Page 13 of January (New Orleans #1)

“I t was worth a shot, Ky,” Jolie told her as she opened another box.

“ Was it? After I asked her and she said no, I told her it was fine, but then I still left because I couldn’t just have dinner with her right after that. It would’ve been too weird,” she replied, closing a box of her own.

“But she said it was only because you don’t live here, and she wants a relationship. That’s something,” Jolie argued. “She likes you, Kyle. She just doesn’t think you should try anything because she likes you so much and doesn’t want to get her heart broken.”

“Well, I don’t want that, either, but we’ve been spending so much time together, and I really like her. It’s been a long time since I’ve been interested in a woman and thought it had a chance at being something.”

“But did it, Ky?”

“Did it what?”

“Have a chance? She’s right: you don’t live here. She does. You’re just supposed to be here to figure out this estate thing, and then you go home. She loves New Orleans. How would that even work? A couple of dates while you’re here, and then we go home, and you guys keep in touch? Do you date long-distance? How long until it’s too hard and it ends or until she asks you to move here?”

“Jolie, you’re the one who told me to go for it.”

“I was hungover,” Jolie replied. “And besides, you’ve never listened to me before. I didn’t think you’d start now.”

“Are you kidding me?” Kyle said, chuckling. “I asked her out because of you. I was embarrassed, and now it’s awkward.”

“Kyle, it’s no big deal. People ask people out and get turned down all the time. I do stand by my idea of you asking her out. At least, now you know, and you can decide what you want to do: be friends with her while you’re here, or just drop it and move on,” Jolie said. “Hey, this is weird.”

“What?” she asked as her sister’s tone had changed, and she’d turned to look down at the box. “Did you find something?”

“Yes, a box of journals.”

“A box of–” Kyle stopped when she looked over and spotted book after book after book.

And Jolie was right: they all looked like journals. Some of them were larger than the others. Some were small and hardback. Others were paperback. A few looked the same as if they’d been bought together in some type of bundle. All of them looked older than the one she’d found when she’d first stopped by the house.

“That’s a lot of writing,” Jolie noted.

“And a lot of reading,” Kyle replied. “It feels weird.”

“Going through her stuff?”

“Reading her journals to learn about a woman we never met,” she replied. “The one I found wasn’t a big deal. It was mostly just her writing down what she did every day. Breakfast, TV, visit with the neighbor, more TV, gardening, more TV, and dinner. That kind of a thing. I doubt all of these are the same, though.”

“God, what if in these, she talks about sex with Grandpa or even with someone else after he died?”

Kyle laughed and said, “I hope not. If she starts talking about sex, I’m skipping, like, ten pages.”

“Grandma had sex with men , Ky. You’d only need to skip, like, half a page.”

Kyle laughed hard at Jolie’s joke and reached down into the box to pull out one of the journals.

“Just help me see if there’s some kind of chronology here,” she replied.

They sat on the floor of the bedroom, pulling out book after book.

“So, I was thinking,” Jolie began.

“What about? ”

“Well, going home,” her sister replied. “I’ve partied and had fun, and I’ve seen the city, so I’m kind of ready to go, Ky.”

“Home? Already? We’re just now starting to figure things out.”

“We’ve made the piles of stuff to donate, keep, and throw out here, and I want to keep helping, but… I don’t know. Every time I’m here, it sort of feels like you’d rather just do this alone.”

“What? Does it?”

“You want to learn more about her. I really don’t. I’m glad she left us stuff, but I think I’m still a little upset about the fact that there were nights we didn’t have dinner and went to bed hungry in a trailer, and she had all of this right here and didn’t even try to help Mom. What must have happened between them that she wouldn’t even send us something?”

“Maybe these journals will tell us,” she suggested.

“Maybe. But I don’t know that I really want to hear the excuses. I don’t want to ditch you, Kyle, but you really want to do this, and I just don’t.”

“What about the houses and the money?”

“We have to talk about that, yeah, but I don’t have to be here for us to do it.”

“We should make decisions quickly, Jolie. If we don’t, the houses will just be sitting here, doing nothing and not being kept up. They’ll be worth less if we do try to sell them later.”

“Do you want to sell them?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed, looking down at the pile of journals at her feet. “I think there are too many options.”

“What is your gut telling you?”

“That we shouldn’t sell yet.”

“Okay. Then, we won’t,” Jolie replied.

“The other house needs some work. Nothing major, but according to the paperwork Beaufort showed us, there’s some interior stuff to be done and a plumbing update that needs to be completed if we plan on selling one day. If not now, they’ll probably just ask us to include the cost of it in any sale.”

“So, you want to keep it and have the work done?”

“The money can come from my share of what she left us,” Kyle said.

“No way, Ky. We’ll split it. We’ll split everything, okay?” Jolie replied. “What about this place?”

“We should try to rent it out.”

“Again, with the landlord thing?”

“I’m thinking like a vacation rental for now. It’s two bedrooms, and it’s nice enough that we could charge a decent rate for it. Tourist season is coming up soon. If we get it ready, we can make good money on it and then use some of it to update this place and put it on the market.”

“You want to sell it eventually?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. It might make us more money to keep renting it out, and you could take that money and go to law school.”

“Law school? Why are you bringing that up?” Jolie asked, tossing the empty box aside.

“Because you wanted to go but couldn’t. Now, you can.”

“I gave up on that a while ago, Kyle.”

“But you can afford it now. And if we make money on this place, you wouldn’t have to spend the money she left us. You’d be able to save that for later.”

