Olivia (19 page)

“This is Cletus Wade, a friend of Miss Olivia Hanson. We would like to reschedule your meeting if you’re still interested… Correct… Yes, ma’am… Ok, Saturday at noon. We’ll see you there… You too, Mrs. Dinwiddie.”

Clete hung up the phone and tucked it into his pocket. Olivia punched his arm one more time for good measure, making sure she put her knuckle into it so it would leave a bruise. “I hate you.”

“The feeling is beginning to be mutual, but I’ll pick you up on Saturday at eight a.m. We’re going to Omaha to meet your sister.”

“I’m not going.”

“Oh, yes, you are. Make sure you’re ready to go when I get there otherwise I’ll drive your ass there in your pj’s.”

“You shouldn’t curse in idle conversation,” Olivia mocked. “It makes you sound like a fucking idiot.”

His jaw set tight. “Oh, this isn’t idle conversation, Olivia.”

“What is it then?”

“Just be ready to go.”

“What about your daughter? I thought she was coming home this weekend,” Olivia asked with a smirk.

“Not until Sunday. We’ll be back in plenty of time. We’re not staying the night.”

“Don’t trust yourself in a hotel room alone with me?”

He looked at her for a long moment, his chest rising and falling, the vein in his temple pulsing. “Eight o’clock.”

“Good luck with that.” She turned on her heel again, and muttered under her breath, “Shithead.”

“I heard that.”

“This isn’t idle conversation, you motherfucker.” She flipped him the double-bird, holding it high over her head in salute as she headed for the door.

Olivia was determined to be as far away from her trailer as possible at eight a.m. that following Saturday, but she forgot to set her alarm.

And so, that is why Olivia Newton John was standing in the Omaha Barnes and Noble at 11:45 a.m. on a humid August morning, nervously sipping an iced cappuccino while awaiting the arrival of Toni Tennille, wearing only a pair of Hello Kitty boxers, flip-flops, and a sports bra.

Chapter Nine

“I hate you,” she hissed in a whisper.

“You’ve told me that twenty-eight times since we left Juliette. I think I believe you,” Clete said from the overstuffed chair he was sitting in, patiently flipping through a
Men’s Health
magazine while they waited for the woman who claimed to be her sister to show up.

“Good.” She flopped down into the chair next to him. “I wouldn’t want you to get some crazy idea that this little outing makes us friends or something.”

“I would never assume anything when it comes to you, Olivia.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Clete never got the chance to answer. At that moment, Toni Tennille Dinwiddie walked through the door. And Olivia damn-near shit her drawers.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Olivia grumbled under her breath.

Sissy Dearest was drop dead gorgeous—tall and thin with statuesque bone structure, jet black hair, olive skin, deep brown eyes, full lips, perfect makeup and clothing that Olivia knew with certainty didn’t come off the clearance rack at Walmart.

Olivia hated her immediately.

The perfect gentleman, Clete stood up and held out his hand in greeting. Olivia sat and glared. Toni smiled pleasantly and made small talk with Clete about the weather and the drive in, and Olivia bit back a snarl. When Toni introduced the equally-gorgeous, male model/football player standing next to her as her husband, Olivia scoped out the nearest exits. She didn’t need this shit.

Olivia hopped out of her chair, and in as polite a tone as she could muster, she said, “Great meeting you. We’ll have to do this again sometime. Maybe for Christmas—”

Clete shot a glare at Olivia. “Please excuse Olivia, she’s not feeling like herself today.”

“Don’t make excuses for me,” Olivia snapped.

“Olivia, I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally meet you.” Toni held her hand out for Olivia to shake. Olivia crossed her arms over her chest and stared her down. Toni made a quick assessment of Olivia’s mood and said, “I know you’re in a hurry so I’ll make this brief.”

She sat in Clete’s chair and the two men stepped back so the “sisters” could talk. Toni pulled a manila envelope out of her shoulder bag and held it out for Olivia.

“This is everything you need for proof that we are sisters. Half-sisters actually. We share the same mother, Camille Marie Logan—” Toni began but Olivia cut her off.

“I don’t care about your paperwork. Just tell me what you want.”

