Page 27 of Into the Deep Blue
When Fi pulls into my yard, an older black Lincoln is idling in the driveway. I think the world can agree that nothing good comes from a random car idling in your driveway at night. She cuts the engine.
“Are you expecting . . . ”
“Nope.”
I push open my door and head for the Lincoln. Classical music blares from inside. I knock on the tinted window, and it rolls down a few inches, revealing an older man with white hair sticking up like he’d been sleeping.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“So sorry about the noise,”
he stutters, turning the music down. Papers are scattered all over his car, and he waves a hand over them still getting his bearings. He plucks a sticky note from the dash that I’m pretty sure has my name on it. He peers over his glasses at me through the crack in the window.
“Are you Nicholas Bennet?”
In the movies, someone always answers with.
“Who wants to know?”
And I toy with it, I do, but I have a sinking feeling, and I don’t want to drag this out, so I keep it simple. “Yeah.”
He fumbles around for a briefcase on the passenger side floor and opens his door. Fiona’s coming toward us with my backpack slung across her shoulder.
The guy steps out and shakes my hand.
“Clyde Owens, attorney at law. I have some business to discuss with you, Mr. Bennet.”
His brown suit is wrinkled and saggy like he fished it out of the trash. A lump of panic rises in my throat because my first thought is that the court realized they made a huge mistake and wants to revoke my license or put me in jail.
“What business?”
Clyde looks at Fiona.
“It’s a private matter. Regarding your lawsuit.”
Alex’s lawsuit. I almost wish it were the jail thing.
“Sorry, Clyde, you’ve got the wrong Bennet. I don’t have a lawsuit.”
Clyde follows me up the stairs to the door.
“Isn’t it a little late for you to be here?”
“Well, yes, but I drove down from Portland and didn’t want to make another trip tomorrow.”
I’m guessing Clyde is not big-time as far as lawyering goes. I bet he lives in that Lincoln—classic Alex. She probably found him on a grocery store bulletin board.
“Is there someplace we can speak privately?” he asks.
Fiona comes up beside us as I unlock the door.
“I’ll put your bag inside and take off.”
Which is crazy.
“What? No.”
I reach for her arm and turn back to Clyde.
“Look, whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of her. Take a seat in the kitchen. We’ll be right there.”
Clyde scrutinizes the house as if he’s expecting a killer dog to jump out at him. Then there’s a long, drawn-out screech of the chair legs against the kitchen floor. Fucking Clyde.
Fiona moves my hand from her arm.
“It’s okay, really. I should go.”
She takes baby steps back toward the door, trying to tip-toe her way out. It feels wrong, her leaving this way after our weekend.
“I want you to stay.”
She winces, eyeing the back of Clyde’s head.
“But this is private.”
“Are you kidding me? Please stay.”
I don’t know what this guy’s going to say, but I don’t want to hear it alone. Fiona shifts her weight and glances back at her car, still unsure.
“You know I’m just going to text you all of this, anyway.”
She finally caves.
“Okay. Okay. Fine.”
We go to the kitchen, and papers cover the table. Clyde watches Fiona pass behind me.
“She’s staying.”
He nods, pushing up his thick black-rimmed glasses.
“Have a seat, Nicholas.”
Fiona sits at the far end of the table. As removed, yet present, as she can be.
“First of all, Mr. Bennet, I’m sorry for your loss.”
I don’t know why I’m so nervous all of a sudden. It’s like I’m being held together by silly string. I don’t want to be listening to any of this.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“You’re aware there was a civil suit against South American Airlines initiated by your sister, Alexandra . . . ”
“If this is about the statement, I haven’t done it, and I’m not doing it, so you can tell Alex it’s not happening.”
“The airline wants to settle, Mr. Bennet.”
That’s when my hearing goes mute, and my heart starts to beat out of my chest.
“I don’t understand.”
He slides a stack of papers my way, marked with little flags where I’m supposed to sign beside.
“I’ve already been to see your sister, and she’s on board with the settlement, but your signature is also required.”
