From this:
To this:
Chapter 26, The Ones Who Matter Most, copyright Rachael Herron
The only word Fern heard was catch. She stilled, conserving her energy. A catch. “Sorry?”
“I’m so nervous. God. I hate this.”
Abby looked young, so young. Years ago, some embarrassing but inevitable Facebook stalking had revealed to Fern that Abby was only two years younger than she was. Abby was thirty-six now. But Abby looked no more than thirty, while Fern felt like her own bones were in their midfifties, at least. “Go on, then.” Fern kept her hands carefully wrapped around her mug. She would not agree to a catch, money or no money.
“I want to spend time with Matty.”
Fern just stared. The café quieted around them, as if listening. Or maybe it was the roaring in her head that muted the rest of the world. She could hear her own breathing.
Abby—insanely—kept talking. “I mean, not much time. Just whatever you say is okay. Like, if you ever need babysitting. In the afternoons after school, maybe? If there are . . . other times like that? That you might need help? I’d love to—”
“Spend time with Matias? No. He’s my son. He’s not a chess piece.”
“No, not like that. Of course not. I thought—in exchange for the life insurance—”
The base of Fern’s spine heated as if she were sitting on the plug-in seat warmer she used on the coach in winter. “You thought I’d sell you time with him? With Matty? That you could buy him?”
Abby pressed her fingers against her cheeks. “No. God, no.” She coughed once and went red. “No, no. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”
Fern gritted her back teeth together for a moment. “What you said was that you want to give me money. In return for letting you spend time with my son.”
“Shit,” said Abby. Her hands dropped from her cheeks, and she laid them, palms up, on the table. “I did. I said that. Exactly. I didn’t think it through, not to that conclusion. I thought—I thought—”
Fern stood, the wooden chair clattering backward. She gripped her sweater with damp palms. “I don’t need his money.” She thought briefly how Abby had been inside her home. She’d seen the broken blinds in the living room. She’d seen the couch, the way it sagged in the middle like an old wooden bench. The scuffed linoleum in the kitchen. The way the wall paint buckled above the sink. “And I sure as shit don’t need yours.”
Abby shot to her feet. “He owes you. Scott owes you.”
True. But that would never make her beholden to this woman. “He did. But I didn’t want it. And you don’t owe me a thing.” It hurt to say. In her deepest heart, maybe she’d thought that, yeah, this Abby woman, with her perfect brown oversized handbag that looked as light as if it had nothing more than keys and a wallet inside, with her perfectly matching brown boots that didn’t have a single scuff, maybe Abby did owe her, like Diego said. Maybe the thought had flitted through her mind. Once. Okay, a few times. In her rational mind, the one that controlled what she said, what thoughts were put into words, she had known Scott had owed her. And Scott was dead. So she said it again, to convince herself. “You don’t owe me a goddamn thing.”
Abby said, “Then I’ll just give it to you.”
“Did he leave it to his son?”
Abby’s face fell. “No. I was the only beneficiary.”
Exhaustion made Fern’s legs feel weak. “So you want to give me money that belongs to you and then extort me later?”
Abby shook her head. “I promise you, Fern, I never thought it would come out like that. I’ll give you the insurance free and clear. I’m sure it will take a while for it to pay out, but I can advance it to you from my own money.” She pointed out the window to the credit union across the street. “That’s our bank. I mean, my bank. That’s why I asked you to meet me here. We’ll go put your name on that account and take mine off.”
Fern hated herself for asking. “How much?”
“Well, okay. It should have been more, but when we bought it, we were only thinking about protecting his business. When we had kids, we were going to up it—we were going to up both of ours. If I’d known about Matty . . . I would have made him buy more.” She glanced at a Post-it note. “Five hundred thousand. Plus twenty thousand from an old policy he got online a long time ago.”
Abby thought it should be more?
A half a million. So much money.
So much fucking money. She could pay off the house and still have half left over. No mortgage payment, and a safety net in the bank. All of it for Matty, for his life, his extraordinary life, because it could be that, with that kind of cash. College, anywhere he wanted. Her mouth went dry at the astonishing thought. She tried to breathe—she tried to remember why she was saying no. No, no, no. No.
Abby glanced down at the floor, and Fern saw a silver hair glinting at her temple. Just one. A promise. She probably had her hair highlighted and dyed every six weeks. She probably happily forked over hundreds of dollars to stay looking as young as she did.
