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I swallowed. Giving him a faint nod, I closed the door, or maybe he did—I’m not sure which. Then Eleanor led me to the couch, where I sank down, put my head in my hands, and cried.
Eleanor waited patiently until I was done and then handed me a tissue and my inhaler. “I’ve already packed our things. You just need to make a circuit to make sure I didn’t miss anything. There’s some mail in the kitchen.”
I drew on my inhaler and blew my nose. “I don’t know where to go, Lens.”
“We’ll figure it out. Don’t we have an uncle somewhere?”
“I think he’s a creep.” Vaguely, I remembered Mom telling me something about her brother being a lech and a drunk. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, though.
Eleanor had the same thought. Her shoulder lifted in a shrug. “So, we’ll stick a chair under the doorknob until we have another option. Our trusts should be coming due soon. Let’s actually swing by Jerry’s office first—see if there’s anything we can draw on for lodging. Make sure we’re doing everything right.”
For a moment I stared at her. Then I wrapped an arm around her thin frame and pulled her to me in a hug. “God, I love you. You know that? I seriously won the sister lottery.”
“Yeah, yeah. Ditto. Let’s get out of her before that little man comes back.” She stood and grinned at me. “I already stole all the shampoo and stuff. Towels, too. I figured if the card was declined, there was no way they were gonna get us for it.”
An unwilling bark of laughter escaped me. “Okay, that’s funny. I think they deserve it.”
“Hell, yeah, they do. Anything else you want to take?”
I looked around the posh suite, my sense of equilibrium returning. It was tempting…so very tempting…to strip it bare. To take everything, the way everything had been taken from us.
In the end, though, I walked into the kitchen and picked up my stack of mail and a single teaspoon from the utensil drawer.
I smiled as I slid it into my back pocket. It was a small thing; that spoon. Maybe it would be missed; maybe it wouldn’t. I would know, though.
Five
Jude
Withliterallynowheretogo and no other options I could see, I dug up a number for my mother’s brother and asked if Eleanor and I could stay with him for a couple of weeks until I could make some solid plans.
“My lil’ sis’s girls, eh.” There was a peculiar note in his voice. “And where is she?”
“We don’t know. She just disappeared.”
“Huh. How old are you two now?”
“Eleanor is about to turn sixteen. I’m twenty-one, so I’ll be looking for a job. I promise we won’t take up much space for long.”
“Can you do dishes? Cook?”
I had never washed a dish or cooked a meal in my life.
“Absolutely.”
“Fine. I have a spare room you can have.”
We left the hotel as directed, within the hour, and went immediately to Jerry’s office. He paced the sleek, carpeted floor of his 37thfloor office after pulling the blinds on the floor-to-ceiling window that divided it from the rest of the building. “Where are you going to go?” he hissed, pulling out another of his ubiquitous handkerchiefs. “And why did you come here?”
We watched him move back and forth in front of us. “Because you have control of our trusts, Jerry,” I said. “I’m going to have to stay in touch with you, obviously.” I shifted in the leather chair, chewing on my lip. “I wanted to know what we’re legally able to access now, actually.”
He finally stopped and stared. “Nothing. You can’t have any of it until this business with your father is settled—”
“There has to be something. Our trusts were part of our maternal grandparents’ estates. They have nothing to do with our father and as such should be untouchable by any of this, right?”
He rubbed at the line between his eyes, suddenly weary looking. “Maybe. Let me check…”
Sitting down at his desk, he slipped on a pair of reading glasses and began tapping away at his keyboard, occasionally murmuring to himself. “Okay, here we are…let me just read through this…”
