Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Georgie
“Dad! Marlowe. Hi. Hi, guys,” I say with no social graces whatsoever. “What are you two doing here?”
“You said you had a question about the shop,” Dad says, looking at the TV screen, where the Firebirds are once again at bat.
Things are fine right now, but it’s going to be a test of the Firebirds’ bench strength if they can hold their lead without Coop and Jake in the game.
“And because I passed all that on to Marlowe years ago, I figured I’d have her come fill in the blanks. ”
If that doesn’t describe the last decade of my life in one sentence, I don’t know what does.
“Oh, uh—”
“Who’s this?” Marlowe asks with a friendly smile.
“Uh,” I stammer, breaking out into a sweat.
“This is Jane Carville and Kayla Carville-O’Shannan.
Jane, Kayla, these are my …” I swallow, my brain processing the truth and the wish in the same heartbeat.
The truth would be to say that this is my dad and his wife.
The wish makes me say, “These are my parents, Raymond and Marlowe.”
“What a pleasure to meet you both,” Marlowe says, shaking their hands. Then her arm comes around my shoulders and she hugs me to her side. “I’m Georgiana’s stepmom,” she says, “But I love her like she’s my own.”
I love her like she’s my own.
Warmth spreads through me hearing her say this, and I lean slightly into her side, remembering, of all things, the day she rushed me to the emergency dentist. She stayed with me throughout the entire process, holding my hand on the stool next to the dentist chair while they extracted the tooth.
She took a video of me all loopy on pain medicine, and when she played it back for Dad and me that next weekend, I was struck by how sweet and funny she was.
“You’re not going to float away, Georgiana,” she said when I told her I thought my head was a balloon.
“But I am!” I said. “My head is full of helium. Can’t you see it’s floating? I’m floating!”
And she just giggled patiently. “Your head is okay. And if it flies off, I’ll jump up and catch it for you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, sweetie.”
“Thanks, Mama,” I said. “I love you.”
Her voice hitched then. “Of course, sweetie. I love you, too.”
I’ve been chasing those words and that feeling of acceptance and love since that day where she acted like a real mom to me, since that day where she loved me, not because my dad was around but because I was a young girl who needed love and she wanted to give it.
And now, here she is, hugging me in front of two women I respect so much, and she’s telling them she loves me.
I think about the papers in my backpack.
Maybe I don’t need them after all.
“Your daughter is a clever businesswoman,” Kayla is saying to my parents. “You two must be so proud.”
“We sure are,” my dad says.
“Of course we are. But what were you three talking about?” Marlowe asks. Her arm’s still around me, but she’s angling toward Jane and Kayla.
“That’s between us girls,” Jane says, tucking her papers and notes back into her bag with an easy smile.
“Well, if it concerns Meant to Bean, it definitely should include this girl.” Marlowe points to herself, still smiling, but her arm around me has gone still. “What did I miss?”
Jane looks from Marlowe to me. Kayla is staring at my dad, who’s watching the game.
“Georgie, is that right?” Jane asks gently, like she’s giving me an out.
I don’t answer right away. I’m too busy noticing the shift in how Marlowe’s holding me, how her arm feels like a hook now, how her questions morphed from how’s my daughter to what am I about to lose?
When someone opens the door to the shop and a cold gust of wind sweeps through, Marlowe’s warmth wafts away toward Jane and Kayla—the people she wants to impress.
I look up from them to the reflection of the TV in the window, where I see a backward 49 stepping onto the mound.
I whip around, breaking Marlowe’s hold on me. “Logan’s pitching already?”
“Yeah,” my dad says, folding his arms to watch the game. “Top of the fifth? That’s early to bring in a reliever.”
“Lucas got hit by a ball,” I say. Dad’s probably only watching because he has some big client who’s a baseball fan, but he’s still my dad.
And this is still my boyfriend.
I look over my shoulder to Kayla and Jane. “Sorry I’m so distracted. Maybe we could pick this up again—”
“Pick what up again?” Marlowe’s asking, talking between my head and my dad’s. Dad holds up a hand to her.
Kayla and Jane stand up on my other side.
Logan’s first pitch has its usual bizarre movement on it, but it drops low and away. Ball one.
“He looks so upset,” I whisper to myself, watching his body language. His shoulders are too tense, practically up around his ears.
“Lucas looked off, too,” Kayla says quietly.
“They both must be worried about Coop. Of course, Logan’s default is to worry about everything.
