Filfthy (49 page)

D
erek

L
eaning
over Gladys’s desk on Wednesday, I slip her a circular from last night’s paper.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“Horton Satellite Internet,” I say. “I need you to call and request an emergency installation at Belcourt Manor.”

“Can I do that?” She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her bumpy nose and reads the fine print.

“As conservator of Serena Randall’s estate, I’m authorizing you to do it it.”

She picks up her phone, cradling the receiver on her shoulder, and punches in the eight hundred number on the paper.

Hoisting up my briefcase, I slip past my dad’s office, ducking in and saying hello. He’s mixing his coffee, as he usually does at this hour. I wait until he’s finished. He has to get a precise ratio of sugar to cream to coffee, and I’ve watched him dump out far too many perfectly good cups because something was a little off.

“Son. Morning,” he says, taking a sip from his mug and nodding when the taste is to his liking. “Have a good weekend?”

“I did,” I say. “I met with Serena Randall on Saturday.”

He scrunches his face. “On a Saturday? Why would you do that?”

“She wasn’t able to meet for long on Friday,” I say. “And I did a little research on the case Friday night. I had some more questions. Wanted to get to know her a little better.”

Dad sighs, smoothing his palm down his plaid tie as he bends to sit. The lines framing the sides of his mouth flex deep as he stares ahead. I’ve seen this look before. He’s thinking too hard about something.

“This is the financial conservator assignment, correct?” he asks.

“Right.”

“You don’t need to research anything, Derek. You simply establish a budget and report the incoming and outgoing funds to the courts as scheduled. You’re making more work out of this than necessary.”

I shut his door and take the seat across from him. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

His head tilts to one side, and he skims his thumb along his thick, dark mustache. I used to think it made him look intimidating. Now it just reminds me of Tom Selleck in his prime.

“At the surface, this is a simple conservator case,” I say. “Scratch that surface and look again? It’s an estate case. The stepmother is trying to prove the daughter is mentally unsound so she can get the father to change the will. She’s paying people to make false statements. Even the car accident was a hoax.”

Dad leans forward, his finger in the air. “Wait a minute. You have proof of this?”

“Working on it.”

He massages his middle finger against his temple, exhaling with a groan. “The Randalls are a very prominent, powerful family. They have a lot of money and a lot of resources. You can’t go muddying up their names because you think you caught a whiff of fraud. You need to have solid evidence before you so much as make a single pointed accusation, or
your
name will be mud.
Our
name.”

“One of the psychiatric reports reference Serena attempting to end her life by driving her car off a bridge in Walworth Township,” I say. “The bridge was six feet off the ground, and the creek below it was only two feet deep. If someone were to try and end their life, why would they do it there?”

“Because they weren’t of sound mind at the time.” His arms fold across his chest, and his head tilts in the opposite direction.

I ignore him. He hasn’t met her yet. He can see for himself the kind of mental state she’s in, and that will answer his question.

“The doctor’s report stated she stayed in a private psychiatric care center in upstate New York after the accident,” I say. “Serena claims she’s never left Belcourt. She claimed she was evaluated by a doctor, treated for a mild concussion, and monitored at home by a nurse during the week that followed.”

“Find me that nurse. Find someone to corroborate her story.”

“Easy enough, right?” I ask. “Wrong. We suspect these people may be on her stepmother’s payroll. She’s buying their false statements. Coming clean would have major consequences for everyone involved. It won’t be easy.”

Dad leans forward, resting his elbows against the polished glass top of his walnut desk. “You’re going to be eyeballs deep in your own shit if you keep this up.”

I snivel. “You have no faith.”

“I think you’re a smart man doing a foolish thing.”

“What happened to doing the right thing?” I stare at the old man before me, his shoulders weighted down from years of bearing everyone else’s burdens. “What happened to justice?”

He leans back, his chair creaking and popping as he spins to face the picture window to his side.

“I ask myself that every day.” He shakes his head, and for the second time in my life, I find the magic around my father’s façade to be more illusion than anything else. “Sometimes, you do what’s best for your career, and sometimes, that isn’t always what’s best for your clients.”

