Secondhand Purses (13 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

One week later I was out of a job and standing next to the Railroad Bridge on the Cape Cod Canal. I had to go to a meeting in the lawyer’s office in Wareham in two hours, but for now, I was killing time in what had to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

I sat on the edge of the canal, watching the tug boats moving barges, watching the sun rise in the sky and thinking about how much a life can change in moments. Sometimes it seemed like life was nothing more than a series of moments strung together that moved and defined us.

After Nick’s surprise visit, I had to make arrangements to come up here for this one appointment. Lou told me that I could not take any time to come up here, despite having a bank of three weeks of vacation saved up. I explained super calmly that this was an emergency, and it was really necessary for me to take this time, despite it being so last minute.

I was not-so-calmly informed that I had a decision to make, my job or my ‘alleged’ emergency.

I thought I handled it like a total adult. I flipped him off, told him to take his crappy no future job and suck it. Yup, totally mature.

I decided to drive up to Massachusetts instead of fly. On one hand, holy hell, plane tickets were so freaking expensive. On the other hand, it wasn’t like I had anything to come back to. So I packed up a bunch of clothes, five pair of Chucks, a couple pair of boots, my favorite cookbooks, my tablet and every purse I owned. Just in case my apartment got broken into while I was gone, I didn’t want to lose everything that mattered most to me. You know, the purses.

It took me about seventeen hours to drive from my little apartment off of South Cobb in Smyrna, Georgia to this parking lot in Buzzard’s Bay, Massachusetts. I stopped only for bathroom breaks and to get some crappy truck stop fast food. I was pretty sure I was all sorts of disgusting, but thankfully there was a halfway decent public bathroom at the Canal where I could freshen up before the meeting.

It was so quiet and peaceful here. Watching the water was something I never would have thought I’d enjoy, but I could totally see the draw of coming and relaxing, having a lunch with a friend. I turned and looked at the row of shops across the green park area. There was a pub and a crap ton of antique stores. This place was too perfect for words.

I quickly looked at my phone. Time to head to the lawyer’s office.

I couldn’t get over how weird my life had become. One week ago I was miserable in my dead end job, now I had no job and was feeling freer than I’d felt in years. Even though I would have to find new work when I returned to reality. Or worse yet, beg for my old job back. Ugh. Anything but that.

I plugged the address of the lawyer’s office into my phone. 217 Main Street, Wareham.

I enjoyed the beach community vibe driving up Route 28 towards the town. Lots of clam shacks, mini golf, T-shirt places. There was even a go-kart place and bumper boats. Mental note to swing by and try out the bumper boats. Even though I didn’t have anyone to go with, I could maybe terrorize some kids and make them cry. Yes, I could be that sort of evil at times.

I parked my car and took a deep breath. I sat there for a few moments, willing myself to get out of the car and walk into the office. My hands gripped the steering wheel as if they had a mind of their own, and that mind said ‘hell no’. This would make it real. Like,
really
real.

With trembling hands, I opened the car door and stepped out onto a really cute downtown street. I almost felt like I’d stepped out a few decades back at time look at the store fronts and the weathered wood siding.

Liam McDaniel, P.C., Attorney at Law.

Sigh.

Here goes nothing.

I walked in and heard a jingle of bells above my head. Huh. People still did that? Maybe this was what people had meant when they referred to Cape Cod as ‘quaint’ to her.

Moments later, a man came rushing out to greet me. He looked to be in his early sixties, with thinning hair that had pretty much given up all its original color. His tie was loosened and he looked as if he’d spent the whole morning fighting battles with some form of demonic legal dragons.

Geez, I’d seen people who’d run marathons that looked better put together than this dude. Nonna sure seemed to like to pick the underdogs in her life.

“Ms… uh…” The man looked down at a very thin folder in his hand. “Edwards. Ms. Edwards, is that right?”

“Yeah, I’m Alex Edwards.” I reached forward to shake a clammy hand. Ew.

“Thank you for coming up to Wareham to meet with me, I do hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience for you.”

“Uh, no?”

“Great. I’m Liam, your grandmother’s attorney. We have just one other person we are waiting on before we can begin. Let’s just head towards the conference room. Would you like anything to drink?”

It had been quite a while since I’d lived in the New England area. I’d forgotten how quickly they spoke compared to the southern drawl of the Atlanta area. It took a few moments to register exactly what he’d said.

“No, I’m good, I grabbed something on the way.”

I followed him into the ‘conference room’. It was sort of a glorified closet with wood paneling and a wooden table that could comfortably seat four. I was pleased to see that he had the prerequisite olive green and maroon ‘lawyer books’ lining one wall. You know, those books you see in every conference room of every legal drama known to mean.

I had just settled into my seat when I heard the jingle sound from the doorway.

