Amends: A Love Story (22 page)

I lean my head against Maggie's shoulder.
"Sh-sh-she had a heart condition," I say, stammering slightly. "It
was inevitable. God, she did so much for me when Mom and Dad died.
I just wish I'd t-t-told her how much I appreciate everything she's
done."

Maggie's eyes are full again. "It's just so
fucking sad," she keens, and I hold her as she shudders through
another wave of sobbing. After she settles, she sniffles a little
and tries to smile. "I guess I'll be more philosophical
tomorrow."

"Me, too." Now it's my turn to cry.

We're sitting quietly when Joe slips into the
seat in front of us. "First stop," he tells the driver, "will be
Trillingham House." Maggie's dorm. When we arrive, he helps her out
of the limo and walks her to the door. I can tell she's wobbly on
her feet from the combined effects of alcohol and shock.

When Joe returns I ask him to take me to
Grand Central.

"I think not, young lady. You're coming back
to my townhouse."

I roll my eyes. "You're disgusting. I can't
believe you're going to hit on a drunk, grief-stricken girl the
same night her grandmother died."

"Listen Miss Cinderella or whoever you are,
there are plenty of young girls—girls who are far more beautiful
and articulate than you are—who would be thrilled to come home with
me."

I feel as if I've been slapped, and it must
show on my face. "Oh, don't look so offended," he says. "You aren't
that enamored with me, either, if your great escape the last time
was any indication."

I flush and look down at my hands, wondering
why I keep saying the wrong thing. "Sorry," I mumble.

"No need to be sorry. Just come back to my
townhouse, sleep in one of the guest rooms, and leave whenever you
want to in the morning."

I nod my head. It will be good to get some
sleep before I head back to my life and try to figure out what I'm
going to do about Gran's funeral.

/////////////////////////

I take a long, hot shower and make a mental
list of everything I have to do for Gran. She was a strong believer
in organ donation, so I'm going to call the hospital and make sure
all her leftover parts are compassionately recycled. I'm going to
call Forever Acres and reserve a plot near my parents. And I'm
going to call the manager at Sunset Estates and make arrangements
to pick up her things.

I quickly dry myself with a huge, fluffy
towel and throw on the fresh T-shirt and jeans I'd planned on
bringing to Maggie's. Dressed with damp, clean hair and only the
slightest whisper of a hangover, I feel fresh, fragile, and
surprisingly sane.

I move as quietly down the stairs as
possible. The huge brownstone has the beauty and the acoustics of a
cathedral. As I descend to the ground floor, I smell the familiar
scents of breakfast cooking. Gran made bacon and eggs all the time.
My throat tightens—Gran will never make breakfast for me again. I'm
also ravenous. I haven't eaten more than a few potato chips since
yesterday afternoon.

I follow the delicious smells down a long
hallway, hoping that Joe will be willing to share. Soon, I'm
stepping through a tall archway into a gleaming industrial kitchen
with a huge wooden island and a profusion of hanging copper pans. I
see a tall, gorgeous man standing over a skillet of bacon.

But it's not Joe. Not at all. It's Laird. And
he's looking right at me.

Chapter 26: Laird

The silhouette in the doorway is a shock and
a revelation. At first, I think she's a hallucination, a
fantastically detailed projection of my most desperate desires. But
then she says my name in a low voice that's both sweet and rough,
and I know that she's real. I wonder how she found me, and I'm
deeply touched that she chose to see me in person instead of
sending a text. I can't believe she got past Dad's security. Then
again, Amity is a smart girl. She could probably do anything.

We approach each other warily, like walkers
at opposite ends of a tightrope. She falls first. Her eyes get big
and wet, and her lower lip quivers in a way that makes me want to
bite it. She rushes to me, and we embrace. She cries and cries
until my shirt is damp. I imagine she's crying for me, for her, for
her parents, even for my mom. For everything.

When she finally takes a step back and
regards me with wide, glittering eyes, I realize her hair is wet,
as if she just took a shower.

"Amity, you amazing girl. How did you find
me?" My voice is hoarse with shock and desire.