His words are a punch to my gut, and I find myself speechless for a moment.

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying.” His eyes snap in mine. “You’re young. You have a lot to learn. You have a long career ahead of you. Stick to the safe cases for now. Stick to what you know. Don’t get involved in the Randalls’ family drama unless you’re explicitly hired to do so, and even then, I’d refer them to some shark in Manhattan who thinks these cases are a dime a dozen.”

“You don’t think I’m good enough to take on this case.” God, I feel like I’m fucking thirteen years old. “So spending the majority of my twenties studying law was for nothing.”

“You’re a damn fine lawyer, Derek.” Dad slams his clenched fist on his desk, and his pens jump in unison. “Damn fine.”

“But what?”

“Do you realize how bad this is going to look?” His dark brows meet. “You’re hired to look after her money, and now you’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, convincing her there’s a case that needs to be billed, extra work to be done. You’re not doing this for free, Derek.”

“Of course not.” God forbid the practice misses a single billed hour. “And I’m a professional. This won’t look bad. Serena’s a good person. She deserves her name back. Her reputation. Her inheritance.”

“What’s this Serena like?” His tone changes. He’s baiting me.

“Why does that matter?”

“How would you describe her?”

I laugh to myself, keeping a straight face. I’m onto him. “You want me to tell you she’s beautiful. You want me to say she’s lovely and intelligent and the epitome of grace and class, and then you’re going to accuse me of having a thing for her, and then you’ll claim my judgment is clouded, and I should be removed from my role as conservator.”

His jaw juts out, his arms folding. “You think like your old man. One step ahead.”

“She’s my client. That’s all she’ll ever be. No boundaries will be crossed. No good names will be tarnished. I’m a professional.”

He studies me, one eye pinched.

“You have my word,” I say.

My father’s phone rings—a timely interruption—and he presses the speaker button with a meaty knuckle.

“Is Derek in there with you?” Gladys’s voice pierces my eardrums.

“Yes, Gladys. I’m in here.”

“Kyla’s on line two.” She hangs up.

“What the hell does Kyla want on a Wednesday?” Dad gives me a questioning stare, and I roll my eyes before heading back to my office because I have no fucking clue.

I groan into my receiver when I’m at my desk a moment later. “What do you need?”

My ex-wife harrumphs. “Always so excited to talk to me.”

“Is Haven okay?”

Her pause sends an electrical current down my chest.

“Of
course
she’s okay, Derek.” She spits her words through the phone. “To imply otherwise is just . . . not cool.”

“Then why are you bothering me at the office in the middle of the week? Shouldn’t you be in Pilates class? Or are Wednesdays for barre? No, wait. Hot yoga. My mistake.”

Kyla sighs. “You’re just mad that my body looks better now than it ever has, and for the first time,
you
don’t get to enjoy it.”

“Yes, yes,” I say. “I’m well aware that your sculpted ass is for the new man in your life. Or should I say old man? Isn’t he twice your age?”

She doesn’t respond, and I grin ear-to-ear at the image of her fuming silently from her sun-filled, white-washed kitchen in some boring little suburban neighborhood two hours away. I bet she has the grandest kitchen on her block, and the ironic thing is, Kyla doesn’t cook. Can’t even boil water.

“And your point?” She fires back with a jagged tone that cuts worse than a dull butter knife.

“I guess . . . I guess I don’t have one?” I stifle a laugh in my tone. God, how I love fucking with Kyla. Some days, it’s the best thing about having her as an ex-wife. “I guess . . . I guess I just wanted to remind you that you’re married to a guy with wrinkly, old man balls.”

I hear her slam the phone down on the counter from her end. And then it’s silent. But she’s still there. I can hear her rustling around in the background.

“Are we done?” she scolds a moment later. “Please have a little more respect for your daughter’s stepfather.”

“You mean Grandpa Stepdad?” I yank the phone away so she doesn’t hear me laugh. When I come back, she’s chewing me out. “In my defense, Haven came up with that one.”

“Right. I highly doubt Haven came up with that all on her own.”

“Okay, it may have been a joint effort.”

“Grow the fuck up, Derek. Seriously. Grow. Up.”

