Chapter Twenty-nine
B efore I had a chance to respond, which I couldn’t anyway because I was sure I’d swallowed my tongue, Liam hustled me out of the house. Standing on the stoop, he took an envelope out of his pocket and once he locked the door, he put the key in the envelope and shoved it back in the mail slot. Then he brushed his hands together as if this was dusted and done.
We hurried down the walk and climbed into Soph’s car. I glanced at my phone and realized I’d missed several texts as it had been on silent. Being busy doing a B and E, okay, just the E, will do that for a girl.
The texts were mostly from Soph.
Where are you? Did you find the urn?
Police cars are at the house.
Now a paddy wagon has pulled up.
Should I go over there?
The next one was from Em, using Jessie’s phone.
Might need bail money. Meet us at the station.
Then Soph again.
The party is over. Em and our friends are okay.
Mr. Loren managed to talk the police out of arresting
them...this time. Jules, we need to talk bout Em.
Where are you?
And then Em again.
Never mind. We’re good. Party on!
I read all of this to Liam. His expression showed his concern. He wisely did not voice his worry aloud. Instead, he said, “You might want to text them that you’ve got the urn and Paisley’s evil plans have been foiled.”
“Oh, right.” I set to it, trying to word the message in such a way that if our text messages were somehow subpoenaed by Paisley on a litigious rampage, then I wouldn’t be disclosing the fact that I had unlawfully entered a person’s house to retrieve an urn without said person’s permission, even though, yeah, they stole our mom!
So, naturally, my responding text read:
Liam and I are getting married!
At this, my phone pretty much exploded.
Soph replied:
Now? Like, right now? Because we have stuff happening here.
Oh, but congratulations!
And Em wrote:
I call maid of honor! Woot!
Then it turned into a texting thumb wrestling match as Soph argued with Em over who was going to be my maid/matron of honor. I smiled at my phone and then broke into the flurry of texts.
BTW, we have “the package” fresh from its “cleaning” and will be home soon. Stall!
Before my phone caught on fire with the response from that news, I shut it off.
Putting the urn beside me on the seat, I leaned over the console and into Liam. He lifted his arm and pulled me in close. It felt right just as it always had, like two puzzle pieces that locked together perfectly.
“I hate to be a bummer,” Liam said. “But by taking Babs the way we did, we can’t exactly prove that Courtney took her from you at Paisley’s request unless we admit our part of what happened.”
“I know,” I said. “I was thinking about that. It was too risky to not get Babs back. I mean, if we called the cops and Courtney dumped her somewhere to avoid being caught with her then I wouldn’t be able to produce the urn and Paisley could take us to court and say I lost her and the entire estate would go to my rotten cousin.”
“Unfortunately, it also means that even though Paisley lost this round, I suspect she’s going to keep trying,” Liam said. “You and your sisters are going to have to be vigilant and loop your attorney in.”
“And we will,” I said. “But today, I am going to enjoy every glorious second of our victory.”
We arrived at the house shortly after that. Liam parked on the street, and we walked up the front walkway, hand in hand, noting that the front door was open.
My pace quickened. I didn’t think Paisley would harm my sisters, I mean she was greedy but not unstable, or so I had thought. We heard yelling just inside the door. I jogged into the house with Liam beside me.
Paisley stood in the center of the great room. Her choppy highlighted hair was wild as if she’d been tugging at it. Her dress looked rumpled, and the hem was frayed. She only had one shoe on, and it seemed as if all of her make-up, including her false eyelashes, were dripping off the end of her chin in a bid for escape.
Meanwhile Soph and Em were sitting at the table with Dante, Jessie, and the hippie turtle rescue guy whose name I didn’t know, wearing feathered boas and sparkly top hats, playing Cards Against Humanity with a big ol’ pitcher of margaritas in the middle of the table. Mr. Loren was also sitting there in his impeccable suit, although he did not appear to be playing cards. His laptop was open before him.
“Jules! Liam!” Em cried at the sight of us. “You’re just in time. Mr. Loren can’t play because he’s technically working and Paisley doesn’t want to, shocker, but this game is definitely a the more the merrier type, don’t you think? So join us!”
Liam let go of my hand and put it on my lower back as I sauntered by Paisley, cradling the urn.
“Sounds great!” I said. “Let’s be sure to deal Babs in, too, since I just had her polished.” Somehow, I managed to say that without cracking up.
Mr. Loren perked up at this. He put on a pair of reading glasses and held out his hands for Babs. I knew he wanted to verify that it was actually the original bedazzled urn with Babs’s ashes sealed inside. He looked it over, nodded, and returned it to me.
