The setback, p.2
The Setback, page 2
“You’re bored with seeing the patterns in the piles of unintelligible accounting documents and making billions in ways no one else I’ve ever met can?” David’s not frowning or smirking now. He looks. . .intrigued. “I didn’t expect you to say that.”
“I’m kidding,” I say. “Of course it’s hard to rule the world from here, but my sister needs me right now.”
“I heard she was sick,” he says. “But I thought I also heard that now she’s fine.”
Mention of Abigail being sick makes me feel. . .strange. My knees weaken, and my heart races, and I want to slap him. “She’s fine. Everything’s great.”
“I’m glad.”
“Why are you really sticking around, David?” He’s standing two feet away from me. Surely he can be honest about his reason. “Amanda Brooks is marrying someone else, and you have zero ties to anyone here. Your company’s headquarters are in California. As hard as it may be for me, my people do whatever I say, and I answer to no one. Your family must be livid that you’re still here.”
His lips compress, and he nods slowly. “Helen, I’ll tell you this. The more you push me to go, the less likely I am to leave.” His grin’s irritatingly boyish. “My sister would tell you it’s my most annoying trait.”
His sister. I can’t contain my grin. “Will she, I wonder?”
David’s face falls.
“Will she say that, I mean?”
He shakes his head. “Do not call her, Helen. I mean it. Tattling to my family is below the belt.”
Ah, he’s sticking with the boxing analogy. He’s even cuter than I previously realized. I lean in closer and whisper slowly. “But I’m not really a boxer, David, and I don’t follow any rules but the SEC’s. ‘Below the belt’ is actually my sweet spot.” I glance down toward his belt for good measure.
When his face flushes, my grin widens. The briefcase full of incentive money almost always works, but even when it doesn’t, it helps me flush out the real chink in my opponent’s armor every time.
“Nice chatting with you today,” I say. “I’m sure you’ll be in touch soon.” I wink at him before leaving, and his fury just makes me happier.
2
Amanda
Eddy told me his parents were miserable, but I didn’t realize what that meant. My parents are a disaster and always have been, but they do love each other. I think. In their own selfish ways.
Eddy’s parents seem to detest everything about each other.
It’s difficult to decide what frosting and cake flavors you want for your wedding cake when the people who come with you to taste it don’t let you get a word in edgewise. They’re too busy arguing to let Eddy or me say a single word.
“This is supposed to be chocolate frosting?” Eddy’s mother asks. She curls her lip. “Really?”
“It’s chocolate mocha,” Eddy says.
“I think it’s delicious,” his dad says. “It goes great with that darker cake.”
“The fudge,” I offer.
“The one with the texture of rubber?” his mother sighs. “You have no taste at all. You’d eat glue if it was chocolate flavored.”
Eddy’s eyes widen and his head tilts. He’s pretty clear with his nonverbal communication. I told you we shouldn’t have brought them.
But I had insisted. I figured they’d make an effort to get along with other people around. Boy, was I wrong. “Okay, well, I thought it tasted rich and delicious,” I say.
“Surely you don’t want a chocolate wedding cake,” Eddy’s mother says.
“Not everyone has to do whatever you say,” Eddy’s dad says. “Stop harassing her and let her choose what she likes.”
“She asked us to come with her.” Eddy’s mom folds her arms. “She wanted my opinion.”
“We’re picking two cake flavors,” Eddy reminds them. “One for the wedding cake, and one for the groom’s cake.”
“Wait, does that mean we gotta pay for it?” his dad asks, peering at the price list.
“No one has to pay for it,” the baker’s assistant reminds us. “We’re offering the cakes free of charge, because Mrs. Brooks is going to document the wedding plans on her Insta.”
Eddy’s dad pulls on his right earlobe. He does it every time something confuses him, and lately, I’ve been worried that he’ll pull it right off.
“Remember?” I say. “Most of the wedding expenses are comped because I’m doing posts about the wedding. It’s my job, or at least, it used to be my full-time job.”
“I just don’t really understand why,” Eddy’s dad says. “It’s not like people can buy their cake on Instagram.”
“Look, Dad, you said you had to get back by one o’clock, right?” Eddy’s hating this. Maybe next time I won’t try to involve his parents by letting them know when these things are.
His dad and mom give us their last-minute thoughts—his dad calling the chocolate mint cake ‘that green one,’ and the coconut guava ‘the piña colada cake’—and blessedly leave.
Eddy doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to.
“You were right.” I sigh.
“I’m telling Mom you cancelled the dress shopping trip.”
“But Abigail can’t come, and without your mom—”
“Maybe your mother could go with you instead.”
“I would rather die.” I could invite Mandy, but I’m still angry at her at odd intervals, and so far, every time I’ve thought about having her pick out my wedding dress, I’ve wanted to throw a glass of champagne at her face. I know she was kind of the reason I got over myself and I’m getting married at all, but I’m still mad at how she got me past my hangups.
If I don’t find someone to help me go shopping soon, I’ll be stuck with Helen. That might be worse than my mom.
Luckily, once his parents are gone, Eddy and I have an easy time picking the cake flavors. “For the wedding cake, I was thinking the strawberry—”
“Champagne.” Eddy’s smile is broad. “I knew it.”