The fact that we don’t know the extent of Coop’s concussion is the worst thing for him.
Add in Lucas getting hit, even if it was minor, and Logan must be like a live wire up there. ”
“But I thought he was making so much improvement with the tank and the brainspotting,” I say. If anyone knows about Logan’s sessions with Dr. Chang, it’s Kayla.
“He’s been doing much better, but uncertainty makes his anxiety spiral. It may not just be about Coop, though. Doug called me yesterday. He’s been worried about him all week.”
Her words drop on me like an anvil at the same time that Logan’s next ball drops into the dirt three feet in front of Rojas.
I audibly gulp. “So, if someone was holding back information because she thought it would help him focus—”
Kayla’s eyes widen only a fraction, but it may as well be pure shock on her face. “That would do it.”
I slump. “I’m such an idiot.”
“What did you do?” Marlowe asks, not as sharp as usual, but sharp enough. “Is this about the trucks? The shop?”
A muscle in Kayla’s jaw ticks. Jane steps back from where she’s standing next to Kayla and says, “Marlowe, forgive my lack of manners. What is it you do for Meant to Bean?”
On the TV, Logan throws another ball. It’s even worse than before.
Marlowe gives a sparkling laugh. “I run it.”
“She runs the books,” Dad answers at the same time as Marlowe, glancing over his shoulder.
He’s totally oblivious to how red her face is getting.
“It was a bit of a mess after my first wife died. We had to take a loan out against the shop for her medical expenses. And then for Georgie’s dental expenses, right, kid?
” he asks, nudging me with his elbow while still watching the game.
“But it turns out I married a great accountant.”
Logan walked the first batter and is two balls into the second when the guy swings and smacks the ball out of the park.
Home run.
A moment later, the skies seem to part, and a heavy rainfall descends on the game.
I watch Logan hang his head while the ump calls a rain delay and Logan’s teammates jog past him.
But Logan just stays there, looking miserable. Looking like his offering of branch and trunk has been rejected by everyone who matters.
By me.
I’ve shut him out all week—no, since I’ve known him.
I’ve done exactly what my parents did—lived my own life in private while he lived his, sharing what was convenient, not what was most important.
I thought I was protecting him from worry, but that was a lie.
I was protecting myself from opening up all the way.
It’s easier to be resigned than to hope.
I learned that a long time ago. It’s easier to be alone than to be heartbroken.
But it’s not worth it.
“You know, they’re allowed to talk and text during rain delays,” Kayla says
“They are?” I ask her. She nods.
“And the announcer said the rain is expected for the next four hours,” she adds. “That’s a lot of time to give him some reassurance.”
“Oof, that was ugly,” Dad says, turning away from the TV to face me before I can answer Kayla.
“Now what were we talking about, Georgie Girl? The shop. Yeah, it got paid off in the spring.” He smiles and pats my shoulders.
“And the truck is almost paid off, too. I don’t know what you’ve been doing over in Sugar Maple, kid, but keep it up.
We’ll have that whole fleet paid off in no time. ”
For some reason, I look at Kayla. I don’t know why I look at her instead of my dad, but it’s like the casual bomb he dropped has robbed me of my senses and I need some element of normalcy to restore it.
“What’s the significance of the loans being paid off?” Jane is asking Marlowe, and the question makes my face whip away from Kayla’s to Jane’s.
“It means we have the business model in place to open a lot more trucks,” Marlowe says, her shoulders pulled back. “Right, Raymond?”
“That’s right,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Now, Georgie girl, why don’t you go make us a few of those It’s Bean Reals I’ve heard everyone talking about.”
“No.”
I stand tall in my platform Converse, letting my feet become stone and my spine become steel. “No, I won’t be serving any drinks. I won’t be letting you open a fleet of trucks with my company’s name on it.”
“Your company?” Marlowe asks. “That’s a bold statement.”
“It’s the truth,” I say, stepping past the group to my booth, where I rummage for the manila folder that’s been burning a hole in my backpack. I pull it out and look at my parents.
At my dad and his wife.
“I was going through Mama’s things and found her will.
There’s a trust in it, like you’ve always told me,” I say.
I open the envelope, my hands shaking, and point to the one section I understood last week, the section an attorney confirmed for me when he explained the rest of the document.
“You were named trustee, Dad, and I was the beneficiary. The shop and this building were the only real assets. And it terminated automatically.”
“When you were eighteen,” Dad says.