“I had a whole speech planned,” Toni said with a little laugh. “You can’t possibly imagine how nervous I’ve been about meeting you.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I would like for you to sign off on your rights to Mother’s estate,” Toni said, finally cutting to the chase.

“What?” Olivia asked in confusion.

“Our mother passed away six months ago. She battled breast cancer off and on for the past twenty years, and when she finally had it beat she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. It was too much for her to fight it again so she decided to let go. She died peacefully at her home surrounded by her friends and family,” Toni said. “About a month after she died, her lawyer called me into his office and gave me this letter.”

Toni pulled a letter out of the manila envelope and again tried to hand it to Olivia, but Olivia refused to take it.

“In the letter, Mother explained her wishes with the remains of her estate after her medical bills are paid. It’s to be divided three ways—one part to cancer research, one part to me, and the other part to…” Toni faltered for a moment and then changed course. “Mother disappeared for three years. She left shortly after my first birthday and returned without explanation on my fourth. It was a very difficult time for my father, and I spent a good portion of it living with my grandparents while he tried to find her. When she returned home, she asked for his forgiveness but would not explain her disappearance. He took her back without question because his love for her was so strong… In this letter, Mother revealed for the first time what had happened to her during those the three years she had disappeared from my father’s life. She explained about her imprisonment, and her illegitimate child, and she expressed the sorrow she felt for seemingly abandoning the child shortly after her birth.”

“Seemingly?” Olivia laughed bitterly. “She held me for five minutes—five whole fucking minutes—before she tossed me aside like yesterday’s trash!”

“I’m so sorry, Olivia. I know how difficult that must have been for you when you were a child.” Toni quit trying to hand Olivia the letter and tucked it back into the manila envelope. “I honestly did not know about any of this until a few short months ago. If I had known about you, I would have come looking for you sooner. You have to believe that.”

Olivia looked Toni over, took in her manicured nails and salon-styled hair, her expensive suit and Jimmy Choo shoes, and Olivia knew in every fiber of her being that Toni would have stopped looking as soon as she crossed the tracks into South Juliette. They might share a bloodline, but they did not come from the same people. And as much as Toni would have wanted nothing to do with Olivia, Olivia wanted even less to do with Toni.

“Father passed away when I was twelve, so it was only Mother and I for a very long time. I was the one sitting by her side, supporting her through her treatments. When she decided to give up the fight, I was devastated to know I would be losing her, but I understood why she made the decision. She was in a lot of pain and she wanted the suffering to end. I only wish she would have had the strength and the courage to tell me her secret while she was still alive. It was eating her up on the inside, exactly like the cancer was doing, and it was a cross she shouldn’t have tried to bear alone.” 

“What do you want me to sign?” Olivia asked.

“Olivia,” Clete interjected. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“No.”

“Olivia,” Clete said with a firmer tone.

“Butt out of this, Clete.”

Toni pulled a stack of paperwork out of her attaché case and handed it to Olivia. This time, Olivia took the papers.

“I need you to sign your full legal name everywhere there is a red tag. My husband is a notary, so he will be your witness.”

Olivia took the pen Toni offered.

“Olivia!”

Olivia put pen to paper.

Clete crossed the space between them in two giant steps and yanked Olivia out of her chair by her arm. He pulled her into the corner of the store, away from the ears of Toni and her husband, and yelled in a whisper, “What the hell are you doing? You don’t go signing shit like that without having a lawyer look it over first!”

Olivia pulled her arm free of Clete’s grasp. “I take it this isn’t an idle conversation.”

“You’re goddamn right this isn’t idle conversation. This is me saving you from making a huge mistake that you will regret for the rest of your life.”

“And what exactly is the mistake I’m making?”

“Do you even know what you are signing away your rights to?”

“No, and I don’t care,” Olivia said.

“Not even if it’s a million dollars?”

Olivia let out a little laugh. “Yeah right. A million dollars? You’re crazy.”

Clete just looked at Olivia as if she were the one who was crazy
.
Or maybe it was that she was stupid. Or possibly both. Either way, it made Olivia pause for a moment. She looked over at Toni, then back to Clete. “What would you do if you were me?”