Amity looks down and lets her hair fall into
her face as if she's embarrassed by something. I put my hand under
her chin and gently lift it until she meets my eyes. "It's OK. I'm
glad you're here. Crazy glad. It's just that this place is my dad's
townhouse, and it's practically a fortress. I want to know how you
got in here."

Confusion flutters across her face. "This is
your dad's place? Really?"

"Yeah, did you think this whole building was
mine?"

"N-n-no, I j-j-just thought..."

She's obviously trying to tell me something
she thinks is important. I stroke her hair. "It's OK, Amity. Take
your time."

"I c-c-came here...with a f-f-friend. I
didn't know...your d-d-dad...lived here."

She takes a quick step back and flinches as
if she's expecting a blow.

"What friend?" And then it hits me. Maybe
she's friends with one of Dad's girlfriends. She does have a friend
who goes to film school in the city, and Dad does seem to be using
his movie company as a way to meet budding actresses.

"Did you come here with one of my dad's
girlfriends?"

My heart sinks. I've somehow said the wrong
thing again. She shakes her head—an emphatic no—and takes another
step back as if she's genuinely frightened.

My father enters the kitchen in a brightly
colored silk bathrobe. I'm slightly embarrassed that Amity is going
to see him like this, but I'm strangely glad they're finally going
to meet.

"Dad!" I say, and Amity whips around so she's
facing him.

"Dad, I'd like you to meet my good friend,
Amity."

Dad frowns and looks Amity up and down. I
feel a familiar tightening in my gut. "We've already met," he says.
"She told me her name was Cinderella, but Amity will do just as
well."

"Oh my God," murmurs Amity. "Joe. Josiah. Joe
is Josiah Conroy. What have I done?"

Amity blanches until her face is the color of
pale yellow chalk. My father brushes his hand lightly against her
arm, but she brushes it away. Then the pieces come together, and I
can't believe how stupid I've been. God fucking damn it, it all
makes sense now.

Amity—my Amity—has slept with my father. I
have no idea how it happened. I imagine Amity tilting her head up
so he can kiss her with his thin, aged lips, and my head pounds
with sickness and confusion. The world has slipped its axis, and
nothing looks the same.

My father and I stare each other down, while
Amity runs away.

/////////////////////////

I sit across from my father, eating breakfast
and talking about the girl we both slept with as if it's the most
natural thing in the world. I should be angrier, but the situation
is so strange and surreal that I barely feel anything.

"Jesus Christ, Dad, what's wrong with women
your own age? Why do they all have to be twenty years younger?"

Dad takes a big swallow from his coffee mug.
The pale morning rays streaming in from the skylight make him look
shockingly old, and there's a bitter edge to his voice. "Women my
own age remind me too much of your mother, and how I squandered my
last months with her. With young girls, I can pretend that I'm
young, too. That I have my whole life ahead of me."

I get straight to the point. "Did you really
fuck her?" We both know the her I'm talking about is Amity.

He nods slowly. "I ran into her at a film
club party a couple of weeks ago, right after I'd broken things off
with Darla. I know this will sound like the world's biggest cliché,
but we were both drunk. It didn't mean anything. I was mourning
Darla, and she was hung up on some mystery guy who took her
virginity and then dropped off the face of the earth."

Dad searches my face with knowing eyes. I
look away, ashamed. "I suppose you are the young man she was
talking about?"

I nod and gaze down at my plate of bacon,
eggs, and toast. "It's complicated," I explain. "She's Amity
Dormer, the daughter of Laura Dormer. The woman who died in the
accident."

Dad nearly chokes on his eggs. When he's done
sputtering, he asks, "Does she know who you are? That you were the
other driver in the accident that killed her mother?"

"Yes."

"And how does she feel about that?"

I frown. I realize I don't really know. "I'm
not sure. Not so good, I guess. We haven't really talked about it.
I'm not even the one who told her. That was Ember. Like I said,
it's complicated."

My father rubs his eyes and sighs. "Was your
meeting an accident, or did you engineer it somehow?"

"I met her by accident when I visited her
mother's grave almost three years ago." I sit quietly for a moment
and then decide I might as well come clean. My father's going to
find out about my trust fund soon enough. I suppose it's best that
he hears it from me.