Liam started a bit, and then hurried towards the lobby.

“If you’ll excuse me, I believe the other party may be here.”

Yeah, you think?

While he shuffled out to the front to greet whoever it was that would be joining us, I tried to sneak a peek at the folder he left behind, to try to get some idea of what was about to go down.

I had only managed to lift open the cover of the folder and see what looked to be maybe six or seven pages of paper before I heard footsteps returning. I leaned back in my seat, resting my head against my hand, and tried to look as normal as possible. I failed miserably.

My heart stuttered when Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome teenaged dream walked through the door. Really, I had to stop reacting to him like that.

But still. Yum.

Ugh.

“Ms. Edwards, this is Mr. Collici.” Liam waved on an introduction, which would have been clearly unnecessary if he had just looked up from the small pile of paperwork in front of him and actually looked at us instead. I stood there with my arms crossed, glaring at Nick for not including the tiny, little tidbit of information that he would be at this meeting as well. Nick stood there, with his hands in his pockets, smirking at me for getting one over on me.

“Yeah, thanks, Liam. I know him
all
too well.” I collapsed back in my seat, the enormity of what this meeting meant and the exhaustion of the last week hitting me all at once.

“Nick, why didn’t you let me know you were going to be here, too?”

“You didn’t ask.” He shrugged as he said this, as if I should have known better than to ask him such a silly question. He plopped down in the seat directly across from me, stretching his feet out so that they touched mine. I automatically scooted back about a half of a foot.

I could hear him quietly snickering at my reaction. I was so tempted to land a perfectly placed ‘accidental’ kick between those stretched legs. I had to remind myself that I was turning a new leaf in my life. At least I could mentally amuse myself at the image of him writhing around on my front porch the time I had landed my knee
just
right. That was such an awesome moment. I wonder if his gonads had descended from his abdomen yet.

Liam cleared his throat and I realized that I had just been sitting there, staring off into space, smiling at my mental image of Nick in agony. It was the little things that brought me joy in life.

“Let’s get started, shall we?”

Nick and I nodded our assent.

“Okay, so this is the Last Will and Testament of Alma Maria Caivano.”

My mouth dropped open at this. Not that I was surprised that I was at a reading of a will, I mean, that was kind of clear. But seriously? That was the first time I’d ever heard Nonna’s real name. I had called her Nonna so long that I’d forgotten that crafty old broad never told me her name. And damn, I thought Victoria Alexandra Edwards was a mouthful.

“Guys, this is pretty straight forward. It’s considered a basic will because Mrs. Caivano did not have any biological heirs to her estate. She didn’t want anything to be all fancy, and as she put it ‘garbled up in that lawyer mumbo jumbo crap’.”

Nick and I started laughing simultaneously. Yeah, that was something she would totally say.

“I could read this word for word to you, but instead of boring you to death, I’m going to give you the overall picture. This is at her request. You will both be receiving a copy of this as well.”

I nodded. I couldn’t imagine this taking too long, I mean, she lived in a tiny house in Providence, and from the pictures, it didn’t look like her house in Onset was any bigger. I didn’t imagine she had much of anything to hand out. But it was really sweet of her to think of me. I mean, she basically had made me her family in the end.

“Nick, she started with you. She has left you a sum of fifty thousand dollars, and her 1956 Harley Davidson motorcycle. That is in the shed on her property at 2675 Seaview Avenue in Onset, Massachusetts. She has also signed over her shares to your repair business, so it is now one hundred percent yours and in your control only.”

Nick wasn’t the type of person who shocked easily. He never was. He was always a kind of go with the flow, easy going type of guy. But he sat there, his mouth open, in a stunned silence. I’m not sure he was even breathing. I watched his chest intently to see any movement. Nope, nothing.

“Mr. Collici, are you okay, sir? Would you like a minute?”

Nick turned his head towards the lawyer, not really comprehending what was going on.

I could see pools of moisture in the corner of his eyes, threatening to spill out. I reached forward and held his hand, giving it a quick squeeze. He smiled tightly at me, and nodded a thank you.

“Yeah, I’m alright. I guess that just really took me by surprise. I mean, she was my sole investor in my shop, and I still haven’t paid her back everything she gave me. I never expected anything from her. And I sure as hell never knew she had a classic Hog.” He rubbed his eyes as if tired and overwhelmed from all of this information, but I knew him. It was too much. The emotion was just too much.

“She also wanted you to have this.” Reaching below the stack of papers, there were two envelopes. He pulled out both and handed Nick the one with his name on it in her familiar script.

“Thanks.” Nick reached for the envelope. He looked at it for a few moments, gently running his index finger over his name. A small, sad smile appeared for a second, before he shook it off and put his envelope in his back pocket.

“Okay, Ms. Edwards. Your turn.”

