Page 14 of When People Leave

“Nope, you were just boring,” Morgan said, and Abby playfully smacked her.

“I’m not letting that happen with my kids,” Abby said. “I take a picture of everyone or no one.”

“Then they better have a quadruple wedding,” Charlie said.

“You can joke, but it will save me money on therapy. They’ll never feel like they didn’t matter.”

Morgan put her arms around Abby. “You mattered to us,” Morgan said.

“Hey, do either of you know who this is?” Charlie held up a picture of their mom with her arms around a man. Abby and Morgan stared at it.

“That was taken recently,” Morgan said. “Mom’s wearing the sweater I got her last Mothers’ Day.”

“She never mentioned she was dating anyone,” Abby said.

“I would’ve thought she’d tell me if she was,” Charlie said. “My clients pay me to be an expert on relationships.”

Your relationship with Rick makes you the opposite of an expert, Morgan thought and struggled not to say out loud.

“I bet Mom’s neighbor Esther would know who he is,” Abby said. “She always seemed like the nosy type.”

“I can’t believe Esther’s still alive,” Charlie said. “She’s been eighty since we were kids.”

Morgan got up and looked out the window. “She’s home. Her Dodge Dart’s in the driveway.”

“You two should go over and ask her,” Charlie said.

“We’re all going,” Abby said.

“I need to get over the shock of her not being dead,” Charlie said, taking another bite of her salad.

Abby grabbed Charlie’s arms, pulling her out of her chair.

A few minutes later, the sisters walked up to Esther’s front door.

Her small, strangely narrow house had always unnerved them.

The exterior color hadn’t changed since they were kids: gun-metal gray paint with a jet-black door.

Morgan thought it was far from the friendliest-looking house on the block.

Charlie knocked so lightly that no one inside could have heard her. “I guess she’s not home,” Charlie said, turning away. Abby grabbed Charlie’s arm and held her there as she knocked loudly.

Esther appeared at the door in a pink housecoat covered in white and yellow daisies, fuzzy slippers, and her alabaster hair in a messy bun. An elderly cocker spaniel wobbled up behind her.

“Hi, Esther, remember us?” Morgan asked. “We’re Carla’s daughters.”

Esther held up one finger, then walked away, leaving the door open. The cocker spaniel stood at the door, glaring at them and snarling with the one tooth it still had. The women took a step back as if it were a vicious pit bull.

Esther came back a moment later, fiddling with her ears. “I was charging my hearing aids,” she said. The dog lunged at them and smacked into the wall.

“Poopsie is as blind as a bat,” Esther said, then picked him up and put him back down facing the other direction. Poopsie wobbled off.

“You’re Carla’s daughters, right?” The women nodded. “I’m so sorry about your mother, the whole neighborhood is upset. She was such a nice lady. Do you know what happened?”

Morgan, Charlie, and Abby made eye contact with each other.

“They think it was a heart attack,” Charlie blurted.

“How tragic, she was so young,” Esther said.

Abby held up the picture of their mom and the unidentified man. “Do you know who this is?” Abby asked.

Esther took the picture and studied it as if she were trying to find a hidden number in an optical illusion.

“He used to visit your mother a lot, I thought he was her boyfriend. He’d come over Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other Friday and stay for about an hour, then one day he stopped coming.

I figured they broke up.” She handed the picture back to Abby.

“By any chance, do you know his name?” Morgan asked.

“Oh, no, I stay out of other people’s business.”

Esther rarely went outside, but somehow, she knew everything that happened in the neighborhood, and probably the surrounding ones.

She slipped off one of her fuzzy slippers and scratched the top of her foot.

The skin on her leg was crepey, and one blue vein on the top of her right toe stuck out prominently.

“Do you girls want to come in? I could make you lunch.”

Esther’s loneliness radiated from her like steam rising from a cup of coffee. The sisters declined; Esther nodded sadly.

“How long had our mom been seeing the man?” Charlie asked.

“A little over two years,” Esther said.

They thanked her for her help, then turned to leave. Poopsie trudged back in, barking as though they’d just appeared.

“Come back any time,” Esther said. “Poopsie loves company. Don’t you, Poopsie.” She picked up the dog who bared his gums at the sisters.

The women thanked her and turned to walk home.

“If Poopsie would’ve been able to see us, we would’ve been goners,” Abby said.

“That tooth did look sharp,” Morgan said, and they all laughed.

When they arrived back at their mother’s house, Albert greeted them happily.

