Page 20 of The Unraveling

“Ballet costs money, Jocelyn, it doesn’t make money. That’s not really what we’re going for right now.”

I didn’t quite understand her meaning, but instead I kicked the back of the seat and made a humph sound.

“Jocelyn, do not kick the back of the seat.”

I was tempted to do it again, as I often was when she told me not to do something, but for the first time, I had something I really wanted. And I was not willing to risk losing it.

“Sorry,” I said, in a small voice.

A few minutes later, once we were on the road we always took home, my mom asked, “Did you mean it when you said you wanted to live with Mimi?”

I almost nodded and blurted out yeah. Instead, I considered. My mom did not want me to live with Mimi. I wanted to make my mom happy so she’d let me keep doing ballet. That meant there was only one thing to say.

“No, Mommy, I was just saying that to be nice. I want to live with you.”

Her eyes landed on the rearview mirror and met mine. She smiled a sad smile. “Really?”

I nodded. And then, after a moment, said, “And I want to do ballet.”

Chapter Six

Istep out onto Arabella’s chilly balcony a few minutes before eight a.m. with my black coffee to take the call from Joel Carson, my mom’s friend, the one who’s taken over the bulk of responsibility for all the logistics back home since my mom died.

It’s overcast and gray, as it so often is in London. My phone rings exactly at eight. My heart plunges as I answer.

“Hello?”

“Jocelyn? Hi, honey, how you holdin’ up?”

It’s my third time talking to him on the phone and it’s only ever bad news. I’ve actually never even met him. All our correspondence the last week has been via text, and he’s one of those older guys who texts with proper punctuation, which always makes the conversation seem weird and serious. But his tone on the phone is completely different. He sounds present and kind of cool.

“I’m okay. How about you?”

“I’m good, I’m good. So, you have a few minutes to catch up about all the stuff going on with your mom’s estate?”

I know what he means by estate, but it sounds like a laughable exaggeration of what is really just a two-bedroom shithole in sweaty Louisiana.

“Yep, I have time,” I say.

Joel was named executor of my mom’s…estate, which was fine with me, because I wouldn’t know the first thing about trying to handle any of this stuff. When he asked if I wanted to have a funeral, I said no. My mom didn’t know enough people. Not enough people who’d still admit to knowing her—all the men she had affairs with didn’t count. Although, since I didn’t know about Joel, I wonder how many other people I didn’t know about.

I also don’t know what Joel’s deal is. I assume he’s a lawyer or something who she slept with somewhere along the way who happened to be one of the good ones.

Joel tells me that, since I said I don’t want anything from the house, it will all be sold or donated. He said that the house was listed for sale and they were hopeful it would sell quickly. He said her car had been irreparable after the accident.

My mind flashes with a horrible imagining of what her final moments might have been like. A car accident feels so dark and sudden and frightening. Did she feel anything after? When they took her to the hospital, did she know? Her heart was still beating, barely, but was she aware? Would she have heard me if I had gone to her?

My breath becomes shallow.

I clear my mind.

“Just do whatever with the car. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need anything from the house or anything else. You have my permission to do whatever you think is best with everything left.”

He seems to sense my unease and gives me a minute before continuing on.

“Your mom had a life insurance policy,” he begins, my hope lifting just a little, “and that was just enough to handle her debt and the fees for the cremation.”

I breathe in deeply. “Okay. So it’s net neutral, basically.”

---