Page 26 of The Usual Family Mayhem

The question sounded innocuous. Sort of a throwaway thing people asked in the morning on the way to the coffeemaker. Coming from Celia, seeing her bright smile, and knowing we were talking about dinner with her nephew, made my defenses rise.

“Fine.” No mention of old kisses or talk about kissing because those weren’t the types of things Gram and Celia needed to know. I’d been embarrassed enough, thank you.

Celia sat in the kitchen with her laptop. Years ago, she’d insisted the home office was too dark. No amount of white paint and sheer curtains made her happy. Gram gave up and went with the green walls she wanted. Celia found other places to do her non-baking work. Today, the breakfast bar won.

Seeing her there, typing away and studying whatever was on her screen, made me wonder about whatwason her screen. I’d sent copies of the ledger photos to Jackson right after I woke up this morning. He didn’t respond, being a busy man and all.

Never mind that it was Saturday at nine in the morning. He probably popped into work for a few hours, which was atotallynormal thing to do on a sunny weekend day.

I sipped my Earl Grey tea and watched Celia. Her fingers flew across the keys. Years ago, she’d done data entry at herhusband’s company before turning to baking. She had serious typing skills and a dead husband.

Isaac Boone. Literally a used car salesman and constantly in search of a big payoff. He talked about grand ideas for making money but couldn’t back them up. He tried to buy a dealership, but that didn’t work. He tried other careers, ones that paid more and were considered more prestigious. Those didn’t work either.

When his father died, Isaac inherited the family’s medical supply business. It took only a few years for him to run it into bankruptcy through mismanagement and bad investments. That came after he and Celia got married.

She’d worked there. Her age was a moving target, but she would have been in her late thirties when they met. She’d wanted a child. Isaac, always being one to over-promise and fail to produce, knew and proposed. She didn’t love him but said he seemed “nice enough”—a very low bar she now admits wasn’t sufficient for marriage—and she said yes. Then everything went to hell.

Thinking he could reverse the surgery without trouble, he “forgot” to tell her that he’d had a vasectomy. He tried to fix the problem without her knowing and managed to fail at that, too. When checks started bouncing and their house went into foreclosure, she realized he’d lied in ways that could destroy her. With the trust irrevocably broken, she wanted out. He died in a car accident right after she told him, leaving her with a load of guilt and unpaid debts.

She didn’t turn to her siblings for help because Celia refused to burden them. She also knew Savannah’s marriage and health were falling apart, and had been for years, and Celiawanted the family’s sole focus on her baby sister. Gram and Celia knew each other from church. Gram stepped up as a friend at first, offering support and a room to rent for almost nothing. It only took a year for things to shift and now they’d been together for more than two decades.

“Do you need money?” Celia studied her computer screen. “I’m paying bills and can write you a check.”

A curveball of a question. “Where did that come from?”

Celia stopped typing and looked up. “I know your apartment is expensive and you have that law school loan because you wouldn’t let us help out with tuition.”

They’d done enough by paying for my undergraduate degree. Condemning myself to a lifetime of monthly payments for my fizzled legal career fell on me.

“You’re home, so I thought maybe you needed a little help. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m fine.” Even if I wasn’t I’d lie. I had no intention of being a money-sucking drain on Celia and Gram. I’d return to law school first.

“We all need help carrying the weight now and then, Kasey. That is nothing to be ashamed of.”

The comment meant something coming from Celia. Her life turned upside down thanks to her dead husband. When she needed help, she couldn’t ask for it. Gram forced her way in, sayingmartyrdom is a road to nowhere. I grew up with the comfort of knowing if I needed a lifeline, one would be extended without question.

“I’m assuming you have savings. We’ve talked about this,” Celia said.

Yeah, once or twice... or a billion times. That was Celia’sother life lesson: have the resources to leave when you needed to go and then go. Being financially independent had been a running lecture from the time I earned my first allowance by washing dishes after a big bake.

Celia specifically drummed into my head that a woman needed to have money set aside for emergencies. She hadn’t and paid for that misstep, so she made me promise if I had a partner that I would keep a separate small account just for me.

“I’m good.” Also, a little relieved because offering me money meant she had some. My wild fears about the business being in financial trouble might be unfounded.

That left my other theory about their strange behavior. Gram and Celia were in the poison pie business.

Jackson would call that a leap in logic, which was why I intended to ignore his opinion on the matter.

Jackson. A puzzle of a man and a cute one. He’d thrown me off-balance. The last comment at the restaurant about our ages had my mind spinning. I knew what I thought he meant. I didn’t know what he thought he meant. And that summed up my relationship with Jackson. Always a step behind, rushing to catch up, and a little breathless from it all.

“Celia?” The call came from upstairs.

Celia downed the rest of her coffee and slid off the barstool. “Sounds like Mags needs me.”

Celia pretended not to love being needed, but I knew she did. She also left her laptop behind. She’d closed it but, I mean, there it was. In front of me. Filled with information, including additional ledger pages and the answer to how many other stars next to customer names correlated with dead husbands.

All of Jackson’s talk about coincidences might stop if I presented him with more examples. Not that the need for more information justified snooping around in Gram and Celia’s business records. It didn’t. The danger, the possibility of them getting sucked into a criminal case, the spotlight I’d put on their business, their past behavior in hiding bad news made me fear a huge disaster waited, ready to pummel them. The tension ratcheted up with each new piece of information until ignoring my worries became impossible.

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