The words in front of me are a blur of black ink. Elizabeth Bennet Settlement stands out. There’s a two with a lot of zeros after it.
“But . . . how? I thought this kind of thing took years.”
“Lawsuits are bad business for airlines. As I explained to Alexandra, if you hold out for a trial, I believe you’ll win considerably more, but she seemed keen to settle. The settlement will be split equally between you and your sister.”
The pen feels like venom between my fingers. I drop it and push the papers away.
“I don’t want it.”
“Mr. Bennet—”
“I don’t want it. Send it back. Donate it. I don’t care.”
“It’s two million dollars,”
he says slowly, as if impressing the importance upon me.
It’s laughable. I can’t figure out if it’s an insult or an overpayment. And I can’t be in here a second more, so I shove away from the table and head for the door. Behind me, Fiona says.
“Can you give him a day? Do you have a card?”
A few minutes later, the porch door screeches open, and Clyde pauses beside me on the stairs. I expect him to argue with me, but he only rests a hand on my shoulder and then leaves.
Inside, I hear Fiona sweeping the papers together. She comes out with a sleeve of chocolate chip cookies and sits next to me, wearing my black Seattle hoodie. She takes a bite from a cookie, and the sound of her drawn out crunching fills the air. Her silence is killing me.
“Can you say something?”
I finally cave like she knew I would. She looks at me, midbite and a chocolate chip falls, sticking to her chin. She wipes it away and licks her fingers.
“What would you do if someone came out of nowhere and said, ‘Take all this money.’”
She shrugs.
“I don’t know. All my private lessons bailed on me, and I’m pretty broke right now.”
“You wouldn’t take it. You tossed her camera into the ocean. There could have been an epic million-dollar photo on it.”
She faces the driveway, her eyes growing wide.
“Damn! Didn’t think of that.”
“You wouldn’t want it,” I say.
“It’s not the same.”
“It is.”
Fiona mulls it over.
“The camera was a leftover from the accident and something that should have disappeared with her. Burn the bucket list if you want to get rid of something. That’s closer.”
But in my head, it’s infinitely easier to decline a million dollars than burn the bucket list. I just can’t.
“How can I ever get away from all this if I’m reminded every time I buy a fucking sandwich.”
She picks a stray grass clipping from the cookie.
“Yeah, but . . . ”
I give her a look as if to say, see.
“It’s a lot of money.”
The moon is a bright crescent above us. Her gaze shifts from it to me.
“You haven’t wrapped your head around it, but it’s all perspective, right? Look at what you do with the happy endings.”
“The happy endings are a lie, I tell myself. They’re a bullshit coping strategy.”
“People lie to themselves all the time,” she says.
“You think I should take it.”
“I think you should look at it as an opportunity, not an anchor. It buys you time. You can get out of here. You can travel. You can finish her bucket list.”
“Yeah, I’ve already watched ‘E.T.’”
“If you don’t want to deal with it, put it in a different account. But don’t let the grief make the decision.”
I lean my head against the porch railing.
“I can’t believe you waited so patiently to say all that.”
“Patience is a virtue?”
I laugh. “Is it?”
My phone rings. Alex’s picture comes up on the screen. I’ve already missed about a hundred calls from her, so I answer it. “Hey.”
She’s talking a million miles a minute. Fiona leans in and touches my leg.
“I’m going,”
she whispers.
“Hang on a second,”
I say to Alex, covering the phone with my hand. I get up and follow Fi to her car.
“Stay. You should stay. It’s late.”
She turns back to me.
“It’s always something . . . ”
she says with the faintest smile.
It takes a minute for me to get it. The endless reasons I find for her to stay. Because it’s late, because it’s raining, because her dad’s not home, because I need her. I will always find a reason. And I have no idea what to say to that.
Because all I can think about is the contract on my table. The words scrolling through my brain in black and white. This unexpected finality. This pressure to respond. And I feel like I’m choking—drowning under paperwork and obligation.
Alex’s tinny voice yells my name from the speaker.
“I’m going,”
she says again, and for the first time, she really does.