Some Like It Perfect (A Temporary Engagement) (5 page)

She shook her head with conviction and said with compassion, “No, they don’t. We’re just afraid they will.”

“Do you have any other advice that is not horrible and could instead possibly help me?”

She laughed at him, her face bright and shiny, and he remembered that she didn’t want him to have a sense of humor. Jack thought he might not want her to smile at him like that again.

Delia said, “Does she live at home still?”

“Still? She graduated high school five months ago.”

“No college?”

“No.” And that had been a never-ending fight. Augusta had not got into the school she’d wanted, expected, to get into and had decided she wasn’t going at all.

Jack had only given up when school had started in the fall.

Delia said, “Well, personally, I don’t know why you don’t just kick her out. Make her worry about paying the rent and putting food in her belly. There’s no time in the real world for going to parties and getting knocked up just to shave ten years off your brother’s life.”

He couldn’t tell if Delia was trying to shock him or if she really believed that. “Is that what your parents did with you? Kick you out?”

“I left when I was sixteen. I couldn’t wait to be on my own.”

“And they let you go?”

She snorted and headed back to the paint cans. “Yeah.”

She cleaned up the detritus that somehow collected throughout her workday, taking off her booties and inspecting her boots carefully. It was a ritual for her, the last thing she did before she headed out the door.

She stuffed her arms into her coat and when she got to the door, she stopped. She said softly, “She’s going to go, Jack. Either you can let her go gently so that maybe she’ll want to come back one day, or you can hold on tighter and tighter until she has to rip herself away.”

He didn’t know what shocked him more– Delia calling him Jack or how much her words hurt.

The little girl he’d loved, the little girl he’d protected and babied and sacrificed for was gone. She hadn’t left yet but she would.

Jack just wasn’t ready for that.

Jack arrived home late. He’d stayed and worked, not having any good reason to leave.

He found his mother in the front parlor and she tilted her cheek for him to peck a kiss on it.

She said, “Augusta?”

“What do you think?”

His mother pinched her lips together. “That boy is a horrible influence. I can’t believe you would let her go with him.”

“What do you want me to do, Mother?”

“Something.”

“As she has said, I am not her father. And even if I was, she’s eighteen.”

“Take away her allowance. He won’t be sniffing around her anymore if she doesn’t have any money to throw around.”

He sighed, settling into a deep burgundy chair that had been his father’s, and his father’s before him.

“You’re her mother, why don’t you do it? Why don’t you take over the finances again? Not only would it strike terror into your daughter’s heart, it would give me a break.”

She flapped her hand at him. “No. I don’t want to.”

He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t say what he wanted to. That mourning for a man for ten years was too long. That she’d been in mourning for nearly twenty years of her life and it had eaten away a third of it.

Jack had been eleven when his father had died and his mother had mourned for ten years. Ten long years, and then she’d gone out and found a second husband in one month. Nine months later, they’d had Augusta.

Jack had been twenty-two and he’d suddenly found himself a big brother. He’d had a mother again, suddenly, a father again, though he hadn’t wanted one.

And a tiny squalling sister he’d never thought he’d wanted. A squalling sister he’d come home to every break, every holiday. A squalling sister who would climb into his lap and wrap her chubby arms around his neck and smile at him, babbling nonstop.

To him she had seemed like everything good and wondrous about this world. He didn’t know how anyone could look at her and not feel his heart puddling into his feet.

He’d spoiled her. And now he was paying the price.

He’d never wanted to take over the father-figure role. He’d loved being the fun older brother, loved being the one she ran to when Mother was too much.

But the older Augusta got, the more fear Jack felt. She wasn’t a beautiful child anymore, she was growing into a beautiful young woman. A woman that other men looked at and wanted.

Just how in the hell was he supposed to handle that?

He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to bed.”

He didn’t know what to do about Augusta. He didn’t know what to do about his mother.

He was half-afraid that in two years’ time his mother would come out of mourning and find herself another husband that very month.

Half-afraid and half-hopeful.

She said, “What about Augusta?”

“She’s at a party.” On a Wednesday night, the night
before
Halloween. And Jack knew there would be another party tomorrow night. And Friday as well.

Maybe Delia was right. Maybe Augusta was trying to figure out how to be an adult and didn’t have any responsibilities to worry about, only parties to plan for.

Jack said, “Are you serious about taking away her allowance?”

“You’re in charge, Jack. If you think that’s what’s best.”

His mother didn’t have any responsibilities either; she’d pawned them all off on him.

He thought it might be too late for her. But maybe he could do something about Augusta.

When Delia came through his office door the next morning, he stared. And then he realized he should have expected this.

She said, “Why am I not surprised you didn’t dress up?”

“Why am I not surprised you did?”

