“Then why don’t you do it?” Mom asks, aghast.
“How can I do it if you’ve already done it?”
There she goes again, dropping her jaw. “If I didn’t do it, you’d go a month without touching it.”
“So? Who says you have to do laundry every day?”
“Whoa-whoa-whoa,” Dad referees. “Take a breath. Both of you.”
“My point is,” Merrick continues, far more calmly than I could ever manage, “you are a family of means. Could the trust you’ve set up for Hattie cover housing and living expenses? And support? Like grocery delivery? Prescription delivery? Maybe even a housekeeping service?”
I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t want a housekeeping service. That would be weird.”
“Yes,” Dad says to Merrick. Not to my comment about weirdness. “Yes, it could cover that. Indefinitely if it were well managed.” He looks at me before raising a brow at Merrick.
“What?” I demand.
No one says anything.
“I can manage a budget,” I say defensively.
Mom gives me a pointed look.
So, I might have overdrawn my debit account before. A few times.
“I can. It’s just… boring.”
“But a designee with durable power of attorney…?” Merrick lets the half-formed question hang there.
“Seriously. I can.”
But it’s like I haven’t said anything.
Dad gusts a sigh. “Honestly, money isn’t my main concern.” He doesn’t look at anyone but Merrick. “It’s her safety I worry about.”
The two of them stare at each other in a way that is weirder than a housekeeping service.
“A security system?” Merrick muses. “Those can be monitored… remotely.”
I frown. Monitored remotely? Why?
Dad laughs through his nose, but he isn’t smiling. “Not much good if she lets someone in.”
Wait. What?
But then I picture a little apartment like the one Margaret lived in her last two years at LSU. The kitchen’s accent wall was Caribbean blue when it should have been goldenrod, but other than that, it was cute.
I imagine myself living there—with a goldenrod accent wall in the kitchen. The doorbell rings and I rush to answer it because I know who it is. When I open the door, Beck is there.
I smile. And my smile isn’t imaginary. It’s real.
I would let Beck in.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Dad snaps, and this is how I know I said that last bit out loud.
Ooops.
“Dad,” Margaret scolds. “She has to live her life.”