“Everything seems to be in order.” Mr. Loren closed the laptop and slid it into his bag. “Mr. Mahony, if you wouldn’t mind walking me out, I’d like to have a word with you.”
Liam looked at me in alarm and I shrugged.
“As far as I know, he’s never bitten anyone,” I said. Liam smiled.
“Okay, sure,” Liam said.
With that, Mr. Loren picked up his bag and led the way toward the door. He paused beside Paisley and said, “You’ll be receiving a bill for today’s meeting in the mail.”
And then he stepped outside with Liam behind him, closing the door after them.
Paisley’s face went pale, then blotchy, and then it was suffused with red like she was breaking out in hives. Not a good look on her.
“Where did you get that?” My awful cousin pointed at the urn.
“Get it?” I asked. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. I’ve had it with me the whole time.” Which was kind of true if you thought of space and time as fluid sorts of things.
“This. Isn’t. Over.” Paisley seethed.
I eyed her up and down. “Yes, it is. And now you need to leave our house and unless you are expressly invited, which you won’t be, I do not want to see you set foot in here ever again.”
Paisley stomped toward the entrance, hobbling given that she was wearing just one shoe, muttering the whole way. When she left, she slammed the door so hard it rattled on its hinges.
“Did you see her face?” Em cried. She stood up from the table and threw her arms around me. “That was epic.”
“Well done!” Soph said. Then she started singing, “Ding dong the witch is dead!”
Which naturally set off the others. The next thing I knew there was a conga line weaving through the house, led by Dante, who was carrying Babs’s urn, Jessie, Em, hippie-turtle guy, and Soph.
As they continued singing, Em made a take-a-picture gesture with her hands. I took several, tossing her my phone just as Soph grabbed my hand and yanked me into line.
When Liam reentered the house, we were working our way upstairs. I gestured for him to catch up, noting that he had a really weird expression on his face.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” he said.
Liam patted his pants pocket and then smiled at me and put his hands on my hips, jumping all in with the shenanigans. Man, I loved this guy. It hit me then, hard, like a punch to the chest. I loved him, I was in love with him, there was never going to be anyone for me but Liam Mahony.
“What?” he asked. Probably, because I looked like I’d been slapped upside the head.
“Nothing,” I said.
I smiled as if to make it so, because I’m a big, stupid chicken, and I couldn’t manage the three little words that start with “I” and end with “You” and have “Love” wedged in between like peanut butter holding the bread together. Ugh, I was such a loser.
Dante and Jessie missed their plane, the cats were not speaking to me because of the party, which apparently was a doozy and likely the conga line didn’t help. They don’t really like people other than me. Hippie-turtle guy introduced himself when the conga line broke up.
He was Troy, just Troy, because last names were “bad energy full of tribalism which led to isolationism, and he was an inclusive sort of guy.” Okay, dude. Good thing he was nerdily cute. He was also completely enamored with Em, who seemed to think no more or less of him than any other accessory she might have like a belt or cute earrings. Given the state of Em lately, I almost took the poor boy aside to warn him off, but when I saw the way he looked at her I realized that he would heed no warnings of any kind. Poor bastard had it bad.
Hannah and Harry came to tuck their mother in, whose nerves had been soothed by three margaritas which left her unfit to tend to herself. Yes, this was Soph’s first real-life embarrassing moment in front of her kids. I tried to cheer her up by assuring her there would likely be more as the twins got older. Shockingly, she was not comforted by this in the least.
I wasn’t surprised that Stan didn’t show up to check on his wife. Jerk. I wondered if Soph had made any decisions about him and their marriage yet. I hoped she left him. I hoped she burned his practice down and left him. Okay, maybe that was going too far. Still, a nice case of chlamydia wouldn’t be out of order for the cheating prick. I could only hope.
When everyone moved to the kitchen to forage for food, Liam grabbed me by the arm and escorted me to the door.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“My place,” he said.
The way he said it made it clear that there would be no discussion. This was fine with me. I was exhausted. I waved and blew kisses at our people and then the door shut behind us and we were striding over to his house.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Pretty great. We got rid of Paisley, and both Em and Soph seemed better today,” I said. “Maybe we’re all going to come out the other side of this grief thing.”
“You will,” Liam said. “You’re stronger than you know.”
He paused in front of his door and studied my face. “So, surfer girl, do we get to pick up where we left off?”
“You mean where you were literally picking me up? Yes, please!”
