darkness. He flipped on the light, then called out, “Mom, you home?”
No reply. He crossed the living room into the kitchen. A note was stuck to the refrigerator. It was the way the Duffys had always communicated. Civilization might have evolved from the beating tom-tom to e-mail, but nothing was more effective than a note on the freezer door. Ryan read it as he grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. “Went to dinner and a movie with Sarah,” it read. “Be back around ten.”
He checked the clock on the oven. Eight-thirty. It was good that Mom was getting out. Even better that she wasn’t home to ask him how things had gone with Liz. He twisted off the cap and sucked down a cold Coors on his way to the family room. He switched on the lamp, then froze.
The furniture had been moved. Not rearranged in an orderly fashion. Moved. The couch was angled strangely. The wall unit had been pulled a few inches away from the wall, several drawers hanging open. The rug was curled up at one end. Clearly someone had been here. Someone who had been searching for something.
Someone, he feared, who knew about the money.
14
Stupid. That was how Amy felt. After all the mental preparation for her meeting with Ryan Duffy, she hadn’t really accomplished what she’d set out to do. Her only objective had been to find out why Frank Duffy had sent her the money. She came away with no clear picture. Stupid, was all it was.
Not that it was so great to be smart all the time. She’d learned the downside of brains long ago, as a child. If you were stupid, no one blamed you. But people were suspicious of intelligence, as if you had done something wrong just by virtue of being smart. That reaction from others had bred shyness in Amy, a trait that had surely contributed to her blunder with Ryan. She didn’t especially like that about herself, which was precisely the reason she could recall the very day she had begun her transformation from an outspoken little girl to a kid who was beyond humble, almost embarrassed by her own extraordinary abilities. A couple of years before her mother’s death, she had tagged along to the doctor’s office for her mom’s annual checkup. Her mom sat on the table, so pretty, looking much like the woman Amy would become. Amy watched intently as the nurse rolled up her mother’s sleeve and checked her blood pressure.
“Very good,” said the nurse, reading from the gauge. “One-twenty over eighty.”
“One and a half,” Amy volunteered.
“One and a half what?” her mother asked.
“One-twenty over eighty. That equals one and a half.”
The nurse looked up from her chart, almost dropped her pen. “How old is that child?”
“Six,” said her mother. “Well, almost six.”
More than twenty years later, the look on that old nurse’s face was still unforgettable. Over and over, throughout her childhood, Amy would see that same spooked expression. Hearing the amazing things that came out of her mouth, people would think she was just small for her age. Then they’d find out how young she really was and look at her like some kind of walking gray-matter freak.
“You’re special,” her mother would tell her, and she had always made Amy feel that way. Until she was gone, and then things really got difficult. Amy learned to be tough, both physically and emotionally. Especially with boys. In elementary school, they would pick fights with her on the playground, just to show her the limits of being so smart. As pretty as she was, she had plenty of dates in high school, but not many second dates. Brains were a scary thing to some people, from that nurse in the doctor’s office, to the boys on the playground, to her jerk of an ex-husband.
Somehow, it didn’t seem like that would ever be an issue for a guy like Ryan Duffy.
Admittedly, the meeting with Ryan wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done. Even her own mother would have told her that, had she been alive. Yet dismissing the whole thing as stupid rang hollow in her heart. She had a good feeling about Ryan. He’d made her smile, put her at ease in a situation that could have been far from easy. To her surprise, she found herself wishing they had met under different circumstances, another time in their lives. She wasn’t sure what was percolating inside of her, but ever since she’d left the restaurant, she’d thought more about him than the money.
If that was what it felt like to finally feel stupid, stupid wasn’t such a horrible thing.
What was really stupid was her remark right before she’d left, when he’d asked to see her again. You never know. Three little words that, to any reasonable human being, translated roughly to “In your dreams, buddy.”
Enough self-flagellation. She had his phone number. And she did have to call him. She at least had to tell him the truth. This wasn’t just a matter of a thousand dollars, as she had led him to believe. She had ignored the very pep talk she had given herself outside the Green Parrot, when she’d promised herself to use “the direct approach.” It was time to practice what she preached.
And then just see where things led from there.
She picked up the phone, took a deep breath, and dialed the number.
The phone rang, piercing the silence. Ryan stopped in the hall. He had checked the entire house. He was definitely alone. Whoever had been there had left some time ago. Still, he had a strange sensation that somebody was watching the house — that whoever had broken in was on the phone, calling him, taunting him. He went to the kitchen and answered in a harsh tone.
“What do you want?”
“Ryan, hi. It’s Amy. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
He knew he sounded stressed, but he sure wasn’t going to tell her about the break-in. “Sort of. No, I’m sorry. Go ahead.”
“I’ll make this quick. I’ve been thinking about our conversation, and I felt like I needed to set something straight. But I can call back later, if you want.”
“No, really. What is it?”
She struggled, not wanting to sound like a complete liar. “One comment you made really stuck in my mind. You said it didn’t surprise you that your dad gave me some money. You said you wouldn’t be surprised if your dad had given away money to lots of people after he learned he was sick.”
“I was just talking off the cuff.”
“But let’s say he did give away money to more people like me. Maybe lots more. I don’t mean to offend, but from what I can tell, your father didn’t appear to be super wealthy.”
He leaned against the refrigerator, curious. “What are you getting at?”
The direct approach, she reminded herself. Use the direct approach. Her voice tightened as she asked, “Where would he get that kind of money?”
Ryan hesitated. Did she know something? “I could only assume he saved it.”
“But what if it were a lot more than a thousand dollars? Just hypothetically speaking.”
“I don’t really see your point.”
“Just bear with me. You seemed like a nice guy when we talked. I guess I need to know just how nice you really are. Let’s say the box had… five thousand dollars in it. Would you still tell me to keep it?”
“A thousand, five thousand. Whatever. Yeah, keep it.”
“What if it were fifty thousand? Hypothetically speaking.”
He swallowed with trepidation. “I guess it wouldn’t make a difference. Not if that was what Dad wanted.”
“How about a hundred thousand?”
He said nothing, as if it were unthinkable.
“No,” said Amy, “let’s say it was two hundred thousand dollars. Would you let me keep it?”
A nervous silence fell over the line. “Hypothetically?” asked Ryan.
“Hypothetically,” she said firmly.
He answered in a low, even tone. “I’d want to know where in the hell my dad got the money.”
She answered in the same serious voice. “So would I.”
He sank into a bar stool facing the kitchen counter. “What do you want from me?”
“I just want this to be on the level. I’d love to keep the money. And as you say, for some reason your father
