“Thank you.”
She got up and grabbed her carry-on, following Loren down the hall.
“That’s your mom’s room,” Loren softly said, pointing at a closed door as they passed. “This one’s yours. You share a bathroom with her.” She pointed to a closed door. “There’s extra towels and everything in there. Please, make yourself at home. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen cabinets or the fridge.”
“Thank you.” Essie gave her another hug before Loren left the room, closing the door behind her.
Ross had left her suitcases on the bed for her. She thought maybe the room did double duty as a home office or craft room, because the bed was a fold-down Murphy bed that looked like it was normally a sofa. When she sat on it, however, she realized it was a high-end mattress, every bit as comfortable as her own bed at home.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket, a text message from Amy.
You okay?
She sat on the bed and thought about how to text her back.
I don’t know how I am.
Amy texted her right back.
You need to talk? I can take a break.
That was right, while she was here dealing with the fall-out of her father’s several decades of bad choices and stubborn behavior, there was a real world still spinning on around out there.
A world she’d never missed as much as she did right that minute.
No, that’s okay. I’m exhausted and need to grab a shower.
What she didn’t add was that she felt like crawling into a hole and pulling the dirt back over her.
Chapter Five
Essie spent a restless night tossing and turning, her brain spinning despite the relief of knowing her mom had her finances handled for the immediate future.
Does it make me a horrible person that I’m not sorry he’s gone?
If she truly dug deep, she knew she loved her father. When she was little, they did things together. He took her places, shared his love of learning with her. But as she grew older, saw how her friends lived and how drastically different it was from how they lived, she felt a visible gulf widen between them. Her resentment over his actions didn’t help.
As she kept her room clean, learning to do purges of toys and clothes when he wasn’t around to scoop them up and take them out to the garage, she felt less and less charitable toward him, and even somewhat angry at her mother for not standing up to him more.
When do I get to grieve? Or can I, after all these years?
Yes, as an adult, she understood her father had likely suffered from a mental health disorder, possibly a form of OCD triggered by the horrific loss of his own parents.
It didn’t mean it made her look back on her childhood with a different, less critical eye.
She couldn’t do that.
When was the last time he told me he loved me?
She couldn’t remember. Before she left home, certainly.
It was different with her mom. Essie understood, to a certain extent, why her mom remained with him. And she could forgive the years of silence from her.
But at least Mom’s alive to explain herself.
And, somehow, had managed to wrangle control of their finances away from her father.
Essie knew she still needed to have a more detailed conversation with her mom about that topic. Before she moved away from home, she remembered her dad being in charge of the money.
Mom obviously has more of a backbone than I gave her credit for all of these years.
It was only six o’clock, and she knew any further attempts at sleep would be impossible, but she didn’t want to get up and disturb the household. She didn’t know how early the Connellys normally arose, and she felt badly enough as it was for disrupting their lives, no matter what they said to the contrary.
Did she have friends who would go to bat for her like this? Well, she had Amy, and Amy’s family, who were like an adopted family to her. She had some friends, not as close as Amy, but still friends. Coworkers she cared about.
But, with the exception of Amy and her family, would any of them step up to bat for her like these nice people had for her mom? Would they shoulder the responsibility and risk and get involved?
She didn’t know, and that saddened her. She’d like to think they might, but she wasn’t even sure, other than Amy and her family.
What does that say about me?
Finally, a little after six thirty, she got out of bed and took a shower, despite having had one before going to bed. She wanted the time to think and wake up. When she emerged, she smelled coffee brewing.
Oh, thank god.
She didn’t just drink coffee in the morning, she needed coffee in the morning. And according to her body clock, it wasn’t even quite four o’clock in the morning yet, exacerbating her “not a morning person” problem.
I wonder how long it’ll take me to adjust to Florida time?
Then again, if her mom was still as gung ho to clean out the house this morning as she was last night, maybe they could expedite the process and she could return to Spokane sooner rather than later.
On the heels of that, she felt like a royal shit of a daughter for thinking only about herself. There weren’t many places in the contiguous forty-eight states she could go that were farther away from her mom’s Sarasota home than Spokane.
Seattle, maybe.
Then again, with her father out of the way, maybe now her mom could call her whenever she felt like it.
She pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and made her way out to the kitchen where Loren, wearing a bathrobe, stood at the counter.
“Coooffeee,” Essie moaned.
Loren gave her a smile. “In this house? Abso-friggin-lutely. Si—Ross needs it worse than I do.”
It had sounded like Loren had started to say something else before saying her husband’s name. She let it go, too tired and overwhelmed to even think about it. “Thanks again for letting us stay here. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you’re doing for my mom.”
“It’s okay,” Loren assured her. “We like having guests over. We don’t have any kids or close family, just a lot of good friends.”
“Considering the kind of family my dad was, maybe friends are better,” she muttered. Heat filled her face. “Sorry. I guess you think I’m a pretty horrible daughter.”