Charlie bent down and kissed him on the head. “I can’t believe Mom had been seeing that guy for two years and never said a word to any of us.”

“Maybe he broke her heart, and she couldn’t get past it,” Morgan said.

“The mom we knew wouldn’t have killed herself over a man,” Charlie said.

“The mom we knew didn’t have a boyfriend,” Morgan said.

“Maybe we didn’t know her at all,” Abby said and began to cry. Morgan got a box of tissues and handed one to Abby, who sat back at the table.

“We have to figure out who that guy is,” Morgan said.

“If we knew his name, we could google him,” Abby said, blowing her nose.

“If we knew his name, we wouldn’t have to google him,” Charlie said.

“I meant to get is phone number,” Abby said.

Frustrated, Morgan went back into Carla’s office, her shoes stomping onto the floor. Albert trotted after her, with Abby and Charlie close behind.

Morgan pounded on the keyboard, trying to find the elusive password. Abby went through the papers on Carla’s desk, finding a vet bill, an electric bill, and a phone bill. All of them were overdue. “Are we going to have to pay these ourselves?” Abby asked.

“Mom’s estate will take care of them,” Charlie said.

“Thank God. I have four kids.”

“There we go,” Charlie said.

“There we go, what?” Abby asked.

“You bring up your kids any time you want to get out of something,” Charlie said.

“That’s one of the reasons I had them,” Abby said.

Charlie looked at Morgan and crossed her eyes.

Abby didn’t notice and continued. “If you want to leave a party early, you say your kids are tired. If you need to get out of lunch with that one friend you have trouble saying no to, you say your kid is sick.”

“Wait a minute,” Morgan said. “When I was in San Diego, and we were supposed to meet for dinner, you flaked at the last minute, saying Hudson was sick.” Morgan raised one eyebrow at Abby.

“And you said Emma was sick when I invited you to visit me.” Charlie furrowed her brows.

“My kids get a lot of colds,” Abby said.

“Right,” Morgan said, then went back to the computer. After a few choice curse words, she rubbed her neck and gave up trying to break into the computer.

Morgan angrily grabbed a piece of paper that was sitting on the corner of the desk, looked at it, opened her hand, and let it fall to the floor.

With that one paper gone, a file with the word ‘Will’ that had been underneath it was exposed.

Charlie grabbed the file and opened it. She took their mother’s will out of it and began turning pages.

“What is that?” Morgan asked.

“Mom’s will,” Charlie said.

“What does it say?” Abby asked.

“That we inherit everything,” Charlie said.

“Who’s the executor?” Morgan asked.

“All three of us,” Charlie said.

“Finally, being a screw-up didn’t hurt me,” Morgan said, then noticed something stapled to the back page of the will. She grabbed it away from Charlie.

“There’s a codicil here that had been notarized,” Morgan said. “Mom left five thousand dollars to some guy named Mike Perez. And it was added three months ago.”

“I bet that’s the guy in the pictures,” Abby said.

“Why would Mom leave him money?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know, but now we have his name and address,” Morgan said.

Morgan got her own laptop out and searched the internet for Mike Perez in Las Vegas. “There’s no phone number,” Morgan said. “I guess we’re going to Vegas.”

“We’re going to Vegas to talk to him?” Abby asked.

“Yes,” Morgan said.

“What’re we going to say when we get there?” Charlie asked.

“Hi, our mom killed herself because you broke her heart,” Abby said.

“That would go over well,” Morgan said. “We’re going to ask him if he knows why Mom would leave him money,” Morgan said.

“That’s a good idea. We can assess whether he had any part in why she took her life,” Charlie said.

“And if not, maybe he’ll know something about her that we don’t,” Morgan said.

Abby clapped her hands together. “I love Vegas. I haven’t been there in years,” she said.

“Abby, did you forget that we’re going because our mom died,” Charlie said somberly.

“You’re right. I’m a horrible person, aren’t I?” Abby asked.

“No, you aren’t. I just like making you feel bad.” Charlie laughed.

Abby crossed her arms over her chest. “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” she said snidely and went to her room.

Morgan gazed off, remembering. “The last time I was in Vegas I got drunk at my hotel and crawled up on the craps table while people were playing. I’m sure that’s been forgotten by now.”

“Just in case your picture is up in their employee break room, which hotel did you desecrate?” Charlie asked.

Morgan shrugged her shoulders. “It had either a giant lion or a trapeze.”