“What does that mean?”
He takes another bite of that one with his fork and closes his eyes, speaking around the mouthful of sugar. “It screamed Amanda from start to finish. Delicious, but light and understated flavor. Flecks of real strawberries with a lovely beige color.” He shrugs. “And that strawberry garnish with the sparkly gel stuff?”
Champagne is my signature item—it’s in my Insta name, after all. I scrawl the flavor down on the paper they gave me for the wedding cake. “And for the groom’s cake?”
“I was thinking the blackberry elderflower,” Eddy says.
I burst out laughing immediately. “Sure you were.”
He chuckles. “You caught me. Not really my style.”
“The black forest? Or the fudge with mousse frosting and strawberries?”
“Am I really that predictable?” He scowls.
“People love chocolate.”
“I do like to give the people what they want,” he says.
“That you do.” It’s actually one of the things I love about him. He knows me well enough to guess that I want fancy and light and froofy, but he wants his pick to be something everyone else will like. Eddy’s beautiful and simple and crowd-pleasing, which makes him a really good foil for me.
Plus, he appreciates strawberry champagne for what it is.
I write Black Forest on the ‘groom’s cake’ line with a flourish.
“Do you prefer cherries to strawberry?”
“It felt like too many strawberries otherwise.” Eddy spears a strawberry with his fork. “They’re nice enough, but what if someone’s allergic or just doesn’t like them? Now they have options.”
“What if they don’t like fruit at all?”
“They can scrape it off,” Eddy says. “I can’t solve the world’s problems.”
On our way home, the private investigator I hired calls. He’s proven to be pretty useless so far, and today’s no different. He found a few more citations and a misdemeanor by my dad that’s three years old now.
“Still nothing?” Eddy’s driving, but I can still sense his judgment.
“I should have taken Helen up on her offer to loan me her guy. I think this one’s not very competent. Or maybe he’s too legit.”
“Isn’t Helen’s guy the one who finds dirt, and if he can’t, he fabricates it?”
“You did look like you were holding a drink, and the photos of you and that woman weren’t fake.”
“They were just part of the tour publicity.” Eddy’s jaw muscles work.
“But anyone who can’t find actual dirt on my family is not doing his job.”
“He found parking tickets, speeding tickets, library fines, and that crime.”
“It was over a year ago, and it was petty shoplifting. They’d never run all the way to me for something like that.” I shake my head. “No, none of that explains why they’re here now.”
“Amanda.”
“No.” I grip the armrests on Eddy’s truck. “No.”
“Amanda.”
“Don’t say it again, Eddy. Do not.”
“They could be here because they love you and they heard you were getting married. They could be telling the truth.”
I can’t help my very unladylike snort. “Right.”
“My parents’ fighting is almost unbearable, but they came to ruin my cake tasting because they love me.”
“Yes, your parents are annoying,” I say. “But they’ve always been the same. They’ve fought like that for years, and they’ve always shown up to ruin all your important activities in the same exact way. Mine, on the other hand, only come when they need something. You can certainly understand why I can’t just sit and wait to find out what it is. I need to know now why they’re here.”
“But it’s already been almost two weeks, and so far, other than paying for their hotel and food, they haven’t asked for a thing from us.”
“That’s exactly what makes me nervous,” I say. “If they aren’t asking for something yet, it means what they want is really big. Believe me. They’re so shameless that if it wasn’t staggering, they’d already have asked.”
“Except you always tell them no,” Eddy says. “Maybe they’re still too afraid to ask.”
“Right, that’s why I need to figure it out myself. The longer they wait to tell me the truth, the worse the truth must be.”
“I think it’s probably time, then,” Eddy says.
“Time for what?”
“To cut them off.” I pick up my phone and dial Mandy.
“Yello?”
For some reason, she thinks answering her phone with yello is hip and cool or something. I sigh and force myself to ignore it. “Hey, it’s me.”
“Yes, this magical thing on my phone called saving numbers allowed me to know that even before you helpfully said, ‘it’s me.’”
“I want you to call and cancel my family’s hotel rooms.”
“Are you sure?” Eddy and Mandy ask the exact same thing at the exact same time.
“I am.”
“But we’ve been paying for weeks,” Mandy says. “Why are you cancelling their rooms now?”
“I was worried they’d come stay with us,” I admit.
“You’re not worried about that now?” Mandy asks. I can tell from her tone that she’s as uninterested in that prospect as I am.
“Oh, I am. But we’re at an impasse. They won’t leave, and I can’t figure out why yet. So if we cut them off, one of two things will happen.”
“Our dear friend, Mrs. Earl, will never speak to us again because she’s not even being paid for the rooms they’re destroying?”
“Wait, are they destroying them?” Now I’m even more embarrassed.
Mandy hisses into the phone. “Just tell me what you think will happen.”
“They’ll either leave, which would be great, or they’ll come stay with us.”
“Isn’t that what you don’t want?” Eddy asks. “You said—”
“It’s not ideal,” I say, “but it may be the only way for us to trip them up and figure out what’s really going on.”