I take a deep breath. "There's more." I
explain how I found Amity at Adams College and how I got close to
her, so I could figure out the best way to make amends. I tell him
that I decided to give her the portion of my trust fund that I
could access when I turned twenty-one.

My dad's face turns positively ashen. "So how
did you manage that?" he asks in a tight, dry voice.

"I had Clancy give it to her grandmother and
make it look like she won a prize in the state lottery. It was two
million dollars with no strings attached. Who's going to question
that?"

"Why give it to her grandmother?"

"Amity's such a sweet, kind person that I
thought she might spend all the money on her grandmother. I bet
that Amity's grandmother would be more likely to spend the money on
Amity and her education than Amity herself."

I pause, and Dad sees the hesitancy on my
face. "There's more, isn't there?" he asks.

I nod. "When Ember told her who I was and
what I'd done, Amity was pretty upset and refused to talk to me.
Then I got an email from the National Cancer Society. I guess Amity
told her grandmother where the 'lottery money' had really come
from, and the two of them decided to donate all of it to charity. I
think they picked the National Cancer Society because of Mom."

Dad throws his head back and laughs until
tears stream from his eyes. He tries to speak several times, and
each time he convulses into snorts and titters. Finally, his
laughter dissolves into low coughs.

"Dad, are you OK?"

"I'm fine. Well, I guess we don't have to
worry about that poor girl trying to sue us!" He emits a single,
high pitched giggle and then masters himself. "I'm sorry," he says.
"I'm sure this was a very painful and expensive lesson in the
pitfalls of using your money to play God with people's lives."

"I wasn't playing God."

"I know, I know. You were just trying to do
the right thing. You were always such a well-intentioned
child."

"I only wanted to make amends."

"What you've made is a mess. And I'm not
going to help you clean it up. You're going to be on your own
financially from now on. The trusts were your mother's idea. She
thought you needed protection from the world." Dad's tired eyes
glisten. "I know you're tougher than that."

I stare down at m uneaten breakfast. Amity's
gone. My trust is gone. And my father is cutting me off—but in a
way that actually makes me respect him more. I have no idea what
I'm going to do.

"If you do get in touch with Miss Amity," he
says, "don't be too hard on her. She was here last night, because I
found her in a bar, drinking herself silly. Her grandmother had
just passed away."

/////////////////////////

I'm knocking on Amity's door again. No one's
there. Damn it. I turn to leave when I bump into a tall,
Slavic-looking girl with all the angles and planes of a
professional model. I take a wild stab in the dark.

"I'm looking for Amity Dormer," I say. "I
heard her grandmother just died. Do you know where she is?"

"I do," she replies with a scowl. "But I'm
not sure I should tell you. You're Laird, right?"

I nod. "Please. Look, I really care about
her. It's just that things between us are—well, they're weird and
tragic and complicated. But I want to be there for her now. I
swear."

The beautiful Slav takes a long, deep breath.
"Fine. She's flown home for the funeral. Please don't make me
regret telling you this."

The airport, I think. I've got to get to the
airport.

Chapter 27: Amity

The plane hangs in the sky, held aloft by the
hopes and dreams of its occupants. Or, at least, that's what I
hope. This is the first time I've flown, and the magic pill Darcy
gave me before I left hasn't done nearly enough to dull my fear. I
try to distract myself from the fact that I am thirty-five thousand
feet above the earth—a place my brain is screaming no human was
meant to be—by worrying about money.

Gran's landlord is going to let me stay in
her apartment for a few days while I collect her things, so at
least that will be free. But everything else is accumulating on my
credit card like so much toxic waste. The plane ticket cost nearly
five hundred bucks, and the rental car agency is charging me extra,
because I'm under twenty-five. And then there are what the
mortician at Forever Acres euphemistically calls the final
expenses—the burial plot, the gravestone, the casket, the
embalming, and the parlor rental.

All these expenses are going to use up at
least half of the money that I saved from stripping. I still have
my work-study job—thank God I didn't quit after Gran won the
so-called lottery—but it pays just a smidge above minimum wage. I
suspect it's a way for the college to guarantee a steady stream of
cheap labor. I wonder yet again if donating Laird's money wasn't a
lot more stupid than it was noble.