Chapter 8 #3
“Thank you!” I liked it, too. I had taken some of the money I’d earned and invested in a few new items for my wardrobe.
I was saving a lot by living here and not having to pay rent or anything else, and that reminded me of his mother and her lawyer business.
“I heard your mom charges a lot. Like, a lot.”
“Have you been visiting attorney gossip pages?”
“No, I heard it from Cadence who looked it up because she was curious. It’s lucky that your mom is doing the stuff for me for free.” I waited for him to nod or confirm it.
“She isn’t.”
I felt my stomach drop so far that it might have fallen out of my body and onto the blueish stones of his patio. “What?” I asked. It came out like a yell.
The two guests looked over. “What’s wrong?” Cadence asked.
“Nothing,” Nolan answered. “Vivi, don’t worry. I’ve got it.”
“I thought she was doing this as a favor! Not a favor to me but to you, as her son!” I told him.
“Are you talking about Nolan’s mother?” Beau asked me. “She’s not the type to do anyone any favors. Our fraternity was having some trademark issues with our new logo and she took on the case, but she sent a huge invoice. He had to dispute it. She had really overbilled, too.”
I nodded because that sounded familiar. My mom had collected money from both me and my sister and had said it was for utilities, but then we’d gotten a glimpse at some of the actual costs and found that she had been putting the squeeze on us. But Cadence was horrified.
“Your mother was cheating you?” she asked. “Your own mother did that?” Then she seemed to realize what she had said and how those words must have sounded to Nolan, and she looked even more horrified. “Well, maybe she had a good reason…”
He made the smile that I didn’t like, where he didn’t seem actually happy or pleased. “She did, of course,” he answered. “The reason was that she wanted more money.”
Cadence stared at him, but Beau didn’t seem bothered. “I remember when your parents came to our graduation. They landed their helicopter next to the Gowan Fieldhouse where we had the ceremony,” he reminisced.
“And the joke was on them because I wasn’t even there to graduate. I had broken into the baseball stadium the night before and had passed out at home plate. Good times,” Nolan said. He stood. “Can I get you anything, Cadence? We’ve been having a lot of lemonade.”
She stayed for a little while longer and so did Beau, then she needed to get back to her mother and he needed to go see his son.
He missed Finley a lot, although they had only been apart for a few hours.
It took less time for Beau to leave than it had before because without the baby in the car, he was a lot less careful about backing up.
But Nolan still shook his head at the lack of speed as we watched them from the porch.
“They’re both going to get pulled over for going under the limit,” he remarked as they drove away.
“Did he talk about Finley the whole time he was here?”
“I heard a lot, but he also wanted my advice about his new business. He wants to start working as a stylist.”
“For hair?” I questioned. Beau’s did look very nice.
“No, more like a life stylist. He would help people pick their clothes, shoes, and jewelry. He would give advice on vacations and home décor.”
“Oh, like he would find rich people who had sad lives and fix them? Like a fairy godmother?”
“Very close,” he agreed. He was smiling again but it looked genuine. “Except it wouldn’t involve transforming pumpkins and he would make them pay for everything. He wants to build a clientele of football players and other high rollers who mainly need sartorial assistance.”
Another good word. I stored it in my memory to look up later. “What did you tell him?”
“I said that I’m not the guy to ask,” he answered.
“Why would I be of any help? I don’t have business experience.
I’ve never successfully built my own company or even held a job for a decent length of time.
I gave him the names of some of my family members to contact, Ryan up here, Steve in Detroit.
They’ll be able to give him realistic advice but I’m not the right person. ”
“But you could be.”
“What?” He turned to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“You could be a person like your cousin Ryan up here and Steve in Detroit. Why not?”
“I’m not like them at all. They’re trustworthy and hardworking.”
“Aren’t you?” I asked. “I mean, I trust you. I’m living with you and I’m not worried about it at all.
I don’t think that you’ll steal my money or take my phone and belongings.
I know that you won’t lock me out and then call the police to tell them that I’m an intruder so I have to run off when I see blue lights.
