Chapter 65
— Chapter 65 —
According to Aubrey’s amendments to Step’s calculations, it will cost the two of us $8,484 to hike the Appalachian Trail, including food, permits, and the occasional hotel room. Aubrey’s birthday money gets us halfway there. But I don’t have gear yet. And before we go, we’ll have to pay off the January taxes and the annual insurance in March.
We stop working on the house. We are out of free time and most of Step’s materials. If the market improves, Hans is going to work with Lee Skagway to sell it for us, as is. Then we won’t have to pay the September tax bill and we’ll have money to find an easier place to live after the trail.
Aubrey goes back to work at Gristedes and picks up shifts at The Aster.
I help Sam fix the pier. Hans hires me to carve his son’s old bedroom set with a fairy garden theme for Emmeline and pays me much more than he should. I do odd jobs for Shorty in the break between lunch and dinner. Eddie gives me his backpack and a real compass and his Inspector Gadget bracelet. Bee gives me her puffy down jacket and buys pedometers for me and Aubrey as a nudge to start training. But we still haven’t solved the biggest problem.
I’m completely exhausted at the end of a Friday double when Bee and Hans come in together.
“Frey! We did it!” Bee says as they sit at the bar. Her cheeks are flushed and the baby hairs at her temples are curling. I think they were drinking before they got here. “Well, Hans did it! He figured it out!” She hands me a stapled document with yellow flags marking the pages.
“It was good teamwork,” Hans says, grinning at Bee. His shirt sleeves are rolled to his elbows, glasses sliding down his nose.
“Once we get Steena and Charlie to sign these, we don’t have to go to court, and you’ll have full guardianship rights,” Bee says.
My heart falls. I thought for a moment they’d come up with an actual solution.
I make them a couple of old fashioneds and sneak peeks at the document between orders, hoping there’s some trick or angle I might have missed, something that will compel Steena to sign. But the paperwork is all very straightforward.
“Steena’s never going to agree,” I say when I’m done. “I appreciate your—”
“Tell her you’ll let the whole town know what a perv her husband is,” Bee blurts out. “That’s got to give us some kind of leverage.”
I’m angry that she’s so openly alluding to something I confessed in confidence, even though I know she only said it because she wants to believe the truth is enough. In Bee’s world what Charlie did to me matters, and it makes sense to her that the shame he should carry allows us an opportunity for justice. But in Charlie and Steena’s world, I don’t matter at all, and any shame Charlie created is only mine to bear.
“Oh dear!” Hans says, covering his ears. “La, la, la! Not hearing anything about blackmail over here.” He’s tipsy too.
I’m going to have to drive both of them home.
“Do you and Hans have some kind of…,” I ask Bee as I take the turn into her development. The stone sign at the entrance reads: Marsh Creek Hollow, A Wells Property .
“It’s weird, huh?” she asks. “Do you think—could he actually like me?”
“Of course he could,” I say. When we dropped off Hans, he said goodnight to Bee four times.
“Could I like him?” she says, like she’s asking me if the pasta special tonight is good.
“I think you can do whatever you want to do.” Their age difference is a little wide, but I liked watching them hang out at the bar, laughing at nerdy jokes, splitting a plate of truffle fries.
“Do you think my crush on Hans could be an expression of a complex?” Bee asks. “My dad moves to Managua and I’m looking for a replacement?”
I can’t picture Hans roaming the neighborhood with a toolbox on weekends, hoping for the chance to help someone build a fence. “He’s nothing like your dad.”
“I know,” Bee says, laughing. “But…”
“Does he make you happy?” I pull into her driveway, leave my car running.
“I like thinking with him.” Her porch light is streaming through my dirty windshield, and I can see her chapped cheeks and bright eyes.
“I don’t think it has to be any more complicated than that,” I say.
Her phone rings as she’s getting out of the car. She holds it up to show me Hans’s name on the screen.
“Hey, hold on a sec,” she says when she answers the call. Before she closes the door, she leans back over the passenger seat. “We are going to solve your problem, Frey. I promise. We are.” And I know she believes it, but I also know it might not be possible.
Right now, the plan is for me and Aubrey to go anyway and see how far we get.