She definitely needs a drink. I walk over to the dry bar as she searches near the front door. I grab the expensive stuff and glance quickly out the front window. The snow is still coming down and the world outside is pure white. I’m going to need the biggest whiskey tumblers my father keeps here.
“I found it, but guess what?” she thunders. “It’s all wet. It won’t work.” She’s cursing and wringing the phone in her fists like she trying to choke the life out of it.
I finish pouring two enormous glasses of whiskey and offer her a trade for one of them. “Give me the phone and take this.”
She still won’t look directly at me. “Why?”
“Claire, stop being difficult. I’ll find some rice to dry the phone in while you take a sip. Nothing more,” I reason.
“I bet they have golden spun rice here,” she mutters, pushing the phone at me. She takes the whiskey and brings it right to her lips and sips.
And sips again.
Then she blinks up toward my hairline, still refusing to make eye contact. “Whatisthis?”
“It’s a seventy-two-year-old single-malt Scotch Whiskey that’s way more expensive than this robe I’m wearing.”
“I don’t even want to know how much, Vaughn. Please don’t tell me. It’ll just make me sick,” she huffs.
I shrug and smile. “My lips are sealed,” I say as I start searching through the kitchen’s pantry closet for rice. My eyes land on it right away, and I rip open the bag and shove her ancient cell phone right inside. Rice spills out all over the floor. I walk over the mess, crunching through it uncomfortably with my bare feet, carrying the bag with me. I plop it on the rustic-style coffee table in front of the couch and go and grab my drink.
It goes down smooth.
Claire walks over to the window, shaking her head in disbelief. “How much snow do you think is out there?”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
We both sit on the couch and sip our drinks in silence.
I know what she’s thinking. She wants to know how long she’ll be stuck here with me. Maybe she found the offshore accounts and wants to run out of here. At first I didn’t think so, but maybe they really exist. It didn’t occur to me until just now. My head swims with questions, and it still smarts from whatever the hell collided into me outside. “So, you’ve really never been here before?” I ask.
“No,” she sighs.
“Who are the texts from?” My tone sounds needling,too curious.
“Apparently, my dead mother,” she whispers.
“Wait what?” I know that because I read through them, but the way she says it sends chills down my spine.
“Yeah,” she says, taking another sip of whiskey. “That was the last phone number I had as her contact. I don’t think I’ve talked to her in the past couple of months.”
It had been a year, but I don’t say the words, she’s looking down at the bag of rice with a sad, far-off look in her eyes. “If you’re wondering…sheisdead. I saw…the body.”
I clear my throat, not knowing what to say. “That’s an old phone you have.”
“Yeah, well, we all aren’t born with a silver spoon up our asses like you,” she says, glaring at me. It’s the first time since being in the bedroom she’s looking me dead in the eyes.
“And you’re here to find money that isn’t yours and take it, aren’t you?” I seethe.
She looks down at the floor and her voice cracks with emotion and shame. “I don’t want anything from your father. That’s dirty money to me. I want nothing to do with their affair, but that person texting me is threatening to send those pictures to my school.”
“So?” I say, crossing my arms.
“So?I work for a private school, all the parents and my principal, and the children? I’ll lose my job, my career.” Her nostrils flare. Her eyes turn glassy.
“Why should I believe you?” I fight. “What if—"
“Look,” she cries, clapping her hands together. “I don’t care what you think. I stopped caring about you and your family a long time ago.” She bolts up, body ramrod straight and looms over me. “Before I identified her body, I hadn’t seen my mother in five years—maybe more.” She plants her bottom on the coffee table meeting her knees to mine. Suddenly, her body seems to deflate like a worn-out balloon. “I never knew she was here or that she lived like this.”
