Chapter Twenty-Four #3
"How is she really?" he asked, eyes suddenly losing their spark, face going dark. His job as the patriarch was to protect his family. It couldn't have been easy to accept that he had not been able to protect Sammy. And then Reagan too.
After a lot of discussion, all involved parties had decided that it would be best if her parents and brother and friends at work weren't privy to all the facts involving the Michael situation. Namely, the fact that Reagan had set out on a mission to take down Michael, to catch him in the act.
"Some days she is better than others," I told him honestly. "The memory loss nags at her," I added.
"It's interesting," he said, voice dipping lower, making sure it didn't carry to the women who were finally breaking apart, tears being swiped off cheeks.
"What is, sir?"
"The fact that she knew what had happened to Sammy. And at whose hands. And yet she got close and alone with him at a party. And that she is dating someone in private security."
He knew.
If not everything, enough.
"That is interesting," I agreed, nodding.
"Another girl came forward this morning," he said, blindsiding me. I hadn't checked the news. "The Schmidt's daughter," he went on, clearly knowing the parents, likely the woman as well. "When she was seventeen," he bit out, jaw tight.
"It's good he has ended up behind bars," I said carefully.
"It would be better if he ended up in a grave," he said, not a hint of dishonesty in his voice. "But I am glad my girl was strong enough to make sure he never did this again."
"It's not over yet," I reminded him. There was a trial to come.
A jury of peers. People could be incredibly stupid when you threw them in a room day after day while they worried about their kids, their jobs, the events they were missing while being forced to try to pay attention to the often boring details of a trial.
"It's over," he said with the confidence, the finality of someone who had the money and power to make sure something went the way he wanted. Mr. Hoffman by himself did. But he and all the fathers of all these girls? There was very little they couldn't influence should they want to.
"Oh, dear," Kitty declared, red-rimmed eyes going wide as she looked at me. Well, not at me, at the half-dead plant in my arm.
"It was a housewarming gift several years back," I told her. "From a well-meaning relative who didn't know I don't know anything about plants. I was hoping you could save it," I added, holding it out toward her.
From there, I was given a tour of the house.
The kind of tour of the kind of house that left my fucking legs sore afterward.
Their home was like Reagan explained—sun-soaked, full of neutral shades, impossibly clean, lacking knick knacks or personal items. Beautiful, but like a catalog, not like a home.
The entire back of the building was windowed, giving endless views of the ocean and clean sand.
The beach was private, so no ugly multi-colored towels or umbrellas interrupted the view.
The Hoffmans had a built-in pool and a separate sauna in addition to the beach backyard. They had, by my count, three rooms that served no actual purpose except to hold more carefully chosen furniture.
While Reagan, Sammy, and Luis all had their childhood bedrooms in the house, we were led to the “second master suite” at the other end of the house from theirs, told to settle in, then meet them downstairs for lunch.
"I am pretty sure this room is bigger than my house."
"I'm pretty sure you're right," she agreed, giving me a smile.
She hadn't spent a lot of time at my place. She always had to be home to check on Mal, so we tended to just go there instead, but she had done a walk through. She'd smiled over the picture of my siblings and me with our mom, and she helped me break in a few surfaces.
"I'm surprised they put us together."
"Really? We're adults."
"Still. Aren't parents usually weird about that sort of thing?"
"I guess some can be pretty prudish. But my parents were never that way. Sammy's high-school boyfriend lived with us while his parents toured Europe one year. He stayed in her room. They've just always been liberal that way."
"Did you and your mom have a good talk?" I asked, watching as she put her bag on the bed, as she started to unpack it. She was one of those people. A vacation unpacker. I was a live-out-of-a-suitcaser.
"We mostly cried all over each other, and apologized for not being closer in our grief. What did you and my dad talk about?"
"How you were. And the whiskey."
"What about the whiskey?"
"He's softening to the idea of slashing the ticket price."
"Really?"
"I may have implied it was too steep. He probably thinks I'm a cheap-ass now, but at least he is seeing that it's not just you who thinks the brand could be doing better.
You're going to do great things with that company, babe," I assured her, snagging her around the waist, pulling her down on my lap at the edge of the bed.
"I'm trying to unpack," she insisted, but didn't put up much of a fight.
"You realize you're only going to re-pack in a couple of days, right?"
"Yeah, but when you live out of a suitcase, things end up all over the floor when you look for an outfit."
"Babe, have you seen this floor? I don't think dirty would dare to land on it."
Then, well, we broke in the bed, my hand on her mouth, even though I very much doubted the sound could carry through such a sprawling space.
Then we got dressed, went downstairs, and ate lunch with her family.
Then dinner.
Then breakfast.
It turned out she was right.
Her mom liked me because of the plant thing. A plant that was looking a lot better already with all its brown bits chopped off, moved into a new spot, watered, and placed near some light.
Her father had liked hearing about Kingston building his own business, about all of us working there on occasion. I think he liked the steadiness of that even though he knew that should Reagan decide tomorrow never to work again, she would still never need someone to take care of her financially.
It was just a dad thing.
Something I could respect.
She and her parents had tripped a long a little the first day, trying to find their connection again as a family.
By the time Luis came parading through the door, they had finally found their groove again as a family. Luis, with all his light and fun, only seemed to add to it.
"Now that we have everyone here," Kitty started that night at dinner, reaching for her husband's hand.
Reagan's shoulders tightened, making my hand reach for her thigh under the table, giving it a squeeze.
"Dun dun dun," Luis mumbled under his breath.
"This family has been through a lot these past few years.
The tragedy that has struck this family is...
it's unfathomable," she said, closing her eyes tight for a long moment as her husband squeezed her hand.
"It has made your father and I have a lot of long discussions, some real heart-to-hearts.
And, as you know, we have been trying to downsize our properties.
But your father and I have decided that instead of selling the property in the Hills, we are going to take it, and slowly turn it something much more useful. "
"We are going to open a women's shelter," Richard piped in.
"Sammy's House," Kitty finished. "We wanted to tell you guys sooner, but there are a lot of legalities involved.
We wanted to make sure we worked out all the kinks with the local governments, find employees, all that.
We wanted to make it real first. But it's real now.
We're moving forward. We thought... we thought that Sammy would have liked her trust money to go to helping other women.
We just... we wanted to honor her correctly. "
There was more crying that night.
At dinner with her parents, later when she talked with her brother, their legs kicking in the water as they sat off the side, and in bed with me.
I knew it for what it was.
More healing.
Pieces of the family being sewn back together.
And I suspected that it meant something that I had been allowed to be a part of it, that I was invited to the opening of the shelter at the beginning of the next year.
"Babe," I called, walking through the empty house, her parents having already said goodbye to us that morning before catching a plane of their own.
"Down here," she called back, making me turn direction back to the “kid wing” as her parents had called it, the part of the house where Reagan's, Luis's, and Sammy's rooms were located, where none of us had gone for the whole week we had been there.
"Is this your old room?" I asked, finding the bright pink walls in contrast with the woman I knew. But time made women out of girls. Who knew what she had liked all those years before.