Chapter 13 #2
Dina waved her hand in fast dismissal, cutting my words off. “Why would you leave? Aren’t you part of them now? Unless you had something more exciting planned besides hanging out with your grandmother on a Saturday night.”
Julian put his arms around her, giving her a fast hug before he said, “We have nothing better to do, but dibs on the car. Nobody else said it yet, so I called it.”
I tugged Phoenix’s tee-shirt to tell him, “You can remember this one.”
“I’m going to make it a point to never forget it.” He kissed my head.
She clapped her hands again, almost out of habit. “I’ll go change then make some spaghetti. Oh, wait.” She snapped her fingers. “I honestly am not sure there’s even groceries here. Jeremy, could you order something? I want groceries, not finished food. I want to cook.”
“Sure, Granny, on it.” He side-eyed me. “So, those are her journals I catch you reading. The ones you won’t talk about—is she spilling family secrets?”
I grinned at him. “Maybe, but the tea was served in 1966. I wouldn’t worry. You don’t even exist yet.”
Julian kissed my cheek, confessing, “This was a good idea.”
“Hey, I just wanted to say hi. This is all Dina’s plan,” I said, since I couldn’t take the credit. Even if I’m really happy we’re doing it.
It turned out that Dina Lent was a fantastic cook, which was funny since they said her son Daniel was a terrible chef. The guys each ate two plates full of pasta while Dina and I dawdled over our first, dipping crusty garlic bread in the zesty sauce.
Phoenix closed his eyes, leaned back, and rubbed his stomach. “I remember this taste. I do. Thank you so much, Granny.”
“I’m glad, my sweet boy.” She stroked his arm gently. “How was your first week of school?”
They all told her pretty much the same thing—everything was fine, so far as they admitted to their grandmother.
Then Julian pulled out a familiar real estate board game, and they all started setting it up.
I bit my lip and confessed, “I’ve never played.
” I’d heard of it, of course. Everyone had heard of it.
Jeremy nudged me with his shoulder. “Good, it will make it easier to cheat you.”
I laughed at both his joke and his speedy delivery. His eyes twinkled, meeting my own and a spark of something heated my blood. Suddenly, I remembered him holding me in the darkness with the television in the background. How he said I wasn’t crazy, and recognized the situation traumatized me.
And I admitted to myself, it felt like a trauma.
Julian squeezed my knee, catching my attention and shifting it toward him. I tried to shake off the ghosts of the past as he said, “I’ll teach you. We’ll play as a team for the first game.”
“You just want to cuddle her the whole time.” Barrett shook his head, scowling at his brother. “I wish I’d thought of it.”
The game was easy enough to pick up on, once they explained the rules. After a few rolls of the dice, I understood yet let Julian make the decisions for fun. I liked watching them interact, sometimes, their brotherly love and competitiveness coming out in equal measures.
Dina glanced up from the board and caught my gaze. “I’m going to break my own rule to ask you where you are in the journal. I can’t stand the suspense of not knowing.”
I smiled at her, actually relieved to talk about it. “You just got married, actually, so it is such a happy part of the story. In the last entry, you went to the Roosevelt then took a plane back to New York.”
For a second, she blinked fast, as if fighting back tears. “Quite a night. If I remember correctly, the journal entry didn’t do it justice. Some days are too full to even put down in words.”
I leaned forward, my own curiosity making me ask, “Can I ask you a question?”
The guys suddenly seemed to go still, and I wondered if she didn’t usually talk about their grandfathers in front of them.
She nodded easily, relaxing back into the sofa. “Of course. I figured you would have more than a few.” Her voice went soft, and her gaze distant. “You’ve been so accepting about all of it, unlike a lot of people I told about my life. If something strikes you as weird, feel free—ask away.”
I stared at my fists, the knuckles bunched white, before looking back at her, since I couldn’t force myself to glance at her grandsons.
“I guess I just wanted to know about the lake. The other side of the lake, specifically. Kit said that it might have something to do with Phoenix’s kidnapping, but you never even knew any of them or said much about the lake at all.
Robert took you to look at the old house once, but no one lived in it then.
I mean, did you leave something out, or what did I miss? ”
Phoenix‘s voice intoned solemnly when he said, “We keep so many secrets. We don’t even know what was in your folder, Alatheia. Can anyone give us at least one answer? About me? About her? About any of us?”
