday night, after getting Casey his thirtieth drink of water and making sure he went pee before finally turning off his light, Jeremiah stopped in front of Ben’s room.
The light was shining out from under the door, a thin sliver that wasn’t much of a welcome. It was nine o’clock and Ben had school in the morning and then his gardening punishment with Lucy, and the boy needed his sleep.
Jeremiah hung his head, bracing himself to be the bad guy one more time today. After the dinner battle and the shower battle and the cleaning-up-his-room battle. Now, he got the going-to-bed battle.
“Hey, Ben,” he whispered, knocking on the door as he pushed it open. Ben’s room was bare, his dresser and bed the only things in it. Jeremiah remembered the walls had been covered in SpongeBob Squarepants pictures and dozens of hand-drawn superhero action shots. But at some point, Ben had taken everything down.