Page 97 of Cruelest Contract
I nod, still overcome with emotion. Julian has gone to so much trouble to make me feel at home here. So has his family. Even Getty has nothing snarky to say as he leans against the doorframe with a bored expression.
“I truly appreciate everything you guys have done,” I say. “All of you.”
“Your car is a piece of shit,” Getty says suddenly.
“My car?” I just assumed I’d never see the ancient red Malibu ever again.
But when I went to lunch with Julian the day after our engagement, I laughingly mentioned my sentimental attachment to my car. Obviously, he took this complaint very seriously.
“It’s in the big garage.” Getty shrugs and glares straight ahead at the windows.
“Aw, tell her how you fixed the air conditioning,” Tye urges. “Cecilia, he spent two days on it. This fool even put on new brake pads. Now he won’t even take credit.”
“You did that?” I say to Getty. I’d be less shocked to hear that he baked me some cookies.
His eyes, so dark and impenetrable like Julian’s, shift to my face. “Julian asked me to. And I meant what I said. The car’s still a piece of shit. Needs more work than I have time for. Try driving it in the dead of winter and you won’t get halfway to town. Better get used to driving one of the pickups.”
I’ve never driven a pickup truck in my life. But this isn’t the time to argue. I’m about to thank him again but he abruptly walks out.
“Are we actually gonna do anything today?” Getty calls from the hallway. “Or should I give up and take a fucking nap until you’re done staring at furniture?”
Tye heaves a sigh and rises from the bench. “Let’s go to town,” he says. “We can get ice cream and make fun of my brother.”
“Which brother?” I ask.
He swings an arm across my shoulders and flashes his crooked grin. “All of ‘em, honey.”
19
CECILIA
Vigilance could have been drawn right from my small town fantasies. Whenever I come here I discover something new. Today Tye takes a small detour to show me the high school attended by all the Tempesta boys.
“I’m jealous,” I say as we pass a stately red brick building that looks exactly the way a high school ought to look. “I was forced to attend a strict boarding school in northern Washington. Pretty scenery but otherwise a very cheerless place to spend your formative years.”
Tye rolls to a stop in front of Vigilance High. School has already let out for the summer. Aside from a sprinkling of cars in the parking lot, the campus appears empty.
Julian must have jogged up those steps to the main entrance countless times. Still, I have trouble picturing him as a high school student, sitting in a classroom with his peers and obediently listening to a lesson on Mark Twain or quadratic equations. I just can’t imagine him in any setting where he’s not in a position of authority.
“We paid for all that,” Tye boasts and points to a football field that’s far larger and more lavish than the usual grass andbleachers found in typical American high schools. “Best high school field in the state. I played for my first two years of high school but after that I was busy with hockey. Getty and Fort also played for a couple of seasons.”
I turn around to look at Getty in the backseat. He’s paying no attention to the conversation and stares out the window with supreme irritation carved into his posture. He gives me a ‘What the fuck do you want?’glare and then turns his head away, moody as ever. Each time I think we’re about to make a breakthrough and be civil, I’m proven wrong.
I rub my hand over my bad knee. “Julian never played sports?”
Tye takes his foot off the brake and steers away from the curb. “Only his freshman year. He was good too. Good at football, even better at hockey. I couldn’t outskate him. Fuck knows I tried.”
“How come he didn’t stick with it?”
A rare frown coasts over Tye’s face. “Dad had big plans for him. Plus he always got stuck watching out for us.”
I’m sad to hear that Julian abandoned his own interests in order to deal with family obligations. This sounds exactly like something he would do without a second thought. But my heart aches for the young boy who had too many responsibilities dropped into his lap.
Julian’s fate was decided for him. Yet I’m sure he’s never complained. Not his style. I touch the mostly healed cut on my forefinger and wonder what he’s doing right now all the way in New York.
The day I met Julian, he stood apart from the boys and their antics, far more of a man at seventeen than many men twice his age. I was in awe and thought to myself that he must have the freedom to do anything he wants. But my childishassumption was wrong. Julian has always carried a heavy weight of responsibility.
Vigilance isn’t spread out at all and that’s partly why I like it. Most of the commerce is clustered on Front Street and the whimsical building facades have an old fashioned frontier town look.
