Page 2 of Troublemaker
After that,I always noticed Blake—at games, at dinner at my house, or when he came over and he and my father would disappear into his office. My dad started referring to him as the“son he’d never had.” I was never allowed to have meals with my parents because I was too loud and messy, but whenever Blake came over, I’d watch from the doorway of the kitchen. My dad was warm with him in a way he never was with me, and if Blake had been a jerk, I would’ve hated him for it.
But Blake always made sure to visit me in the kitchen before he left, patting me on the head, calling me kid, and asking me how school was. I was too young to realize how starved I was for attention, because even those brief moments made him the kindest person I knew.
I was twelve when my parents died. Their private plane had crashed on their way to some vacation somewhere. I hadn’t been with them because they never brought me along, and I guess, in that way, I was lucky.
On the day of the funeral, I stood alone in the first row of the synagogue. I had no aunts and uncles, no cousins, no living grandparents, leaving my father’s lawyer to plan the funeral. The rows behind me were filled, but aside from awkward hugs from my father’s employees and work friends, no one bothered to come close to me, to offer support or comfort. I was alone.
Then someone cleared their throat. I turned and looked up.
Blake stood there in a black suit. He seemed older, gruffer, almost stiff, pulling at the tie around his neck like it didn’t belong there.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. He looked lost, himself. “I think I’m supposed to say, ‘May their memories be a blessing,’ right?”
I nodded, forcing a smile on my face, although all I wanted was a hug.
“Yeah.”
“This is a stupid question, but how are you doing?”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
But I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. I hadn’t been close to my parents, but they were all I had, and now it was just me.
The stiffness in Blake’s body softened. He opened his arms and hugged me. For the first time that I could remember, I felt safe.
“You don’t have to be okay,” he told me. “You can be however you want to be.”
He stayed near me during the service and the burial, and even though it was probably just pity, it didn’t feel that way. He even rode with me back to the house for the shiva—when everyone came over to “mourn” with me like you do in Jewish tradition—but was pulled away by various people who wanted to talk to him.
So when my parents’ lawyer asked me to come upstairs to my dad’s office to hear about the will, what my parents had left me, and who they had left me to, I was surprised to see Blake there.
I was extra surprised when he couldn’t look me in the eye.
“Lucy, your parents left you everything in a trust—except for the team, which the estate sold, as per their instructions in the will.”
I nodded, feeling numb. I was twelve. I didn’t really care about the money, or any of it, because I was too young to understand just how rich I was. I just wanted to know where I was going to be living, and who I was going to be living with. Someone needed to take care of me.
“Lucy, you do have a guardian. Your parents trusted Blake Samson—your father specifically said he ‘loved him like a son.’ So they left you to him in their will.” Pity in his eyes, he added, “There was no one else.”
I ignored the way the words ‘loved him like a son,’ hurt. My parents had never told me they loved me. I was too busy replaying the last sentence, the shock of it…and the hope.
Maybe my parents, as much as they hadn’t cared, had cared a little…because even if there really was no one else, they still left me to someone who was kind.
I glanced over at Blake. He still wouldn’t look at me.
“Did you know?” I asked.
He jerked his head once in a nod.
The lawyer sighed. “Lucy, Blake has decided, appropriately, that you should go to boarding school until you turn eighteen, when you can go off to college.”
Boarding school.
Not with him.
Alone.
Even more alone than I’d been.