Mandy grunts. “Are you sure they’re not just here—”
“If you say ‘because they love you’ or ‘to get to know you’ I will paint your toenails green while you sleep.”
Mandy hates green toenails. She thinks it looks like fungus. Her cackle is one of my favorite things about her. “Fine. I won’t even suggest it. I’ll cancel their hotel reservation, and then we can start our full-blown investigation into the villainy of your parents and brothers together.”
“Yes,” I say. “Sadly, that’s our next step.”
“They could come stay with me,” Eddy says. “I have room.”
“Not a chance,” I say. “That would be worse than the hotel. They’d be spying on you, and I’d still learn nothing. Plus, my fiancé would be miserable.”
He shrugs. “Alright, well, just remember this was your idea.”
I’ve just started the process of shoving Emery’s stuff into a bag so she can vacate her room when my phone rings again. I expect my mom. I expect my dad. I wouldn’t be shocked if it was one of my brothers.
I’m happy to see it’s one of Abigail’s old friends calling me back instead. He used to be a detective and has all kinds of contacts, so I was hoping he might be a good resource. “Hey. Thanks for calling me back.”
“Hello, Amanda. As you know, normally I don’t do this sort of thing, but Abby says these people are your parents and they’re trying to ruin your wedding.”
I laugh. “Abby’s not wrong. That’s all true.”
“I should hope not. She could be disbarred for lying.”
Oh, man. That’s intense. “Okay, and what did you find?”
“Well, you were right that they have a problem, but there aren’t any active criminal charges pending, or at least, not according to anything I could find based on the names and known aliases you had. However, they are late on their mortgage and the bank has filed to begin foreclosure on their—” He clears his throat. “Their mobile home.”
“You mean the bank’s going to repossess their trailer?”
“It appears that it will, yes.”
They wouldn’t have driven this far over that, either. They’d just buy a new one in someone else’s name or from someone else they managed to convince they were trustworthy. “There’s really nothing else?”
“Not that I could find. None of the local police had any ideas, either.”
I swear under my breath. “Alright, well, thanks.”
“Don’t forget about the purse. My wife is all kinds of excited.”
Abigail told him that in return for the favor, I could send his wife one of the exclusive Chanel clutches that aren’t even out yet. They’re too small for anything but a dinner party, and I never go to any of those anymore, so good riddance. “Just text me your address. Thanks again for the help.”
It takes my family hours to gather up the courage to show up on our porch—or maybe that’s how long it takes before Renita or someone else in downtown Manila admits where we live—either way, they show up at Mandy’s place around nine o’clock. Maren and Emery are almost ready to go to bed.
“Why are you here?” I ask, as if I have no idea.
“That hotel says we don’t got rooms now,” Dad says.
“Oh?” I feign innocence. “Were they booked up?”
“No,” Mom says. “But I guess your boss isn’t paying any more?” She lowers her voice. “Did we make her mad?”
“Mom,” I say. “You’ve been here for two weeks. How long did you really expect someone you don’t even know to pay for your hotel rooms and food orders?”
She blinks like I’m making no sense. “Well, you said you didn’t have room for us here.”
“You’re adults, all five of you,” I say as gently as I can manage. Which isn’t very gently as it turns out. “It’s not our responsibility to provide you somewhere to stay.”
Mom straightens up, all of the righteous indignance swelling inside of her and spilling over. “Well, I certainly provided you with a place to stay for almost eighteen years.”
“Really, Mom?”
“Well, we can hardly just climb in our car and drive away tonight.” She glances over her shoulder at the beat-up old station wagon they brought. “And the man at the repair shop says our car needs a new transmission and new brakes.”
Of course it does.
“How about this?” I ask. “I’ll pay for one more night, or maybe two, and I’ll cover for the car repairs.”
“That would be really nice.” Mom smiles, her brownish teeth gleaming in the porch lights. She shivers, clearly still not dressed properly for a Northern Utah winter.
“But the second your car is ready, you and Dad, and Roy, Peter, and Xavier will load up and leave.”
“But what about your wedding?”
“My wedding that’s still almost two months away?” I grimace.
“I mean, the holidays are around the corner. We thought it’d be nice to spend ‘em together for once.” Dad bobs his head.
My three adult brothers are still in the station wagon, thankfully, but they’re wiping at the fog on the windows and peering out at me expectantly.
“So is that a no to my offer?” I start to close the door.
“Alright.” Mom’s voice is small, her expression full of sorrow. “If it’s really what you want, we’ll head on home as soon as our car’s fixed.”
Maybe Mom’s bluffing. She’s an expert at conning people, which I know better than most, but she seems pretty sincere. For maybe the first time since I was very, very young, I actually feel almost bad for how I’ve treated her.
Then the most dangerous feeling of all starts to well up inside of me, a feeling I haven’t encountered in conjunction with my family in at least three decades. A feeling I’d given up on ever feeling about them again.
I almost can’t admit it, even to myself.
Hope.
I’m hoping that they’re here because they care about me. I know it’s stupid. I know it’s going to make me feel worse later, like the very second they stop lying about why they’re here. I mean, sure, they’ve held it together for a while, but it can’t last. I know that better than anyone.