“I have a job, Kyle. I make good money. I have a 401(k) and full benefits and everything.”

“I know that, Jolie. You wanted to be a lawyer. It’s not about the money. It’s about the fact that you wanted that for years, and we couldn’t make it happen for you, but now we can.”

“We?” Jolie patted Kyle’s knee. “I know you’ve had to play mom for my entire life because our actual mother wasn’t any good at it, but Kyle, you’re my sister. I’m not your responsibility. I’m an adult. If I wanted to go to law school, I have options. I can go part-time and save money that way. I can go to a cheaper school. I could take out loans. I could use the tuition reimbursement the company offers that won’t pay for everything, but it would help a little each semester. I’ve chosen not to do any of those things because I actually like being a paralegal. It’s hard and sometimes thankless, but I like it more than I think I’d like being an attorney.”

“I didn’t know that,” Kyle said.

“Because you’re a good big sister. You want what’s best for me, and you want me to have all the things I’ve ever talked about in my life. But, Ky, I don’t want that pony I asked for when I was eight anymore, either. Too much work.” Jolie winked at her. “I’m okay. I promise you, I’m good.”

Kyle nodded and said, “Okay.”

“Do you actually believe me about that pony? Because that’s important, Kyle. You can afford to buy me a pony now, and I don’t want one.”

Kyle laughed and replied, “No pony. Got it.”

“And look, I’ll stay if you want.”

“No, it’s fine. You’re right: this is one of those things that I feel like I want to do alone. But I also don’t want to leave you out of it if you actually want to be involved. She was your grandmother, too.”

“ Was she, though? I get your connection to this place. I just don’t feel it. You were inside Mom when she still lived here. Maybe that’s why you feel like you need to be here to work through this.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But you can go home, Jolie. If you don’t need to be here, I get it.”

“Will you be okay, though? On your own?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Kyle replied. “I have a lot of reading to do to keep me occupied. I don’t know if they’ll reveal her secrets or just what she had for breakfast every day for, like, forty years, but I need to go through them to find out.”

“Do you think these will tell you what really happened between her and Mom?”

“I hope so.”

“What if it’s bad news? ”

“What exactly is bad news in this situation? Mom already blames me for her leaving.”

“What if it turns out Mom was telling us the truth the whole time, and we’ve assumed she’s been lying? What if it confirms that Grandma kicked her out because she got pregnant?”

“Then, that’s what happened, and at least I’d know,” Kyle said on a sigh. “And it would suck, but I want to know what happened.”

“You’ll be here alone, Ky. I don’t know that I like that. I should stay.”

“No, you should go home. I’ll be okay. Really.”

“There’s always Melinda.”

“Melinda?”

“Yes, the woman you like and asked out.”

“Shut up.” Kyle laughed.

“You could call her if you need someone to talk to in person. I’ll just be a phone call away, though.”

“I know. I just don’t know if I can really rely on her now.”

“Did she tell you that she didn’t want to see you again?”

“No, of course not.”

“She seems like a good person, Kyle. I don’t think she’d ditch you if you can get past the whole thing where you asked her out and she said no. That’s just your pride.”

“No, it’s more than that,” she said. “It’s disappointment and wondering if something could’ve been real between us, even though we just met.”

“But you’re sticking around for a while, right?”

“Yeah, until this gets figured out.”

“Kyle, do you know how long that’s going to take?” Jolie asked. “Her estate is fairly straightforward, but if you’re staying for clean-up and repairs, that’s months, not weeks or days.”

“I haven’t thought of what I’ll stay here for and when I’d leave yet,” Kyle replied.

“All I’m saying is that if the only reason Melinda said she didn’t want to go out with you is that she thought you were leaving next week, you’re not now. You’re probably staying for at least a month or so, right?”

“Maybe longer. I don’t have to go home to work, and you have my apartment key to check on the place.”

“I can even ship you some more clothes and stuff if you need me to,” Jolie replied. “What I’m saying is that if you really like her and think there’s something real, you should ask her out again. Tell her you’re staying.”

“It’s a few months, though. Wouldn’t that just make it worse? I leave, and we’re a couple or something, if everything goes well.”

“Ky, what’s back home for you? Mom? Dad? You’re thirty years old. You can move wherever you want. If it’s me you’re worried about, I’m fine. And I’d visit, or you’d visit me. Now that we have some money, we could visit each other a lot.”

“You’re suggesting I just pack up and move down here?”

“I’m suggesting you keep things open. And before you tell me that you took my advice before about asking Melinda out and that it was a bad idea, remember that I was tired and hungover. Now, I’m totally sober and wide awake. I think this is a good idea. Tell her you’re sticking around for a while. Tell her you’d like to see what happens.”

“She’s at a wedding in Baton Rouge. At least, that’s what she told me. I don’t know that she’s the kind of woman to lie about that, but she might have just wanted some time away from me.”

“I doubt that. She literally told you when she was coming back. She said Saturday afternoon, right?”

“Yes,” she replied, wondering where her sister was going with this.

“Kyle, she told you Saturday afternoon . She didn’t say Saturday and make it vague or even lie and say Sunday and that she’d be too tired to hang out. Telling you that she’d be home before the night suggests to me that she wanted you to know she’d be available.”

“That’s a big assumption,” Kyle replied .

“Will you just tell her you’re staying for a while and that I’m going home? If she knows your party-loving sister, who treated this place like a true tourist, is leaving, and you, the person who is genuinely interested in New Orleans and its history, along with some of its locals, are staying, she might take her no back and change it to a yes.”