Watching Amanda (3 page)

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Authors: Janelle Taylor

BOOK: Watching Amanda
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What?
Amanda gripped the phone. “My father is dead?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” Mr. Harris said. “He died last night. Late-stage cancer was discovered some months ago—he didn't want anyone to know. I'm so sorry.”
As the air in Amanda's lungs whooshed out of her, she dropped the phone. She sat numbly, blankly staring at her lap, where the receiver lay.
“Ms. Sedgwick?”
Amanda picked up the phone and put it to her ear, but all she heard was the rushing beat of her own heart.
My father is dead.
My father is gone.
The father I never really knew is now gone forever. I'll never have the chance to know him. Tommy will never have the chance to know his grandfather.
Tears welled in Amanda's eyes. “I'm here,” she told the lawyer.
“Ms. Sedgwick, do you have a piece of paper and a pen? You'll need to jot down our address and the date and time of the reading of the will.”
Amanda picked up the notepad and pen on the side table and numbly wrote down the information the lawyer gave her. He offered his condolences again, and for the second time in fifteen minutes, the phone buzzed in her ear.
She glanced down at the address in midtown Manhattan, on the East Side. She shouldn't have bothered writing it down.
There was no way she was going to the reading of her father's will.
CHAPTER 3
As Ethan Black settled another piece of wood in the old coal stove and the flames flickered back to life, he could have sworn he heard a knock at the front door of his cabin.
Not likely.
The howling winter wind must have knocked down another tree branch, sending it crashing against the door or the window. This was his third winter in Maine, and he was almost used to the bitter cold, the frigid wind. Where he used to live, on the thirty-second floor of a Manhattan skyscraper with an entire wall of windows, he could actually feel the building shake on windy days, but the wind never sounded so fierce as it did in Maine.
He liked the sound.
He listened to the branches rapping against his door again, and then got back to work, fixing the Marrows' toaster, which probably cost ten bucks ten years ago. His nearest neighbors, a mile and a half down the road, the Marrow family consisted of a widowed father and his thirteen-year-old son, Nick. Around six months ago, Ethan had come upon the kid on one of the trails behind his house; he was bent over a tree stump, poking at wires in a busted CD player with a screw driver. Frustrated and close to tears, Nick threw the CD player against another tree, and Ethan had picked it up. He'd offered to show Nick how to fix it, and the kid let loose for twenty minutes about how his dad used to do stuff like that with him until his mother died almost a year ago, and how now his father mostly sat in the leather recliner in their living room and watched
Law and Order
reruns.
Ethan had begun fixing the CD player on that stump in the woods, Nick scowling nearby for a while until he finally came over and watched, asking questions, asking Ethan to undo what he just did so that Nick could try it himself. The next day, Nick had stopped by the cabin on the way to school, beaming with the news that his dad had been so impressed by Nick's hidden talent that he'd gotten off the recliner and driven Nick to Home Depot to set up a “fix it” shop in their garage. Nick hadn't mentioned that Ethan had actually fixed the CD player, so now Nick needed Ethan to teach him how to fix other small appliances. Every week or so he turned up with something new. Last week it had been an electric shaver. He'd shown the boy how to fix it, then took it apart again and had the kid take a crack at it. It had taken Nick Marrow an entire week of afternoons after school, but he'd done it.
Early this morning, when Ethan arrived home from his six-mile run, he found Nick sitting on the top step of the cabin's porch, slumped over a silver toaster. With tears in his eyes, Nick explained that his mother had bought the toaster a few years ago and had their names engraved on it, something she'd had done after seeing it on an episode of
Everybody Loves Raymond
. The toaster suddenly didn't work that morning while his dad was making frozen waffles, and his father burst into tears and left the room and hadn't said a word since.
“I can't fix it,” Nick said, tears pooling in his eyes. “I tried for hours in our garage. I can't even deal with trying anymore.”