“No, not at all. Ross was estranged from his father. Fortunately, they reconciled right before he died, but I get it, believe me. And Ross and I share your view. You can pick your friends, even if you can’t pick your family.”
The man himself joined them in the kitchen a few minutes later, his hair damp from the shower and also dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
“The bed was great, thank you.”
He smiled. “Not exactly what I asked, but then again I know it’s a stressful time for you.”
She felt more heat in her face. Why he flustered her, she had no idea. She hadn’t felt like this since college, when one of her professors, whom she adored, made her feel like he was running intellectual circles around her without even breaking a sweat.
And it totally wasn’t anything romantic. It was…
Well, like the kind of dynamic she wished she’d had with her own father. Someone with whom she could lay her burden down for a few minutes, who would watch her back for her and step in and give her a break.
Someone to lean on who she wasn’t afraid of breaking under the weight of her problems.
Who am I kidding? I need to suck it up and deal with it.
A little after seven o’clock, they were all sipping their coffee when her mom’s bedroom door opened. She was wearing what looked like a brand-new pair of pajamas when she walked into the kitchen.
Essie put down her coffee mug and went to her, hugging her. “Hey, good morning.”
Her mom offered her up a tearful smile. “I was afraid I’d wake up this morning and dreamed you got here last night.”
“No dream.”
Just a fucking nightmare. “I’m really here.”
“Would you like some coffee, Corrine?” Loren offered.
“Yes, please. What time is that man coming this morning?”
“Nine o’clock,” Ross told her. “Mark. He’s a friend of ours. He’s going to sit down with you and Essie and detail everything that has to happen to get you back into your home.”
“I want it all gone. Just…gone.”
“You can tell him that yourself when he gets here,” Ross assured her.
“There’s not much I want to keep. Just my clothes, the dishes, some of the furniture.”
“We know,” Essie said. “It’s okay. We’ll deal with that with him. I’ll be there to help you.”
“You know, I’ve seen those TV shows where they go into houses, and I used to dream about calling them and asking them to come help me with your father. But I knew he would never have allowed it. He would have thrown them off the property.”
Now Essie felt even worse. Maybe she shouldn’t have abandoned her mom. If she’d been closer, maybe she could have helped work on him for her, gotten him the mental health assistance he so obviously needed.
“Can they get rid of his truck, too?” her mom asked.
Ross nodded. “I’m sure we can.”
“It still runs. I’ll give it away to them.” She let out a barking laugh. “One of the few things I can find are the car titles. I kept that stuff in my little filing cabinet.”
“Mom, can I ask you a stupid question?”
“Sure.”
“How did you get the money away from him? I remember Dad doing all that.”
She smiled, but it looked sad. “A couple of months after you left for college, he forgot to pay FPL. He lost the bill. It cost us money to get the electricity turned back on, of course. Then he did it the next month. The third month in a row, I finally stood up to him and told him we couldn’t afford for him to keep doing that. So I said either he let me handle all the money and the bills, and I’d give him a cash allowance every week, otherwise he would come home from work one day and every bit of trash in the house would be gone.”
“Wow.”
“Wow exactly. He caved. I’d already set up one of the other accounts by then. I told him the big check I wrote out of the joint account every month was for free money orders to pay all the bills at one time at one of those check cashing places.”
She reached over and ripped a piece of paper towel off the roll hanging from under the cabinet and dabbed at her eyes. “He believed me. He never looked at the bank statements once I took over the bills, and I gave him his cash allowance every week. I made him think we were a lot poorer than we really were.”
It was as if she deflated. “I feel horrible I lied to him about our money, but I was afraid if he knew how much money we really had that he’d go spend it on more of that…crap.”
She waved her hand toward the front of the house, but her meaning was clear. She meant the massive undertaking across the street. “At least the mortgage is paid off, and I make enough between my pension and my part-time job that I have more than enough money to cover my monthly bills. But my greatest fear was if he blew through all our money and then I’d be left with a mountain of garbage and a mountain of debt.”
When she burst into tears again, Essie held her close, awash in a sea of conflicting emotions and feeling like she was close to drowning herself.
* * * *
By the time nine o’clock rolled around, her mom had grabbed a shower and dressed and they’d all had breakfast. Her mom vacillated between tearful and laughing, sometimes from one second to the next. Essie wasn’t sure if that was normal or not, and knew she’d need to text Amy with the question.
Essie was used to dealing with grief in terms of clients losing their furbabies to age, illness, or accident. She hated that part of her job with a passion, made even worse by not having a pet of her own to go home to and cuddle after work.
But she loved the rest of it, loved the animals, loved the people. Well, usually loved the people.
A few minutes after nine, a truck pulled into the driveway with Collins Cleaning Management logos on the sides. Essie held her breath as she followed Ross, Loren, and her mom out the front door and watched as a missed opportunity from her past stepped back into her life.
