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“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Bernard said. “I can give you the details of your investments, assets, and holdings, but I prefer not to do so over the phone—”
“I meant, is that it? You spoke with them and told them I graduated.”
“Well…yes. As per—”
“The agreement.” The one in which I specifically requested they never talk to me again. I should’ve been glad they stuck to it, but as my parents, they weren’t supposed to.
“How much?” I asked, blinking hard.
Monsieur Bernard cleared his throat delicately. “You want the number—?”
“Yes, I want the cold, hard number. What’s the payoff?”
He lowered his voice. “When all assets are totaled—liquid and otherwise—the amount is in the vicinity of $750 million.”
A huge number. It would take half a lifetime to count that high, and yet I’d have traded every penny to have my parents be parents instead.
“It’s a little on the low side, but I suppose I can work with it.”
“Mr. Parish, I recommend we meet in my Paris office as soon as is convenient to go over the details and walk you through the—”
“I’m on my way.”
I hung up and watched the last of the sun sink beneath the ocean, spraying gold and amber over the water. Up the coast, the rocks slid into the sea, and then their grays and browns gave way to the green of the forest.
“A guy could get used to a view like that,” I said, the wind whipping away my words.
But it was time to go.
I hauled my ass off the chair and stepped into the Shack one last time. It was dark, the small space full of shadows. And memories. The best memories. I set my flask on the long wooden fisherman’s table and left, shutting the thin door behind me.
I was almost to the parking lot when my phone chimed a text from River.
She’s gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mom had spiked a fever and went into the hospital at four in the morning. She slipped into a coma a few hours later, rapid organ failure followed, and by four p.m. she was gone.
The staff in the oncology department recognized us; we’d been frequent visitors for a year, and they did the math. Four of us went to the hospital that morning. Three came out. The front desk staff didn’t ask questions. They smiled gently as we filed by, silent and stupefied by shock and grief.
“I thought I was ready,” Amelia said dully from the backseat of the car. “She’s been sick forever. I…I thought I was ready.”
From the passenger seat, I craned my head around to look at her. She stared out the window, passing streetlights reflected in the glass. She wasn’t crying. Neither was I. Or Dad. He drove like a robot, eyes on the road, saying nothing.
Shock isn’t always a sudden impact, knocking the sense out of you like a blow to the head. This shock felt like I’d been stuffed full of cotton, my skin dry and tight. No blood moving through my veins, my ey
es staring at everything and seeing nothing. On the radio, the DJ was hawking concert tickets. It sounded like a transmission from an alien planet; something that had no bearing on my life.
I moved through the days after Mom passed in that same stuffed-cotton shock. Plans were made, phone calls were placed. More of our small family trickled in, familiar faces belonging to strangers. They talked to me, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I just nodded, knowing this step outside of reality wouldn’t last. The shock would wear off and I’d have to handle it. Take care of my dad and sister.
I kept turning corners in the house, expecting to see Mom, but she was never there.
The funeral happened under a gray sky. Mourners in black gathered around a casket bearing a huge spray of daisies and sunflowers; Mom loved white and yellow. Except for Violet McNamara, none of my friends had shown up.
Holden hadn’t shown up.
While the priest droned about life eternal, my gaze aimlessly wandered among the headstones, expecting to see Holden lurking. The vampire. I’d given him my heart and he’d sucked it dry and left the husk.
