Page 47 of Brick

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Liv

When her phone rang in the middle of the night, Liv’s first thought was Brick had changed his mind. It wasn’t a fully formed idea, just a wish on the edge of a dream. A reason for her smile to carry in her voice when she answered.

“Hello?”

“Liv.” The anguish rolled off Rosita in waves and her stomach sank like a stone. “She’s gone.” A sucked-in stuttered breath of air. “She’s gone.

“Carol is dead.”

***

Liv didn’t cry at the funeral. She felt too empty inside to grieve.

Thank God for summer vacation. The last thing she could do right now was face a classroom of kids. She had nothing to offer them.

The service was small. Only Rosita, Carol’s twenty-year-old daughter Elise, and a few friends from work attended. Carol’s parents had died long ago, and she had no other family. The preacher said some stuff about walking with the Almighty in the kingdom of Heaven. Not exactly Carol’s jam, but it seemed to comfort Elise.

She watched it all in stunned silence. Shock and grief turned her into an observer watching from outside her body.

It wasn’t until three weeks later, at Carol’s attorney’s office, her shock gave way to anger. Henry Beauchamp, Esquire, sat behind his large mahogany desk, facing Elise, Rosita, and Liv. The wrinkles at the sides of his eyes gave him a kindly, concerned appearance as he dropped the bomb no one saw coming.

“Thank you all for being here. I know this is a bit unorthodox, but I knew Miss Carol for a long time. She helped place my son with our family many years ago and we kept in touch.” His cadence was Old World Georgia to the core. A genteel Foghorn Leghorn. “I hate to be the bearer of this news, but this is a favor she asked of me.”

Elise laughed bitterly. “I’m pretty sure the worst news has already come and gone. What could be worse than my mama dying?”

“Of course, ma’am.” He ran a pale, wrinkled hand over his thin white hair. “What I meant was, I’m afraid I knew Miss Carol was dying. Or more directly, so did she.”

“Bullshit.” Elise rose to her feet.

“Her last bout of cancer never went into remission.” He gestured for Elise to return to her shiny leather chair, and she sat in shocked silence, a pallor over her normally rich mahogany skin.

He couldn’t be right. Her head spun. “We finished our chemo at the same time. I would know if she were still getting treatment.”

“True, Miss Turner. She did stop treatment.” He swiped at his iPad and peered at the screen. “In December of last year.”

Rosita gripped the gold cross she always wore around her neck. “She wouldn’t give up. Carol wanted to live.”

The lawyer sighed, as if this conversation was harder on him than the women who loved Carol most. “Her cancer spread to her liver. The doctors could do nothing else except make her comfortable. She said she wanted to use the time she had left to live her life to the fullest.”

“The fucking list,” Elise muttered.

The Dare to Dream list.

The gut punch threatened to make her double over.

Carol’s fucking bucket list, her last hurrah at living. And the worst part? They only managed to complete two goddamn things on it before she died.

“She knew you’d be angry,” Mr. Beauchamp murmured. “But she made her choice, for good or for ill.” He cleared his throat. “Miss Carol didn’t have much in the way of material possessions. Her car, a 2015 Honda Accord, goes to her daughter Elise, along with some photo albums and home videos I have set aside in the back room. To Miss Suarez, she left the contents of her apartment: all furniture, clothing, electronics, et cetera. Miss Turner, she left you this.”

The lawyer opened his desk drawer and pulled out a black eight-by-ten frame and held it out to her. It was plastic and flimsy, feather-light in her hand. And inside, a handwritten copy of the list they’d come up with together so many months ago.

Dare to Dream

Cliff dive

Skydive

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