7. Archie
Archie
W ith Piper settled, and the rain stopped—it rarely lasts long this time of year—I decide to go out for dinner and spare us both any more awkward encounters.
I walk the Promenade that parallels the beach to the Breakwater neighborhood. I’ll have my choice of restaurants there. The air smells crisp and fresh, like everything’s been rinsed clean from the rain. Waves are flat and creep to the shore with a soft, lulling sound that settles my nerves.
Just as I’m feeling chill again, my mobile plays “The Imperial March” from Star Wars , another Frankie ringtone setting.
This call I answer right away. Dad rarely rings me.
“Archibald,” he says on top of my hello. “Why haven’t you signed the documents I sent?”
“Dex and Britta don’t have anywhere to live yet.” I leave out I’ve ignored opening the package with the docs in it that Sybil sent. Dad’s always liked Dex. Giving him and Britta a bit of time to move out is my best play for convincing Dad I need more time.
“Sybil can make some calls and get him a place. I need those papers signed.”
I’ve used the word no before, but I can’t remember if I’ve ever used it with Dad. Worse than that, my throat has gone dry and, suddenly, I can’t remember how to say no . Even if I could, Dad doesn’t understand the meaning of it.
But I can’t just walk away from the house, my mates, and LA without a fight.
I step from the path onto the sand and take a deep breath. “I can’t sign them. Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“I need more time to figure things out.” My chest tightens, cutting off my breath.
“More time? Mmm.” In the quiet beat that follows, hope skitters around the edges of my mind.
“I’ll give you the weekend. Any longer and you can figure out how to pay for that house and everything else on your own,” he says brusquely.
And hope slinks away.
Dad’s tightened the leash, and if he’s talking about my allowance and trust, well, he’s willing to go pretty tight.
“I understand,” I say, giving him the only acceptable answer he’ll take.
He ends the call.
I stare at the ocean, willing the waves to regain their strength so they can crash on the shore.
But I don’t have that kind of power. I don’t have any power, really. Not with Dad.
Resentment creeps up my chest, but I push it back like I do every time I recall the money I should have from my years on “Surf City High.” Instead, my earnings from the show and a few skincare ads that followed are tied up in a revocable trust Dad controls until I’m thirty, at which point I become the trustee and can do what I want with the money.
When he first put it together, I was sixteen—a young bloke who didn’t know bugger all about managing finances.
Now, at twenty-eight, it’s obvious the trust is more about managing me than my money.
Controlling me. As the current trustee, Dad can change the terms any time he likes.
He could decide tomorrow that I have to wait until I’m thirty-five to get access to the trust.
Or, worse, he could do like he did to Frankie and make sure I never gain control of what I’ve earned.
With my own money tied up, Dad’s supplied me with an admittedly generous allowance that supplements what I’ve made from coaching Dex these last few years.
I’ve used the funds to help my mates, to pay for travel, to build a life in LA.
But without that allowance, I’m...broke.
I break into a cold sweat at the thought.
Money has never been something I worry about. I’m not keen on starting now.
But I’m not keen on working for Dad either. And with Dex’s dream of winning a second World Surf League championship on hold, I’d like to try to make my own dream come true.
The irony is, I figured out how to get Dex his first WSL championship, but I have no idea how to make my own dream come true.
Not without Dad’s money.
I walk a bit further, but the convo with Dad has stolen my appetite. I detour back to the sand and find a relatively dry spot to sit.
What I need is my own coach, and I know exactly who that should be. If anyone can help me figure out my life, it’s my twin.
She answers on the first ring. “Hey, Arch. You caught me on break.”
“Sorry, sis. I should’ve known you’d be working the dinner shift on a Friday night.”
“That’s how I make the big bucks.”
“You could actually be making the big bucks, you know.” I force a laugh, but I still can’t believe my sister is waiting tables at a diner in the middle of nowhere instead of starring in more movies.
She was the best actor of us and had every opportunity to make a real career after the show ended.
She got really good reviews for the few films she did right out of the gate.
“Yeah, nah. I don’t miss having lies about me splashed all over the internet, or anything else that came with fame.” Frankie’s confidence falters with the last bit. I get the sense she misses the acting part, and I hate that she’s given it up because of her ex and Dad.
Frankie seems happy enough—broke—but independent. She’s only a couple hundred miles from LA, but might as well be a different world.
“What’s up?” she asks.