Most of the time, I’m the epitome of grown up. But sometimes, life can be so fucking brutal that the only way I can cope with it is by having a sense of humor. Who marries the love of their life, has a gorgeous baby girl with them, creates this beautiful fucking life together, and then comes home early the Friday before Valentine’s day to find the sixty-year-old plastic surgeon who did her breast implants nailing her from behind as she’s bent over the back of the sofa?

Fucking hilarious. I can’t make this shit up.

At that point, she’d had her tits done for a year. I remembered because the day she stopped breastfeeding Haven, she’d claimed they were ruined and demanded I pay to get them fixed. For all I knew, their budding attraction started the day he felt up her pancake tits in exam room number four.

Five grand for new DDs. Tens of thousands lost in the divorce settlement. And a third of my monthly income going straight to her pocketbook in the form of child support while she plays hot housewife for Dr. Herbert Hodge IV.

And thanks to the wonderful family court judge we had the pleasure of dealing with—who’s apparently stuck in 1992—Haven gets to see me every other weekend, alternate holidays, and two weeks every summer. No amount of lawyering or dragging out the case would get that old broad to budge.

By the end of the trial, we were all exhausted, and in the end, it was Haven who suffered. My sweet, innocent daughter caught in a tug-of-war between two people who never should’ve been together in the first place.

I’ll never forget the first year of our marriage and the look of disappointment on Kyla’s face when she realized the small-town lawyer she’d married was not going to be raking home a cool half-a-mil a year after all.

Guess she should’ve done her research.

And I’ll also never forget the way it felt to watch Kyla struggle with motherhood, to come home at six o’clock at night and find a half-empty bottle of wine on the counter and the baby sitting in a piss-soaked diaper.

I suppose you could say both our dreams were shattered those first couple of years.

“Are you done?” she asks. “I can hear you laughing.”

“All right, all right. What the hell do you need, Kyla?”

“Herb is taking me on a surprise ski trip, and we’re leaving Thursday and coming back Sunday. You’re going to have to pick up Haven tomorrow.”

“Herb skis? What if he breaks a hip?”

“Derek.”

“Okay, I can pick her up, but doesn’t she have preschool Friday?”

“She can miss.”

“Love the priorities, Kyla. Awesome. Mother of the year.”

“I’m allowed to take a ski trip with my husband. Unlike some husbands, Herb actually spoils me rotten. He loves me. He lives to make me happy.”

“Because the world should revolve around you. Naturally.”

“Can’t we have one conversation that doesn’t feel like we’re taking ten steps backward? I’m tired of fighting with you.”

“We’re not fighting. This isn’t a fight.”

“You’re being hostile.”

“Poor choice of words. Blunt might work better there. I’m being blunt.”

“You’re being rude. I feel like you just want to punish me for winning custody of Haven. That’s all this is about. You’re still bitter.”

“She should be with me, and you know it. You said several times that you didn’t want to be a mother. You were a stay at home mom with a full-time nanny. What the fuck does that say about you?” My words are gritty, my nerves raw all over again. “The judge never should’ve awarded you anything other than weekend visitation.”

“Mothers should never be separated from their children.”

“Mothers who put their children first,” I correct her. “And you don’t fall into that category.”

“Are you saying I don’t love our daughter?” The amount of disbelief in her tone is concerning. Then again, I always knew Kyla was a delusional bitch.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Derek, I really need you to co-parent with me, just like Dr. Sarah taught us.”

Ah, yes. How could I forget the forty-six expensive-as-fuck hours spent with our court-ordered family therapist in those glorious post-divorce weeks?

“This isn’t helping anything,” she says. “We need to reach a peaceful resolution and speak to each other with respect and love.”

I cringe. I could never respect Kyla, and I sure as hell don’t love her, not even as the mother of my child. Not anymore.

“Have her ready to go by seven on Thursday,” I say. “I’ll bring her back Sunday night. Usual time.”

Slamming the phone down, I inhale a lungful of air and reach for the picture on my desk of a smiling, tow-haired Haven holding a Minnie Mouse kite last summer. The only good coming out of this is getting to spend more time with her.