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May you eat bad Thai food, get explosive diarrhea, and be stuck in traffic.
I hope you —
Tears were close to the surface. My finger hovered over the keypad, ready to send one more message.
You didn’t reply, but I got the message.
Eleanor jerked the phone out of my hand.
“Hey!”
She ignored my protest, scanning my litany of increasing desperation with a pinched expression. “Jude, you have to stop. You have to let it go.”
My face crumpled, giving way to the tears, and I covered it with both hands. “Damnit, Lens, I can’t. It’s not right, what he did to me—”
Dropping the phone to the sofa, she wrapped her arms around me. “Of course, it’s not right. He’s a dick. But do you really want someone like that in your life?”
I shook my head. “No, of course not.”
“So, fuck him and his IKEA bar cart.”
I gave a watery snort. “It probably was IKEA. I love you, Lens.”
“I know. I’m amazing. Let’s move on from this asshole.” She wiped the skin beneath my eyes. “He’s not worth this. What did the lawyer say about getting our stuff?”
“Three o’clock this afternoon. Just the basics; they’re probably going to repossess a lot of the stuff.”
“Lovely.” She sighed. “All I really want is my art stuff.”
“We’ll make sure we get that, then. In the meantime, let’s work on figuring out where Mom is.”
When three o’clock rolled around, we were no closer to finding our mother than we had been. I told Eleanor one of the first things I was going to do when we got to the apartment was find out if she had taken her luggage and pocketbook with wallet and passport. That would at least let us know if she had left on her own or in a hurry, perhaps under duress.
The lawyer stood to the side as we entered our home, feeling oddly like interlopers. He was visibly nervous, pulling a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiping at his forehead. “Try to make it quick, ladies. I’m not supposed to let you do this.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Jerry.”
Eleanor and I moved swiftly through the apartment. I went first to my mother’s room, walking into her closet and checking to see if her luggage was present. There, behind the coats and shoe racks, sat her expensive hard case matching set.
Pressing my lips together, I went into her bedroom and opened the drawer of her delicate Queen-Anne style desk, where she sat to do her make-up and occasional correspondence. An odd location, but this was where she kept any important papers, like her passport.
The little blue folder stared up at me, along with a roll of cash.
Taking a deep breath, I collected both and tucked them into my purse, then hurried into my own bedroom to gather the few items I wanted to keep. “Eleanor, we need to hurry.”
More than ever, I felt the compulsion to make haste. As flighty as she’d been, there was no way my mother had run without her luggage and passport. Eleanor and I needed to get out of this city. Away from our father and his troubles and how they intersected with the mob.
He’d never been much of a “dad” in the full sense of the word, anyway, and there was no way I was going to allow my baby sister to become a pawn in whatever scheme he was involved in.
Fuck that.
Four
Jude
“Whatdoyoumean,declined?”
The small, officious-looking manager standing in the doorway of the hotel room where Eleanor and I had been staying the past month didn’t blink. “Perhaps you could call the account holder, miss, and get this sorted out. In the meantime, we need another form of payment for the coming week.”