* * * *
Mark’s eyes were drawn to Essie immediately. Standing behind Ross and Loren and an older woman he suspected was Corrine Barrone, Essie looked like she hadn’t changed at all.
Scratch that, she was even prettier than in high school. She wore her brown hair longer now, pulled into a ponytail on the back of her head, no makeup, and her brown eyes bearing a sadness he wished he could fix for her.
Play it cool. Stay casual. Don’t be an asshat.
It was difficult to remember her father had just died and her mom was facing losing her home when all he wanted to do was ask her over to his house for dinner that night.
“Hey, Mark,” Ross said, shaking hands with him. “Thanks for coming out this morning.”
Their eyes met briefly. He’d seen Ross and Loren two weeks earlier, at the last munch their BDSM group held. “No problem.”
“This is Corrine Barrone, and her daughter, Essie.”
Now Mark’s gaze met and held Essie’s, even while he was shaking hands with her mother. When he shook with Essie, he offered her a smile he hoped didn’t come off as creepy and manic. “It’s nice to see you again. I’m sorry about the circumstances.”
Her brief flicker of a smile in return bore so much sadness that it nearly broke his heart. “Thanks,” she softly said.
He couldn’t help it. It’d been so long, and all those feelings he’d had as a teenager rushed back into his heart and soul despite his brain trying to apply the logic brakes.
“Did you want to head over there now?” Ross asked.
“Not yet,” Mark said. “Let’s sit down and talk first before we do that.”
Once they were inside the Connellys’ home and situated at their dining room table, Mark pulled out his iPad and got started. It was difficult for him to do what he normally did, speak how he normally spoke. This was different.
This was personal.
“Okay,” he said. “Let me give you an overview of the process, for starters.” He detailed what they did, what they handled, how they did it. That they were welcomed to bring in friends and family if they wanted to help with the cleanout, but those friends and family needed to be willing to sign liability waivers and follow the orders of the crew managers.
Then he got to the part of it he didn’t want to discuss, and wanted to gloss over as quickly as possible. “We’ve also got a contract with gO! Network for a show they film. You are under no obligation to agree to crews coming and filming. Some people do, because then the network will underwrite a minimum of half of the expenses, but I can tell them that you don’t want—”
“Yes,” Corrine Barrone said with a firm nod of her head.
Relief filled him. “Good, I’ll tell them we won’t need their film crew for this.”
“No, I meant yes to filming it,” Corrine said.
Essie looked shocked. “Um, Mom, are you sure that’s a good idea?”
She stared at her daughter. “He said they’d underwrite at least half the expenses, right?” The older woman turned back to him. “Isn’t that what you said?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Bottom line, how much are we looking at, minimum, if we don’t film?”
He had to admit her forthright approach caught him off guard. “Well, without seeing the house, it’s hard to say. But since there doesn’t appear to be any major biological hazard involved other than dust, likely a base cost of ten to twelve thousand dollars, with possibly—”
“Alrighty then,” Corrine said. “Yes to the filming. What else? Where do I sign?”
Mark’s gaze met Essie’s. She didn’t look happy about this decision. “You don’t have to decide that r
ight this minute,” he told the older woman.
“There’s nothing to decide. This was my husband’s mess, not mine. I want it out of there. If it means they can help pay for some of the costs, I’m all right with that. I’m tired of having to hide my life.”
She grabbed her daughter’s hand. “I have my daughter back. That’s all I care about now. If putting this on TV can help someone else, and it can help pay for it, let’s do it.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Essie asked her.
“Absolutely. How soon can we start? Can we get this started today or tomorrow?”
He was in uncharted waters. Normally the process was the producer and their people met with the family and discussed things with them before initial filming started. Ted closely worked with the family, assessing the best way to proceed. Then they got the arrangements put together, and the crew assembled. Usually it took a couple of weeks, unless there were children involved and it needed to happen sooner to keep parents from losing custody. Or an animal hoarding case.
“We can’t get the cleanout started today,” Mark explained. “I need to coordinate with the production crew and assemble a team.”
“I already made some calls this morning,” Ross said. “I can have fifteen volunteers here in the morning to help start the process if you can get the waste containers brought in. Even more on Saturday and Sunday.”
“And,” Corrine continued, “if you can’t arrange for a charity to take the stuff that’s worth anything, I’m fine with you tossing that, too.”
Essie looked uncomfortable. “How are you with all this?” Mark asked her.
Essie shrugged. “It’s her house,” she said quietly. “She’s in charge of this.”
“Are you all right with people coming in and cleaning it out?” Mark asked.
Essie let out a barking laugh. “Yeah. I don’t want Mom to lose anything she wants to keep, like her clothes or family keepsakes, or pictures and stuff. As long as the people will help sort through all that, yeah, I’m good with it. I know I can’t help her do this without a lot of help behind us. It’s just too overwhelming. If she’s okay with it being filmed, fine. I personally don’t want to be on TV, so as long as I don’t have to say a lot, whatever.”