"Not much," I tell her, suddenly hesitant to ask for help with finding my life’s purpose. That’ll take longer than the few minutes she’s got. It’s taken me twenty-eight years just to figure out I need a purpose.
"Liar. You only call when you really need something."
I laugh. Frankie and I text all the time, but it's true—I’m not a big phone person. Now that I’ve rung her, I won’t be saying goodbye before she wrangles the reason why out of me.
"Dad wants the house back so Cynthia can have it as their divorce settlement." No use beating around the bush when Frankie’s working.
She huffs. “That tracks. Give me the details.”
I tell her how Dad’s pressuring me to come back to Aus and threatening to cut off my allowance if I don’t sign the quitclaim deed. “I’ve got the weekend.”
Mumbling voices and other indistinguishable sounds fill the pause that follows before Frankie speaks. “So, he needs you to turn over the house before the divorce is final?”
There’s a gleefulness in her voice that has me worried.
“Yeah,” I say hesitantly.
“Don’t sign.” The words are short, sharp, and sure.
“Don’t sign ?”
“Archie.” She sighs. “What do you want to do with your life?”
“Dunno. That’s why I rang you.”
“Do you want to live in Brisbane? Work for Dad?”
“Brisbane’s not bad.” I do love my hometown. I just haven’t lived there since I was a kid, and going back would be…complicated.
“Brisbane’s great,” Frankie says. “As long as you’re okay changing your name to Malcolm Forsythe’s Kid. That’s all you’ll ever be known as there.”
I kick off my thongs and dig my toes into the sand. “I prefer Archie.”
“Then you’ll need to tell Dad you’re not going back. You need to keep the house.”
“I don’t really need the house.” I’m not ready to walk away from Dad the way Frankie did.
“No, but you’ll need money if… when Dad cuts off your allowance.”
“So, you’re saying I should sell the beach house?”
“Yes,” she scoffs. “He took our money. You have every right to get some of it back.”
Now I understand the excitement in her voice. It’s not just about fighting Dad. It’s about revenge.
When Frankie eloped with someone Dad didn’t approve of, he restructured her trust, changing the conditions so Frankie won’t gain access to hers until Dad dies. At which point, a new trustee will be appointed who Frankie will be required to ask for money whenever she needs or wants it.
Even when the marriage was annulled less than a year later, Dad wouldn’t change the terms back. If she wants her “Surf City” earnings and what she made from the couple of movies she was in afterward, she’ll need to take him to court.
He’ll bury her in legal fees in a matter of weeks, and she knows it.
So, she’s turned her back on the money— her money—and made a life of her own.
Not one I envy, though. Independence is too high a price to pay to work in a greasy diner in the middle of nowhere.
Frankie will come to her senses, and when she does, I’ve put aside every cent Dex has paid me so she’ll have something to live on while she starts over.
“If you sold the house, you’d have money to start Bombora,” she says. “You hold the title. There’s nothing stopping you from selling.”
Sand—still wet from today’s rain—covers my feet, squishing between my toes.
I shiver as much from the cold sand as I do Frankie’s suggestion.
She’s not only read my mind, she’s remembered my dream to start a surf wear company.
She even remembered the name Bombora, and I haven’t mentioned it in years.
“Dad would never forgive me for selling it out from under him, let alone starting my own company instead of working for him,” I say to tamp down my rising excitement.
“Yeah…You would like it, though. Right?” Frankie is so good at reading my mind, it’s scary sometimes.
“Yeah,” I admit.
“Then you can’t sign over the house. If you need to go to battle to prove you’re the rightful owner, do it. The courts will side with you. Then you can sell the house,” Frankie says with an easy confidence—that is the one thing we don’t share.
As though what she’s suggesting wouldn’t sever my ties to Dad for good.
“Remember how Dad was when we were younger? Before Forsythe took off?” I ask her.
“I remember he worked all the time,” she says. “But that hasn’t changed.”
“Yeah, but work wasn’t his whole life. He made time for us and what we wanted to do. He taught us to surf.” My best memories of Dad are the early mornings when he’d take us to North Burleigh Heads to surf before he went to work.
“He taught you to surf. I tagged along, then learned mostly from you.”
An older couple with four yappy dogs walk behind me, speaking a language to each other I don’t recognize. “That’s not how I remember it,” I say when I can be heard over the yapping. “He taught both of us.”