Troublemakers Mess With the Wrong Girls novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Keys
At Grandma's birthday party Jo's uncle gets a house paid for with her father's savings, Mom writes the lender on her hand, and a contractor arrives with an $86,000 invoice. Dad says he already agreed to cover it.
My grandmother turned seventy-nine, and she spent the party smiling at thirty people while she handed my uncle the keys to a house.
It was her seventy-ninth birthday, and Uncle Dennis was hosting at the new place on Linden Court.
The kitchen was white and huge, with an island long enough to park a truck behind.
Mom and I stood by the cheese tray, holding paper plates we hadn't touched.
Dad sat at the far end of the table with his hands flat on the cloth and his eyes on his water glass.
Grandma tapped her fork against her wine.
"Dennis, come here. Your brother Frank and I wanted you to have something."
Dennis came over grinning and bent so she could press the keys into his palm.
His wife held up her phone and filmed it.
"Frank was very generous," Grandma said. "Everyone clap for Frank."
Thirty people clapped.
Dad flinched at every one of them.
Last spring Dad sold his half of the machine shop he'd run for twenty-six years, and the check was supposed to be his retirement.
Grandma had asked him to put it in a family investment.
I looked at the island, and the pendant lights, and the keys.
That was a hundred and forty thousand dollars of my father's life, and it was now my uncle's front door.
Mom put her plate down on the cheese tray.
People in my family know what that means.
When I was twelve, Grandma took Dad's truck fund for Dennis's wedding.
Mom went straight to Dennis's office in her nurse's scrubs and walked out with eleven thousand dollars in a bank envelope.
No one in the family had tried it again until today.
Grandma had waited until Mom was in a room full of guests who would call her rude for making a scene.
"Frank," Mom said. "Is that true?"
Dad didn't look up. "Ma needed help, Maureen."
"Dennis," Mom said, and her voice was friendly. "That's a beautiful house. When do you close?"
"Already did, Maureen." He jingled the keys. "Three weeks ago."
"Wonderful. Who's your lender?"
"Why?"
"I like to know who my family owes."
Dennis laughed, because he thought she was beaten, and told her the name of the bank.
Mom took a pen from her purse and wrote the bank's name on the back of her hand.
Then she wrote the date under it.
She did not look angry. She capped the pen and zipped her purse.
I was the one shaking.
"Give it back," I said.
The clapping died.
"Jo," Grandma said, "sit down."
"That's Dad's retirement. It isn't a birthday present."
"Your father is a grown man," she said. "Ask him if he was forced."
Everyone turned to look at Dad.
He kept his eyes on his water. He said nothing, and that was worse than a yes.
"Not yet, Jo," Mom said, low, beside my ear.
I wanted to flip the island.
My mother has taught me everything I know about staying calm in a fight, and for once I couldn't use it.
The doorbell rang.
Dennis's wife went to answer it, still holding her phone.
A man stood on the porch in work boots and a canvas jacket, with a folder under his arm and drywall dust still in his hair.
He was tall and about thirty, with a jaw that hadn't met a razor in two days.
He looked past her into the room, and found Dennis in about a second.
"Dennis Dunleavy?" he said. "Caleb Rooney, Rooney Build. I've called you eleven times."
"This is a family party," Dennis said.
"Good. Family should hear it." Caleb opened the folder. "You owe me eighty-six thousand dollars for this kitchen. The last three checks you sent me bounced."
Dennis went the color of the cabinets.
"Frank will cover it," Grandma said from her chair, and went on cutting her cake.
I walked across the room and took the invoice out of Caleb's hand.
He let me.
I read it out loud to all thirty guests, line by line. Custom cabinets, quartz island, wine fridge, pendant lights, labor, the total.
My uncle tried to grab it and I held it over my head.
"Jo," Grandma snapped. "That is family business."
"Then the family can hear it."
Caleb didn't say a word, but the corner of his mouth moved.
Behind me, very quietly, my father spoke.
"I already told Ma I'd cover it."
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