She struck a pose, her fists on her hips, her hair in braids sticking straight out from her head, a grin splitting her face.

It took a lot of effort not to smile back at her.

“Aren’t you a little old to be Pippi Longstocking?”

She stopped smiling to glare at him. “I’m a little old to do a lot of things. Being Pippi Longstocking isn’t one of them.”

She pulled on her booties and he waited until she’d finished before he said, “I cut off Augusta’s phone.”

She turned around. “It’s a start. Baby steps, right?”

“I closed all her credit card accounts.”

“All of them? She had more than one?”

“I emptied her bank account.”

She nodded at him approvingly, looking impressed. “Huh. I didn’t see that coming.”

“She didn’t come home last night.”

She tilted her head, smiling at little at his discomfort. “And you’re afraid of what she might have been doing the whole night.”

“I know what she was doing. I wish I didn’t.”

She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “You can’t tell me you ever stayed the whole night out partying. I won’t believe you.”

“You think I’ve been working in this office my entire life?”

She chuckled, opening a paint can. “Yes, I do.”

When she looked back at him, he smiled at her slightly, and her eyes widened. She sucked in a breath and looked back down at the paint can quickly.

She muttered quietly, “Put that thing away,” and it made him want to smile at her again. Made him want to see her face flush and heat enter her eyes. It made a nice change from disgust.

But it clashed with her Pippi Longstocking costume. There was something not quite right about Pippi looking lustful.

He said, “I expect Augusta to come crashing into the office sometime today to yell at me about the money.”

“You might want to think about calling her Gus. Just a suggestion.”

Jack couldn’t think of an uglier name for his beautiful sister. He said, “You’re full of them. Suggestions. Here’s one for you– make a hasty exit and take a break when you see her coming.”

“Aw. Can’t I stay and watch? I signed the confidentiality agreement.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to see that.”

“Trust me, I was a teenage girl once. Nothing she could do would faze me.”

He sighed. It fazed him and he wished not for the first time that his mother would have handled Augusta, that there had been a woman to deal with this. He’d suspected, and now Delia had confirmed it. A woman would’ve handled Augusta better than he had.

He waved his approval at her and she grinned at him, looking forward to the show.

And somehow, that look fit right in with her costume. Pippi was excited for the chaos and drama to come.

His door crashed open far earlier then he was expecting but he didn’t take his eyes off his computer screen.

Augusta shouted, “Jack!”

He continued to type. “Just a minute, Gus. Let me finish this email.”

It shocked her into silence which hadn’t been his plan. He’d hoped that if he said Gus without looking at her he could get it out.

When he looked up at her, he recoiled and stood swiftly to walk towards her. Her hair was matted, her makeup smeared. She looked tired and mussed.

He grabbed her arms, looking for anything wrong with her. “Are you okay?”

“I have no money!”

“And that’s why you look like you’ve been attacked?”

“No, it was just. . . I haven’t slept.” She shrugged. “It was a good party.”

His heart started beating again and he knew he was doing the right thing.

He walked back to his chair and she said at a slightly lower decibel, “Jack, I have no money.”

He held out the phone she’d left yesterday. “You have no phone, either. I turned it off.”

“What!”

“You were right, Gus. I’ve been treating you like a child. You’re not, you’re an adult, and I apologize.”

She stared at him with her mouth hanging open.

He thought he heard a little snicker of laughter from the peanut gallery and he looked up to find Delia peeking over the edge of the scaffolding, her braids still sticking straight out from her head.

Augusta, Gus, angled her head up, her mouth still hanging wide open.

Delia said, “Sorry. I couldn’t keep it in when he apologized. I’ve known him for a week and I know he’s never wrong.”

Gus closed her mouth. “He
was
wrong. I am an adult.”

“Oh, yeah. I was saying
he
never thinks he’s wrong.”

Jack said, “I can hear everything you’re saying.”

Delia laughed and pulled her head back in.

Gus sat down slowly. “You do always think you’re right, you know?”

“That is because I usually am.”

Delia snickered again and Gus’s lips twitched. “But not about this?”

“I don’t want to be wrong about this. The evidence suggests otherwise.”

Gus smiled at him, as if all she’d wanted was for him to see that.

She said, “So now can I have my money back?”

A laugh pushed past his lips. “It was my money that I gave you. Perhaps it’s time for a job.”

She stopped smiling at him. “A job?”

“I assume you would like a phone again. You’ll need a job to pay for it.”

“I. . .uh. . . Did I hit my head?”

“No. You grew up.”

She looked around his office. “Do I have to work here?”

“No. But if you’d like a share of the profits then you’ll have to contribute.”

“Mother doesn’t contribute.”

“And that’s who you want to emulate?”