She Raised Us on Our Dead Parents' Settlement, So We Crashed Her Gala novel · Chapter 3 of 40

Chapter 3: Unit 14

In the storage unit Dell reads eight years of billing and a letter to herself that stops mid-sentence; the lease is in the matron's son's name.

Storage Unit 14 was at the end of a row of orange doors behind the Route 20 truck stop.

The padlock opened on the first try.

Cass pulled the door up with both hands and found the light switch.

I had expected a few boxes.

There were forty-one.

They were stacked to the ceiling on metal shelves, each labeled in a small square hand I would have known anywhere.

ST. B INVOICES 2005-06.

ST. B INVOICES 2007-08.

TRUST ACCT - HASEK CORRESP.

WING - PERMITS, DRAW SCHEDULE.

"That's Sabina's handwriting," I said.

"Every box," said Cass. "Eight years of it."

I put my hand flat on the nearest carton, and the cardboard was cool and dry.

Someone had been taking care of these.

Someone had put silica packets in every lid.

I pulled the lid off the box marked ST. B INVOICES 2009-10.

The top page was a bill on Hope Harbor letterhead, addressed to the Lakeshore Settlement Trust, care of Conrad Hasek, Attorney at Law.

Resident: Mazur, D. Residential care and enrichment, one month: $4,000.00.

The one beneath it was the same.

Every page in the box was the same, with a different month.

My stomach turned over.

I had been twelve in 2009.

I had been wearing Cass's cut-down jeans and washing my hair with dish soap.

"There's a box of the girls' school records," Cass said, behind me, in a thin voice. "Look. She billed for a piano."

"There was no piano."

"There was a keyboard. It had four keys that worked. We weren't allowed to touch it, because it was a donation."

She laughed once, ugly. "She billed our trust for the piano and then got a tax deduction for donating it."

I pulled out another folder.

The 2005 court order was on top, copied so many times the edges had gone grey.

I read the first line twice.

IN RE THE LAKESHORE GRAIN AND FEED SETTLEMENT, MINOR BENEFICIARIES MAZUR, LIPINSKI, PASTERNAK. Total: $1,380,000.

"My father's name is on this," I said. "Frank. It says he was a night-shift lead."

"Mine's on it too."

"Yours is on page two."

We read it together with our shoulders touching.

Near the end, in the dry language of lawyers, was a sentence about the trust funds.

They were to be held until each girl's eighteenth birthday, and applied to her care in the meantime at the discretion of the trustee.

At the discretion of the trustee.

I read that phrase three times.

Then I closed the folder, because I could not read it again.

"There's a letter," Cass said.

I looked up.

She was holding out a sheet of lined notepaper, folded in thirds, the edge soft from being opened and closed.

It had my name on the front.

Dell.

I knew the hand.

I took the letter and sat down on an overturned crate in the middle of the unit.

I held it in my lap for a moment before I could open it.

Dell, it began.

If you are reading this, then Cass found the key and you came home, and I should have said all of this in person.

I have written it over and over. I don't know how to start, so I'll start with the thing that matters.

You didn't take that envelope.

I know you didn't, because

The page ended there, mid-line, in the middle of the word.

The rest of the sheet was blank.

I turned it over.

On the back, written in smaller letters in the same pen, someone had added a note I could barely read: Never sent.

The line under it said: Every time I tried, I thought of Cass.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I don't know." Cass was staring at the page over my shoulder. "She wouldn't tell me, either. I thought maybe she'd say it to you."

I read the broken sentence one more time.

I felt something hot and sore that I had been carrying around for eleven years and had no name for.

I folded the letter and put it in my vest pocket.

"There's more," Cass said, quieter. "The lease. I wanted you to see the lease."

She took a thin envelope off a hook on the inside of the door and handed it to me.

It was the rental agreement for Unit 14, a standard form, two years old and renewed every year.

Rent was paid in advance in cash, by money order.

I ran my finger down the page until I reached the signature line.

The leaseholder's name was printed in block capitals above a slanting, hurried signature.

Stefan Gorski.

I looked at Cass.

"The matron's son," I said.

"He fixed your bike once," said Cass. "I remember it. He was sixteen."

"He put the chain back on and told you to stop riding it down the hill."

"That was a different boy."

I remembered him, though.

I remembered a pair of big, scraped hands, and a sandy-haired kid who had never once met my eyes.

And a station wagon at midnight, a bus ticket, and sixty dollars folded in a square.

I had thought about that boy a lot, over the years.

I had never once imagined I was thinking about the matron's son.

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