Liam scanned the pages briefly, before raising his eyes to meet mine.

“Ms. Edwards, you have been left her home at 2675 Seaview Avenue in Onset, Massachusetts; as well as all the contents of the home, with the exception of the 1956 Harley previously mentioned. Anything in the structure of the home is yours. She felt it was especially important for me to mention that to you, she said it needed to be said, so that no one would fight it.”

A house?

I was left a house?

I figured I’d always be in an apartment, not something of my own. Never something of my own.

“I have, obviously, an envelope for you as well, and the keys to the house. Now, the will has to be filed and go through probate just to transfer the ownership of the assets to you. But I don’t foresee any problems, considering you are the only heirs that she’s named. I don’t imagine either of you plan on contesting any part of this document, do you?”

We both shook our heads slowly, neither of us had quite yet absorbed what had just taken place.

“Good. Ms. Edwards, Mrs. Caivano indicated that you would need a place to stay during the time to pass probate. I don’t see any problem with you staying at the house that you are inheriting. So if you would like, here are the keys.”

He dangled a set of keys in front of me. I hesitated, and then reached for them. I rolled them around in my hand, the weight of them making the whole situation seem more real. Looking at the key chain, I had to laugh. It was a bakery roll with the words ‘Kiss my Buns’ on it. Epic.

And just like that, I, Victoria Alexandra Edwards, was a home owner.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Nick had been kind enough to let me follow him through the narrow roads of Onset to my new home. I still couldn’t get used to the words ‘home’ and ‘my’ in the same sentence. All my life, all I ever really wanted was a permanent place that I could call mine and that I could decorate if I wanted to and not have to leave if I didn’t want to.

As I stood in front of the perfect little cottage that had been Nonna’s home for six years, I couldn’t help but fall in love with my new surroundings.

I had to take this one step at a time, I kept reminding myself. I mean, I had a life back in Atlanta, right?

Well, didn’t I?

I had a job. Well, okay, literally I
had
a job, because that was over and done with. I may have gone beyond burning a bridge and headed straight to strapping some explosives on it and blowing that bridge to high heaven. I had an apartment. Um. I stood outside Nonna’s house thinking, trying to come up with something worth walking away from this and going back to Georgia for. I shook my head. Not a damned thing.

So, maybe it was time to take that leap.

I stood at the front door, and touched my hand to the weathered wood.

“Thanks, Nonna.” I whispered my gratitude, hoping that a part of her soul somewhere would hear it. I felt a slight, cool breeze brush the back of my neck. Smiling, I turned the key and entered our home. She had heard me.

As I looked around I just started laughing. This was like going back ten years in time, back to the first day I entered her home and was awestruck by how many different colors could possibly live in harmony with one another. I walked through the house as if I’d been there before and then it hit me. This was the exact same floorplan as her little home in Providence. It was smaller, no doubt, but the same layout, the same colors, and pretty sure the same furniture. Thanks to the plastic covers that were omnipresent, they hadn’t aged a day. As a matter of fact, they were so out of style that I was pretty sure they were en vogue.

I walked over to the mantle and felt fresh tears as they poured down my face. My favorite little figurine, the little boy in the tree. Turned out that it was something called a Hummel. As I did years ago, I carefully touched his cheek. I picked him up and walked over to sit on the plastic sofa, sinking in as deep as you can into a piece of furniture that you were sticking to. I’d never been bold enough to actually pick the little figurine up before. But now it was mine. Everything was all mine and that scared the shit out of me.

What did you do when you had everything you ever wanted? What did you do when all your dreams came true?

Was I supposed to be jumping up and down? Screaming with excitement? Spinning in circles until I passed out cold on the floor and threw up from the dizziness?

The thing was, I’d give it all up to have Nonna here. I guess this was one of those times when you wait until someone was gone before you totally realized just how much they meant to you all along.

I closed my eyes for a few moments, breathing in the scent of Nonna that still resided in the house. Even though she was still gone, she lingered.

When I opened my eyes again, it was pitch black in the house and my stomach was gurgling from hunger. I was clutching the little porcelain boy to my chest so I carefully put him on the end table and stood up.

My legs were stuck to the plastic and it felt like I was at waxing appointment as I stood up.

“Dammit, freakin’ OW!” I yelled every curse word I knew and some I made up on the spot as I rubbed the back of my legs.

“Ah…ahh…choo.” My eyes started watering and my nose itching. I went to find a light switch and when the lights came on I looked critically around the room. Although everything was in meticulous condition, it was also covered in a layer of dust from the weeks since Nonna had passed. Great, just great. I had just napped in an allergy pit. I glanced at my phone. Holy crap on a stick. I was just asleep for four hours.

My stomach growled again. Damn, I was starving.

