We Never Said We Went Bankrupt! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Nobody Asked

Lawrence drives her home and offers a name she refuses; her father's bank puts the credit line under review.

His car was black and quiet and smelled like leather and cold air.

I sat as far from him as the seat allowed, with my wet shoes in my hand.

"I didn't ask you for a ride," I said.

"No," Lawrence Kerrigan agreed. "You asked a ballroom for coffee."

He pulled out of the drive without looking at me.

"That was the best thing I've seen anyone do at one of those parties in ten years."

"I'm not looking for a compliment from a stranger."

"I'm not offering one."

His voice stayed level.

"I'm telling you what I saw."

"What you saw was a woman getting dumped in front of two hundred people."

"What I saw was a woman hand back a ring and take a microphone," he said. "Everyone else saw the first half."

I stared at the side of his face.

The scar through his eyebrow looked very white in the passing lights.

"Why were you even there?" I asked.

"I was invited."

"By who?"

"By the woman who spent tonight telling people your father is broke."

A cold finger touched the back of my neck.

"You know she started it."

"I know a lot of things, Miss Lockridge."

"Then tell me."

He glanced at me then, one quick gray look.

"Not tonight," he said. "You wouldn't believe me, and you'd be right not to."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the true one."

I turned toward the window.

Greenwich went by in wet black and gold, the stone walls and the iron gates.

Every house on Round Hill Road had its lights on.

Behind each of those windows was a dinner table where someone had said my family's name tonight and laughed.

"Turn left at the white mailbox," I said.

"I know where your father lives."

"Of course you do."

He stopped in front of our gate.

The house stood back from the road, long and white, with one lamp lit in the kitchen window.

Lawrence reached into his coat and held out a plain white card.

"I don't want your money," I said.

"It isn't money. It's a number."

"I don't want that either."

He set it on the console between us and left it there.

"The valet will be taken care of," he said. "Don't send me anything for it."

I climbed out in my bare feet.

Gravel bit my soles, and I did not care.

When I turned around, he had already driven away.

The card was in my coat pocket.

I had no memory of taking it.

Inside, the house was warm and smelled like burned toast.

My father sat at the kitchen table in his old gray cardigan with a legal pad in front of him.

My brother Teddy sat across from him with his feet up on a second chair.

Teddy looked at my bare feet, my dress and my face.

"Okay," he said. "It went great."

"Teddy."

"No, I mean it. I can tell by how you walk. Who did you kill?"

I laughed, and the laugh turned into something else halfway out, and I sat down hard in the third chair.

My father took off his glasses.

"Tell me," he said.

So I told them.

I told them about the stage and Regina's microphone, and I told them about the ring on the tray.

When I got to Preston saying he couldn't, my father's hand closed slowly on the legal pad.

"I should have called her on Monday," he said. "I should have gone to their house and said it to her face."

"Dad, you didn't do anything wrong."

"I did nothing," he said. "That was the wrong."

"We never said we went bankrupt," Teddy said.

He said it in a little announcer voice and held up a fork like a trophy.

"Put it on the company letterhead. Put it on a shirt."

"Teddy."

"Seriously. I'd wear the shirt."

My father's mouth twitched, in spite of everything.

"Did you really tell them to bring their lawyers?"

"I said I'd have coffee."

"Good girl," he said, and his voice cracked on it.

I got up and put my arms around his shoulders from behind.

His cardigan smelled like pipe tobacco and old books, and for a minute nobody said anything.

Then the phone on the counter lit up.

It was the cell my father kept for the bank.

He had unplugged the house line two weeks ago, because the calls had been so ugly.

He looked at the screen for a long moment and then answered.

"Gerald Lockridge."

He listened.

I watched his face go still, the way it had after my mother's funeral.

"I see," he said. "Yes. How long?"

He listened again.

"No, I understand it's a courtesy. Thank you for calling at this hour."

He put the phone down very carefully.

"That was Hartfield Bank," he said. "At eleven o'clock on a Saturday night."

"What did they want?" Teddy asked.

"They've placed our credit line under review," my father said. "Effective immediately."

Nobody spoke.

In my coat pocket, the white card felt suddenly heavy as a stone.

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