Fern, on the other hand, had Googled her way to learning how to mix her own hair dye when she’d gone prematurely gray at thirty-two. A whole box of dye cost fifteen dollars at CVS. Instead, she bought the color in six-packs meant for professional hairstylists on Amazon. Developer was literally cheaper than bottled water, two bucks for an amount that lasted her two years. Plastic gloves were only pennies if you bought them in bulk at the SavMart on High Street. She used one of Elva’s royal wedding shot glasses to measure one ounce of each into a chipped ceramic bowl she kept under the sink for exactly that purpose. Total cost of each touch-up: $5.37.
She had this. She knew how to live. What to do.
She didn’t need this woman’s money. Ever.
But there was… Something about Abby was heartbreaking, something other than the fact that her husband had just died, what, three weeks ago? Not just that single gleaming silver hair. It was bigger than that. Fern tried not to look for what it was but couldn’t help scanning her face again, one more time.
Abby laced her fingers together at her stomach. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it all the way through. I wasn’t trying to buy time with Matty, I swear. Not like that. I’m ashamed of myself.” Her voice was disconsolate.
“I won’t take your money.” Fern’s voice was softer now, but she was still on guard. She could still fight.
“But . . .”
Fern stuck her hand on her hip. “And here it is.”
“I promise, no condition. I swear. But I . . . I’d love to ask you as a favor. To let me spend time with Matty.”
Fern blew out a breath sharply. “Why?”
Abby’s words were rushed, as if she was scared of them. “I asked Scott for a divorce. A few minutes before he died.”
Fern couldn’t help it—she laughed.
She shouldn’t have. The look of sorrow on Abby’s face wasn’t worth it.
But that, combined with the silver hair she’d just seen. It was . . . time. That was all. Scott’s second wife. Leaving him. Finally.
“Why?” Abby’s voice was small. “Why would you laugh at that?”
“I’m not laughing at you,” Fern said, trying to catch her breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . Well. Good job, girl. You should have told me that earlier, don’t you think?” Then she sobered. Why, then, if Abby had been going to leave him, would she want to spend any time at all with his son?
As if Abby were reading her mind, she said one word, “Family.”
Fern waited.
“It’s all I wanted from him. Family.” Abby pressed her hands to her stomach again, and now Fern thought she knew why.
“And he never told you about us.”
“He had one.” Abby’s fingers were shaking. “And I didn’t know that.”
If she’d been anyone else, a passenger on the bus, a customer in front of her in a checkout line, Fern would have known what to do. She would have just grabbed her in a hug, wrapped her in her arms, and given her a few reassuring thumps on the back. She would have held on until Abby let go. Then she would have cracked a dirty or otherwise inappropriate joke until Abby’s face relaxed.
But this was Abby.
“He had a family,” Abby said. “He never told me. He never saw you two even once, am I right about that?”
Well, he’d shown up out of the blue on Matty’s fifth birthday, but he’d stayed less than ten minutes. The pendejillo hadn’t even been able to make himself come in off the sidewalk. He’d clutched the fence and watched the children run around, shrieking. Fern had been pretty sure he wasn’t positive which kid was his. “Once. He came by and watched Matty and his friends smack a piñata. He freaked, and left. Didn’t even talk to his kid.”
Abby gasped.
“What?”
“A raccoon? Was it a raccoon piñata?”
Fern jolted, and her knee knocked the table leg. “Yeah.”
“He told me about that. Not about Matty, but that he’d gone to a friend’s kid’s party. It was his response when I told him I’d just had my third miscarriage. He said he didn’t want the . . . the stuff that went with a child. I was so shocked I didn’t quiz him about who he’d gone to see. It never crossed my mind to wonder.”
“Motherfucker.”
“He had a family. He had the only thing I ever wanted, and he threw it away.”
“So you . . .”
“I want to know you. All of you.”
“You can’t have it.” The words were harsh, but this woman needed to hear them. “You can’t have my family.”
“I know. God. I’m so sorry.” The words sounded ripped from Abby’s throat. “Can we just go to the bank? Can you let me do this for you?”
“No. Never. I won’t take the money.” Fern was going crazy—she was losing her mind right here in this coffee shop. The money could change everything. She needed more time to wrap her head around it, around the rightness or wrongness of it. She needed to count in her head, up and down, from penury to wealth, with Matty’s face at the front of her mind. “But you can babysit him.”
“What?”
Fern’s stomach leaped. “It turns out . . . that I might need some help. My schedule got changed at work. And I . . .”
“Anytime. I’m free every day.” Abby’s words tumbled over themselves. “Every single day. I mean, I volunteer with a botany group on Tuesdays, but I was thinking about quitting that anyway. I’m free anytime at all.”