I went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I was disappointed and yet relieved at the same time that it was empty. I could only begin to imagine what the food that used to reside in there would look like after the weeks of neglect. I pulled open the freezer door and jumped up and down at the frozen goodies left behind by my wonderful friend. It was like a piece of her was still here with me.

I closed the freezer door, and thought about it. Thaw pastries or order pizza.

Duh.

I picked up my phone and searched for the closest pizza place.

“Onset House, takeout or delivery?”

“Uh, delivery please. I’d like a large pizza with mushrooms and sausage.”

“Is that all?”

“Yup.”

“Address?”

Crap, hadn’t memorized that. Frantically looked around to see where I’d dropped the paperwork from earlier today.

“Hold on, I just got here today. My address is… here it is, 2675 Seaview Avenue.”

“Hey, is this Alex?”

What? Oh wait, they must have some sort of caller ID or something.

“Um, yeah.”

“Oh cool, you made it. Nonna used to talk about you all the time. So glad you were able to make it up, even under the circumstances.”

“Wait, you knew Nonna?”

“Well, yeah, of course I knew her, she loved our pizza.” You could hear the pride in his voice.

“She would tell us about your latest creation, what you were doing. She really was proud of you.”

“Thanks, I... I really appreciate that.”

“No problem, it will be eleven seventy five for the pizza, we’ll be there in about a half hour.”

The more this day progressed, the more I felt like a total ass for not making the time to come visit.

My cell phone started ringing in my hand. I looked at the display. Oh, crap. Mom. I was supposed to call her when I arrived so she didn’t think I was stuck dead in a ditch somewhere on the side of the road.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you are alive.”

“I know, I know. I got a little caught up in everything up here so I forgot.”

“So, what’s this town like? We never really spent much time on the Cape when we lived in Rhode Island.”

“Well, it’s really super cute. I mean, total old school store fronts. Right on the water, so that’s really nice. Oh, and you’re never going to believe this. The lawyer had bells on his door to let him know when he had a client.”

We both burst out laughing over this.

“No way, I haven’t seen that in over a decade.”

“It was a surprise. Then again, the lawyer’s office was so old and dated inside, pretty sure it hadn’t had a woman’s touch since maybe the seventies. Maybe I should nominate it for some sort of renovation on HGTV.”

“Speaking of the lawyer, what happened?”

“Well, Nick was there.”

Silence was on the other end of the line. Mom had mixed feelings about Nick. She loved him for being my first kiss and first love. She hated him for being my first heart break.

“Mom? You still there?”

“Yeah. I’m here. Just processing you being in the same room as Nick for the second time in a week, when you hadn’t seen or heard from him in ten years.”

“Imagine how it feels on this side of the phone.”

Snort.

“Okay, so why did they need you there? Did you inherit her cookbooks or something?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose I did.” I was starting to get a little hysterical, my voice rising as laughter bubbled up out of me.

“What do you mean?”

“Mom, I got the cookbooks, the stove, the counters, the walls, the floor…” My voice kept rising higher and higher.

“Wait, sweetie, slow down. What are you talking about?”

“She left me the house and all of its contents.”

Silence.

I had, for the second time in as many minutes, rendered my mom speechless.

“Wow.”

“I know, right?”

“So, does that mean you’re moving up there? I mean, well, I guess that’s a pretty stupid question. You have a house, of course you’re moving up there.” She was starting to sound a little bitter, as if she was upset about this. But that didn’t make any sense, she and dad had been living in Savannah for a while now, it wasn’t as if I saw them all the time and they suddenly weren’t going to have their precious little girl around.

“Mom, yeah, I probably will be moving up here. I mean, I don’t have any reason to stay in Atlanta. I never really fit in there anyway. And I may have sort of lost my job.”

“I know, I know, it makes perfect sense.”

“I always wanted a house of my own, mom, a permanent place, not just another place to move away from. I’ve never had that.”

I heard a long, shuddering sigh come from the other end of the line.

“So once again, she has given you everything I couldn’t, and everything that you ever wanted.”

“
Excuse
me?” No way, she did
not
just say that.

“I’m sorry sweetie, I know this seems really cold, but seriously, it’s like no matter what she’s always going to win.”

“For God’s sake, mom, she’s
dead
. I am pretty sure you win on this one. This is a sick conversation that I am just going to end right now and try my very best to forget ever happened. I’ve got pizza on the way and a lot of plotting and planning as to what I’m about to do with the rest of my life.”

Without even a ‘goodbye’, I hung up the phone. Seriously, I really couldn’t believe that conversation just happened.

Beep.

‘
Sorry.’

Yeah, I bet. She at least had the grace to apologize, but geez, seriously? Nothing like taking the shine off of my interesting and exciting yet heart breaking day.

I heard a knock on the door and brightened immediately.

Pizza.