Page 103 of Your Every Wish
He takes my hand and laughs while we stroll along the creek side, occasionally stopping to skip a stone across the water. “I won’t. But here’s an unsolicited suggestion: Don’t move in with Dex.”
That had come out of nowhere. Well, not completely. We’d been dancing around it for days, ever since Dex left to go back to the city and I told Liam about his proposal.
“Why not?” I lean against a tree and zip my jacket all the way up.
“A lot of reasons. You probably won’t like any of ’em, though. ”
“Try me,” I dare, though I probably won’t. Since my small fallout with Kennedy over Dex, she at least has treaded lightly on the subject. I wish Liam would do the same.
He heaves a sigh. “First and foremost, I don’t want you to leave. But putting my own feelings aside, I think Dex is an asshole. And as blind as love can be, I also think you know he’s an asshole.”
“Yeah, but he’s my asshole,” I say because it’s easier than admitting the truth. For a long time, he took me for granted. It wasn’t until Liam came along that Dex did and said all the things I wanted my boyfriend of a decade to do and say. And then there’s the wish. Who knows if Dex is really under the influence of Misty’s superpowers? I sort of laugh to myself because the whole notion that she made him love me is patently absurd and yet I can’t help but wonder.
“Let me ask you something.” Liam steps up to me and gently removes a twig from my hair. A wave of warmth flows through me. “As an advice columnist, what would you tell one of your readers if they described Dex to you?”
“What would the description be?” I ask.
“Pompous. Self-entitled. A guy who wouldn’t come through for his long-term girlfriend when she needed him most. Your basic run-of-the-mill asshole.”
“That’s just mean.” He’s so close I can feel a whisper of his breath on me, and my stomach does a somersault.
“What would your advice be?” Liam won’t let it go.
“That maybe he’s misunderstood. That maybe people focus too much on the superficial and miss seeing the real him. I don’t want to play this game anymore and I’m cold.” I push off the tree and start to walk again. “You know what? I’m going to head home. I’ll see you Wednesday morning.” That’s when Bent is bringing the excavator to dig up the wall.
“Ah, come on, Emma. Don’t be angry.”
“I’m not.” And I’m really not. But Dex and I are finally working out the way I’d always dreamed. I don’t need Liam of all people raining on my parade.
When I get home, Kennedy is in the living room, talking to Madge on the phone. She shakes her head, a message that she hasn’t told her mother about the rock wall and has no plans to anytime soon. We talked about it, and she decided that she doesn’t want to get Madge’s hopes up. But my Spidey Sense tells me that Madge is an empty hole of need and Kennedy doesn’t want the pressure. I give her a thumbs-up in support and go into my bedroom to give her a little privacy.
I dash off a quick text to Dex with a heart emoji, check my email, and leave a voicemail to my editor, reminding him to schedule tomorrow’s column before he leaves for a journalism conference in Orange County.
I do my twentieth Google search on the legal consequences of finding hidden money and wind up reading a story about siblings, a brother and sister who found eighty thousand dollars in cash stashed in a suitcase in their late grandfather’s attic in Dayton, Ohio. Along with the cash was a collection of newspaper clippings about a 1968 bank robbery.
It turned out that their grandfather and his best friend had done the stickup. Afraid that the money was marked, the grandfather had hidden the cash in the attic for sixty-three years. Upon his death, the siblings, trying to do the right thing, called the police, who impounded the money until they could tie it to the bank robbery, which sure enough they did. Shortly after the robbery, the bank offered a two-thousand-dollar reward to anyone with information about the whereabouts of the money and the identity of the robbers. Back then, two thousand dollars was equivalent to eighteen thousand today, so no small amount. You guessed it, the sister and brother duo were rewarded the two thousand bucks and their family’s reputation was stained forever. I made up that last part, but who wants to find out that their sweet old grandpappy was an armed robber?
I tap on a story about money laundering but before I can read it, Kennedy pops her head in my room.
“I’m going to kill her,” she says.
“Madge? What did she do now?”
“Nothing, that’s the problem.” She sags onto my bed. “She was going to ask Max for the money to pay Sterling. But he’s still waiting for his deal to go through and has to keep his books clean, yada, yada, yada. How much you want to bet that Max would have no compunction spending Willy’s dirty money? Clean, my ass.”
I sit next to her. “Kennedy, you already knew they wouldn’t help. This is old news, so why are you dwelling on it now? If the money is in the rock wall, which I’m starting to believe it is, then Madge and Max . . . they’re moot. You’ll have what you need, and Brock Sterling will be a distant memory.”
She sniffles and I can tell she’s holding back tears.
I grab a wad of tissues from the box on my side table. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.” But she is. “What if the money isn’t there? Or worse, what if it is and as soon as we start spending it, we’re arrested by the feds for being an accessory to a crime or whatever criminal statute there is for spending a convicted felon’s money?”
“There’s nothing illegal about inheriting our late father’s money.” Which isn’t strictly true as we’re both aware of. But on the face of it, without the nuances, the money should be ours to spend. We’re Willy’s only living heirs.
“You’re right.” She swipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “What are you going to do with your share of the money?”
“Fix up this place. Um, not the trailer, which I might fix up, too, but the whole park.” I pause. “Are you planning to go back to Vegas?”