“This one's on me,” Ethan assured the kid. “I'll have it ready for you after school. How's that?”
Nick's bony shoulders had slumped with relief and then he ran off toward home.
Poor kid. Grief was something Ethan knew about all too well.
Ethan turned the toaster upside down and was about to reach for a screwdriver when the rapping intensified. Ethan glanced up and almost jumped. A young man in his early twenties was knocking on the window and waving frantically at Ethan. His cheeks were almost as red as his hair.
Who the hell is that?
Ethan wondered, rushing over to the door to save the guy from frostbite. It was difficult to get lost in Ethan's neck of the woods, which really was the woods. If you came down this way, you most likely meant to.
The moment Ethan opened the door, the guy burst in.
“Man, it is freaking freezing here!” the guy said. “Hey, can I hang by that fireplace for a minute? I can't even feel my nose.”
Ethan nodded, and when the guy darted over to the fireplace, hopping up and down to warm himself, Ethan could plainly see a huge SUV parked in the dirt driveway.
The SUV had New York plates. Which meant it wasn't anyone Ethan wanted to see.
“You're Ethan Black?” the guy asked, rubbing his hands together.
“Who wants to know?”
He gestured to the messenger bag slung across his navy blue down jacket. Stitched in black script across the flap of the bag was the name of his company.
“The law firm of Harris, Pinker and Swift,” said the guy.
Three years ago, a messenger delivering a lawsuit or subpoena was as commonplace to Ethan as breathing. Not anymore.
Man, whatever this is, I don't want to know
, he thought. Ethan wanted to run his miles and fix Nick's houseful of broken appliances and be left the hell alone. The last thing he wanted—the very last thing—was anyone from New York City coming to call.
“George Harris asked me to personally deliver this package to you,” the messenger said, opening his bag and pulling out a plain manila envelope. “He said to tell you it concerned William Sedgwick.”
William Sedgwick? The name changed everything.
Ethan nodded and took the package, which he set on the wood table in front of the fireplace. Then he poured some coffee into a thermos, added milk and sugar, and handed it to the messenger, who gave him a surprised thanks. Ethan then pulled a fifty from his wallet and tucked it into the messenger's still-cold hands, and told him to scram before he developed frostbite.
From the window, Ethan watched the SUV make its way slowly up the half-mile-long drive and then turn onto the main road. When the car disappeared from view, Ethan eyed the package on the table. It was a simple manila envelope with Ethan's name and address handwritten across the front.
What could this be about? It had been three years since Ethan had contact with William. And they'd met only once. What could the man want with him now?
He wondered what would have happened if he hadn't met William Sedgwick on that fateful evening three years ago.
You know what would have happened
, he reminded himself.
Ethan threw another piece of wood in the coal stove, stoked the fire in the massive stone fireplace, brewed a fresh pot of coffee, fixed the Marrows' toaster, watched the fresh powdery snow start to swirl down and around in the wind outside, and even washed his breakfast dishes, all in the name of procrastinating. He didn't want to open that envelope. Not yet.
“One day, Ethan Black,”
William Sedgwick had said,
“I might just call in that favor you promised me ... ”
The day must have come. Yet what could a man of William Sedgwick's wealth and power possibly need from Ethan? William had known that Ethan had completely given up his old life, knew that he'd taken his advice and built himself the cabin up here. Ethan had once sent him a postcard from the general store in town.
Curiosity got the better of Ethan. He slit open the envelope and peered inside. Two letters and two five-by-seven photographs were the entire contents. One letter was on the lawyer's stationery; the other was from William Sedgwick, handwritten in black ink.
Dear Ethan,
Once you told me that if I ever needed a favor, I should just say the word. I'm saying it. I have complete faith that you will do what I am asking of you, which is a great comfort to me.
If you're reading this, I have passed on ...
“Damn,” Ethan said, shaking his head.
He slid the letter back into the envelope and placed it gently on the table.
He'd read enough for the moment.
 