“I’d end this conversation right now and continue it when I had a lawyer sitting by my side,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because the only reason she would ask you to sign off your rights to an inheritance is if your share is big enough to be life changing. She wouldn’t be doing this for a hundred bucks and a Tiffany lamp.”

“But what if she
really
liked the Tiffany lamp?”

Clete sighed in frustration. “Olivia…”

“Just teasing you. Relax.” Olivia patted his chest as she walked past him and returned to her “sister.”

Toni and her husband had their heads together, whispering in what sounded to be a hushed argument. The husband glanced up as Olivia approached and quickly shushed Toni.

“I have one question for you,” Olivia said as she returned to her chair.

Toni sat up straighter. “Ask me anything.”

“How did you find me?”

“Oh, well that was actually really easy. I couldn’t believe my luck.” Toni smiled bright. “Mother included a last-known address in the letter. I looked in the Juliette phone book to see if you were still listed—and there you were!”

The muscles in Olivia’s jaw twitched. She nodded slowly—processing—and then she matched Toni’s million-watt smile with a fake one of her own. She could feel Clete’s eyes boring into the back of her head, but she ignored him as she picked up the pen and signed her name everywhere there was a little, red Post-It flag.

It took her two minutes to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’ and for the husband to stamp his official seal everywhere she signed. When he finished, Olivia stood and shook Toni’s hand, lied and said it was nice to meet her, faked excitement at the mention of planning a Thanksgiving family get-together, and then watched them walk away.

Clete didn’t say a single word to Olivia until they were an hour outside of Omaha. When he did finally try to talk it came out in an angry, jumbled sputter. Olivia turned in her seat and placed a light hand on his thigh to quiet him.

“When I was ten-years old, I got hit by a car,” Olivia began in a soft voice. The long buried memory came to life as she spoke, the colors of it becoming as vivid in her mind as her eyes had seen them fifteen years earlier. “I was riding my bike down the four-lane highway, headed out of town. I don’t remember why, but I’m sure it was for some stupid reason that made sense to me in that moment. I never saw the car coming. I broke my leg and hit my head really hard and was knocked out cold. When I woke up, I was in the hospital, lying in a bed, and my father, Eugene, was lying alongside me—holding me in his arms.”

Olivia started to cry silent tears and Clete looked at her in concern.

“You would have to know Eugene to understand how important that tiny detail is, but it was a big deal, Clete, a
really
big deal. I know I’m not very smart, and I know I do some really stupid shit and make the same mistakes over and over again, but I’m smart enough to know who my family is. That woman in the Barnes and Noble is not my family… and neither was her mother. I don’t want anything from them, no matter how ‘life changing’ it may be.”

As Olivia moved to pull her hand away from Clete’s thigh, he brought his down on top hers and laced their fingers together.

He held her hand the rest of the way home to Juliette and listened as she talked about how golf is the dumbest sport ever invented, and how much it pissed her off that hand soap pumps are intentionally designed so that you can never get the last seven pumps of soap out of the bottom of the bottles, and how the heel is the best part of the loaf of bread and it’s a shame there’s only two of them, and how Band-Aids don’t stick as good as they used to, and how golf might suck, but Skee-Ball is the greatest sport ever invented and if it were to ever be included in the Olympics she would be the gold-medal champion.

He listened. He laughed. Occasionally, he stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. He let her run the radio. He sat quietly and drove, and, even though Olivia had a feeling he still didn’t agree with her decision, Clete didn’t mention Toni Tennille Dinwiddie, or the money, ever again.

*  *  *

September rolled around and Olivia’s life remained as boring as ever. If not for the fact that she and Mitch were back together and back to having regular sex, and therefore regular orgasms, she would have thought she was incapable of smiling. She desperately needed to find something to make her smile when she was vertical, and so did Izzie. The poor girl had been uncharacteristically smile-free for almost a month. So, while ordinarily Olivia couldn’t have cared less, she found herself actually hoping the little stick sitting on Izzie’s bathroom counter had two lines this month instead of only one. A bun in the oven would make anyone smile.