I don’t put furniture in front of my door at night—I know that you’re not going to come in so you can get at me.
I don’t even have to sleep with my knife! That’s a lot of trust.”
“Are you speaking from experience? Have you had to put furniture in front of your door, have you been locked out of your own home? Have you been scared enough to sleep with your knife?”
Well, yeah, so I nodded. “But not anymore,” I said, to emphasize my point. “And you’re clearly hardworking. You’ve been sober for more than half a year, trying hard and succeeding every day.”
“Thank you for saying those things. I would hope that you trust that I won’t attack you somehow, and I absolutely won’t.
You’re talking about a basic level of human decency.
I am working hard to stay sober, but I have to do that because I put myself in the position of being a drunk.
I saw how my parents behaved and what happened to my grandparents, too, but I still didn’t bother to put the brakes on myself. ”
“You were young when you started.”
“I was,” he agreed. “And I waited too long to stop. I was even drunk on the day of my grandparents’ funeral, even though I saw the irony.”
“I think I know what you mean by irony but how did it apply to their funeral?”
“They were lost in a boating accident. No one ever says it, but we all believe that it was because they were intoxicated,” Nolan explained.
The stuff I’d read online hadn’t mentioned that. “You should always wear a PFD,” I said, which the article had recommended. “I’m sorry that happened to them.”
“Me too. Despite their issues, they weren’t bad people. My mother is a generally wretched person, by the way, which is why she tried to overbill my fraternity. She’ll probably do the same thing with your case, but you don’t have to worry. I’ll handle her.”
“You mean, you’ll tell her that she should do you a favor because she’s your mother? Or do you mean that you’ll pay her all that money?”
“We’ll probably haggle for a while, since that’s one of her favorite things, and then we’ll settle on a number that’s a fraction of what she had demanded.
She actually called this morning to let me know that she has results.
She’s insisting that she needs to see you in person, so I thought we could fly down.
It won’t be fun but I think it’s necessary.
You don’t have any clients on Wednesday and Thursday, correct? ”
“No, and not on Friday either. That family was only up here for the summer and they went back home because school starts soon,” I answered.
The spreadsheet that Cadence had helped me make was only getting emptier instead of filing with more names, and that wasn’t going to help me pay back Nolan for everything that he was doing.
“Will you give me a copy of your mom’s invoice? ”
“No. It was my idea to get her involved, right?”
“It’s still my problem that she’s solving,” I said, but he didn’t answer. “Do you talk to your parents besides when you have legal questions?”
“I do speak to her briefly every month or two.” He thought. “Both of them usually call around my birthday but now they won’t have to.”
“Why?”
“Because if we’re going there on Wednesday, I’ll see them. They won’t have to call,” he explained.
“That’s your birthday? In three days?”
“Unless you can figure out a way to stop it,” he told me.
“As far as I know, we might be able to stop time when we’re dead.
I mean that obviously our time will have stopped due to being dead, but we might be able to also stop it for people in the world of the living.
” He looked very doubtful and I switched topics.
“What do you think that your mom has been able to do about my paperwork?”
“Maybe she found out that you’re actually elfin,” he suggested. “Someone switched you at birth with a human baby, and that’s why you’re so dainty.”
“I’m what? I’m dainty?”
He laughed. “Don’t pull out your knife. That was supposed to be a compliment,” he said. “When you walk, you almost glide, like you’re flying. You have big blue eyes like a fairy.”
“Fairy eyes are yellow.”
“Is that right? I’m going to have to do more research,” he answered. “Maybe I’ll talk to Cadence at the library.”
“Maybe we should go for a run and I’ll tell you everything I know,” I said. The afternoon was much cooler and we had been heading out together almost every day.
“That sounds like a good idea. We’ll see if you can catch me,” Nolan answered. He laughed again and we went off together.
I shared my knowledge about elves and fairies as we went. Lately, my life did seem to have a supernatural tinge because it was so easy and boundless. That was due to Nolan, though. I smiled at him and felt like I really was flying.