He smiled, opened the door, and we slipped inside. I made for the stairs, figuring we were headed straight for the make-up sex we’d been denied that morning, but he hooked me by the back of my baggy shorts and steered me to the back of the house. He took my hand and led me outside where we could see the Pacific sparkle in the late day sun.
“No upstairs yet,” Liam said. “I need to talk to you about something first.”
Oh, no. I started to panic. Had he changed his mind about us? Did he not want to get back together? We were getting back together, right? Oh, man, what if he’d only been kidding when he said we were going to get married and all. Ack! Why did I text that to my sisters? I felt like an idiot.
Suddenly, the lone margarita I had quaffed was making a desperate bid to come back up. I did not, not, not want to have my heart pulverized again. Was that overly dramatic? Yeah, well, Babs hadn’t raised me for nothing.
We stood on the deck that overlooked the petite backyard and gave us a view of Gull’s Harbor below and the sea beyond. The sun was just dipping down toward the horizon and in moments it would be gone. I thought the cover of darkness might be a good thing, especially if the big jerk was going to dump me and make me cry.
“I had an interesting conversation with Mr. Loren,” he said.
I sucked in a breath. Oh, no, what did the lawyer do? Had he said something to Liam? Warned him away? Told him to run? I mean, really, who could blame him? My mind created and discarded a million scenarios all before I said, “Really? How so?”
“Do you remember the ring your mother stuck in my bag?” Liam asked.
“Oh, just a little since it’s what caused me to leave you and all,” I said.
“Do you remember what it looked like?”
“Yes, it was obnoxiously big,” I said. “Three stones, each a carat, because my dad gave her a new diamond every time she popped out one of us girls, or, in my case acquired a baby.”
“Well, did any of you wonder what happened to it when she died?” Liam asked.
“Huh.” I blinked at him. I hadn’t and I didn’t think Soph or Em had either. “She always said we’d each get our own stone when she passed, but I guess we all assumed she put it in her safe deposit box or something. We haven’t been processing very well.”
“She didn’t put them in a safe,” he said. “She had something else done with the diamonds.”
I tipped my head at him and gave him a considering look. How did he know this? “What did Mr. Loren want talk to you about?”
“Turns out Babs had another part to her will in which she left me a little something,” Liam said. “In the note Mr. Loren gave me, she said she wanted to make things right.”
My heart started to thump hard in my chest. When Liam moved to get down on one knee in front of me, it stopped completely. He took something out of his pocket and held it up to me between two fingers. Sparkling in the light from the setting sun was the square diamond my father had given Babs when I was born.
“Julia Blumer, I asked you once before and I meant it then, but I mean it even more now. Will you marry me?” he asked.
My face crumpled and I started to cry. I couldn’t get the words out. Maybe this was what Babs had meant when she said she wished she’d had more time to make it right. Babs had done this for me. For us. For the first time ever, I felt my heart swell with gratitude for that woman. I could hardly breathe. So, I nodded and then hiccupped, “Y...Yes.”
Liam slid the ring on my finger. It was a perfect fit.
“We couldn’t hear her!” Soph yelled over the wall.
“Yeah, what did she say?” Em demanded.
I looked over my shoulder to see my sisters peeking over the top of the wall, along with Dante, Jessie, Hannah and Harry. I started to laugh.
“Sorry,” Liam muttered. “I sort of figured witnesses might be in order this time.”
“It’s okay, no, it’s perfect,” I said. I shouted to my sisters, “I said yes!” Then I turned back to my man, dragged him up from his knees and jumped into his arms.
He kissed me as if I was everything to him, and I kissed him back just the same. When we broke apart, because oxygen is required to live, apparently, we looked at each other with matching goofy smiles.
“I love you, surfer girl,” he said. “I always have, and I always will.”
“I love you, too, new boy,” I said. “And I’m never ever going to leave you ever again.”
“Excellent.” The look Liam gave me scorched. “Now we can go upstairs.”
I laughed and took his hand. As we strode through the house, the light caught the diamond on my finger and I stared at it for a moment, trying to wrap my head around Babs having a ring fashioned for me and giving it to the man I love so that he could propose. It was so touching, and charming, and waaaay overreaching—in other words, so Babs.
I squeezed Liam’s hand as one sly tear slipped out to glide down my cheek but that was okay. In this precise moment in time, all of the years of hurt and anger between me and Babs finally faded away.
When I glanced at Liam, I found him watching me with a tender smile on his face. He let go of my hand and opened his arms. I walked into his embrace, knowing that this time nothing would ever keep us apart.