“What do you mean you're not going to the reading of the will?” Jenny Coles asked, pouring two cups of tea from the pot on the coffee table.
“I mean I'm not going,” Amanda repeated. She leaned back against the sofa in her small living room and wrapped her hands around the warm mug, breathing in the comforting aroma of Irish Breakfast tea.
Jenny put her feet up on the coffee table and flipped her long auburn hair behind her shoulders. “Amanda, let's go over your situation, shall we? One: You were fired from your job yesterday. Two: Your health insurance will be terminated at the end of the month. Three: You have to pay your rent in three weeks. Four: Diapers don't grow on trees. Need I go on?”
Jenny was Amanda's best friend and had been since high school, when Jenny moved to Queens from Brooklyn. The women were complete opposites and always had been, but for some reason, that worked for them. Jenny was outgoing and daring and trendy; at the moment she wore a long black mohair sweater coat, a white satin camisole, and sexy low-rise jeans, with knee-high black leather boots. In contrast, Amanda wore a long sleeve pink T-shirt with jeans and sneakers and a burp cloth tossed over her shoulder. “Mom clothes,” Jenny called them.
Jenny sipped her tea. “I'll sit on this sofa for as long as it takes to convince you that it's not wrong to accept whatever your father left you in his will.”
Amanda let out a deep breath. “But Jenny, it is wrong. How can it not be wrong to suddenly take money from a man who didn't care that I was his daughter when he was alive? What does that say about me?”
“It says you're not an idiot,” Jenny insisted. “It says you need the money. It says you won't let pride stand in the way of surviving. It says that until you find a new job with benefits, not easy to do at the start of the holiday season, you're screwed.”
“Even if you're right,” Amanda said, “I—”
I don't want his money. I wanted
him
. I wanted a father.
“Sweetheart,” Jenny said. “I know your dream was for your father to be a dad to you. But that never happened and now it never will. It's time to stop. To let go of that and look to the future. And the future requires the money he may have left you.”
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest. “I don't want his money. It would make me feel dirty to use his money when it has no meaning behind it.”
“Oh, Amanda,” Jenny said. “Integrity is not going to pay your rent.”
She was right, Amanda knew. But how could she do it? What would her mother think? Her mom hadn't taken a dime from William Sedgwick her entire life.
Mom? I need some guidance here.
Amanda directed her thoughts toward the ceiling.
“How about if you just go to the reading,” Jenny suggested. “Just go and listen. Maybe he didn't leave you money. Maybe he left you a beautiful letter, saying how much he regrets what a crappy father he was.”
“That's possible,” Amanda said, brightening. “Perhaps he did write me a letter or left a memento of who he was. I'd like that. And it would be nice to be able to see Olivia and Ivy, offer my condolences to them.”
Suddenly it occurred to Amanda that she had seen one of her sisters, by complete coincidence, on the very day their father had died. It seemed like divine intervention had placed Amanda and Olivia in each other's paths yesterday. Even if Olivia hadn't seen her.
“You're right,” Amanda told her friend and took a sip of her tea. “I'll definitely go.”
Jenny smiled, grabbed a chocolate chip cookie off the tray on the coffee table and bit into it with a satisfied sigh. “I knew I'd say the right thing eventually. That almost feels as good as this cookie tastes.”
 
Ethan stood by the window of his cabin, alternately glancing at his watch and looking for a flash of Nick Marrow's royal blue down jacket to appear in his driveway.
Come on, kid.
It was four o'clock, and with a six hour drive to New York City ahead of him and the storm coming, Ethan wanted to hit the road now.
Finally, the bright blue turned up against the dusting of white snow outside.
“Going somewhere?” Nick asked, gesturing at Ethan's suitcase by the door.
“New York City,” Ethan said.
“Wow! Really? That's so cool! I'm dying to go to New York. You know people there?”
“I used to,” Ethan said. “Now, just some business.”
“I didn't think you had any business,” Nick said, pulling off his hood and gloves. “My dad and I figured you were either a reclusive millionaire who didn't have to work or a bounty hunter maybe, or even an escaped convict.”
Ethan laughed. “None of the above. I'm just a regular guy who likes living a simple life, that's all. Your toaster's all fixed. Works like new.”
Usually a whirlwind of motion, Nick froze. His gaze shot to the toaster on the kitchen table and at the plate of two chocolate-frosted Pop Tarts next to it, and he burst into tears.

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