She frowned at him. “Don’t be theatrical.
Kit didn’t tell me anything about any folder yet, so I’ll ask and get back to you.
If there are secrets, it’s because your fathers want to protect you.
It’s love, basically, and I don’t know that you should get in their way when they’re proving how much they care.
I once tried to protect them. . . Anyway, no, based on where you are in the journals?
I haven’t left anything out, except bedroom shenanigans you wouldn’t have been comfortable reading anyway.
In regard to the past, all I will say is this. . .”
Her phone beeped, and she groaned as she glanced at it. Dina hated texting, squinting at the phone as she tapped with a single finger. “Stephen is on his way here, but he doesn’t know you’re here. He’s popping by just to say hello.”
She scanned their faces before asking, “What do you boys know about the history of the Lent money?”
“Department stores,” Julian said in an empty tone, not even bothering to look up from the table in front of him.
“Frankly, it seemed like you guys did this.” He pointed to the board.
“Charging rents and utilities while living off trust funds and if they’re bored, maybe they also have jobs.
I know they expect us to go into a trade of some kind. ”
She rose to fill her wine glass, not rushing to answer him.
I noticed that despite the fact I regularly saw most of them drinking, they didn’t even try in front of her.
Out of respect? I wondered. Her glass sparkled with popping bubbles in pink drink, a cherry floating cheerfully in the glass as an accent.
Once she sipped and crossed her legs elegantly, she answered, “They allowed you to believe what is basically a misunderstanding. No trust funds for them, or guaranteed futures. We came to New York with money, but not like the people in the city. We earned your futures with a lot of hard work. Your fathers might have been born rich kids, but they weren’t trust fund kids, either.
After their fathers died, they inherited a lot of money.
Some of it now fills your trust funds. They took the seeds from their fathers, and they made them blossom and became even more wealthy. ”
“Really?” Julian leaned forward, his elbows propped on his knees. “I never knew they worked for it. I figured they were like a lot of the others in their generation, and they just inherited it all.”
“No, but you specifically asked about the lake, Alatheia. Let’s start there, for now.
Your great-grandfathers started out on the other side of the lake, poor but classy.
They loved their wife, though, and they liked to spoil her.
Few others ventured outside the community, fearing getting caught, but they took risks. ”
She rolled her dice then moved her little car forward five spaces. “Risks, as you know, often mean more money. Theirs started with logging, back when the wealthiest family in town was the Trosclairs.”
“That’s Mom’s last name.” Phoenix’s mouth hung open for a few seconds as he just stared at his grandmother. “Well, it was her last name, back before she became Rosalind Lent.”
She smiled. “Would you imagine that? While they took risks and gained wealth, the Trosclairs lost theirs just as fast. Her grandfathers drank a good amount down the drain, preferring the very best and by the cask. Your grandfathers had nothing to do with the downfall of the Trosclair family, but it didn’t stop them from getting blamed for Trosclair troubles.
The Trosclairs lost everything, ending in squalor.
Your great-grandfathers grew their wealth to surpass anything they ever had.
Eventually, they died, though. They left a great deal of money to your grandfathers and your great-grandmother, so she lived the rest of her life as a wealthy widow, but the Trosclairs claimed she was snobby to them.
Hilarious, really, since she came from the wrong side herself. ”
Dina sighed, glancing around at them before clapping her hands on her knees. “I haven’t spoken about the lake in so long.”
“Please, tell us more.” Jeremy squeezed her hand. “No one else ever wants to talk about anything important, and some only want to tell us what not to talk about.”
I bit my lip, resisting telling them that at least there were people who listened to them at all. I lived for years like a ghost, completely invisible as anything other than a walking dollar sign. I could sort of understand their situation, though, which arguably could be worse.
“I can’t imagine someone telling you what you shouldn’t say.
Your great-grandmother on your father’s side was not a nice woman, at least not to me, so I tend to think the worst of her.
Your grandfathers wanted out. They spent enough time working for their fathers, and they didn’t care about the game playing and gossip of the lake.
In fact, they planned to leave the lifestyle altogether before they met me. ”
I had read as much, but she brought the experiences to life on the page.