Troublemakers Mess With the Wrong Girls novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not Yet

Mom keeps everyone in the kitchen at midnight, Dad admits Grandma cried, and Caleb turns up on the porch. Grandma wants a check on Sunday.

We left the party in two cars and met again at my parents' kitchen table in twenty minutes.

Nobody had taken a coat off. Dad sat with his big hands around a mug he hadn't drunk from.

Mom stood at the sink with her back to us, running water over nothing.

"Tell me what you told her, Frank," she said.

"She called me Thursday. She was crying."

"What did she say?"

"That Dennis was ashamed of the kitchen bill and might lose the house. That she couldn't bear it."

"And you said?"

"I said I'd handle it." He rubbed his face. "She's seventy-nine, Maureen."

"She's seventy-nine and she has done this to you for fifty years."

Mom turned the water off.

She said it without any heat at all, and Dad looked at the table.

I couldn't hold it in any longer.

"Why didn't we make him give it back? She humiliated you in front of the whole family and Mom just wrote on her hand."

"I did write on my hand."

"What does that even do?"

"It means I'll remember it tomorrow when I'm not angry," Mom said. "Angry is how we lose, Jo."

"We never lost last time."

"Last time I walked into his office and took eleven thousand dollars from a man who had it in his desk. Dennis has no money now. You can't take what isn't there."

I hated that she was right.

"Then what do we do?"

"We do it on a Tuesday."

Mom has said that sentence all my life.

It means a day when nothing is happening, when nobody has an audience, and the people who wronged us have forgotten to be careful.

"Nobody signs anything," she said to Dad. "Not a check, not a note, not a napkin."

"Ma's expecting me to pay the contractor."

"Then she's expecting wrong."

Someone knocked on the back door.

All three of us looked at it.

Mom dried her hands and opened it.

Caleb Rooney stood on the step with the folder under his arm. Without the crowd behind him he looked tired, and he'd taken off his jacket and held it over one shoulder.

"Mrs. Dunleavy. I followed Jo's car. That was a bad idea. I'm sorry."

"It was," said Mom. "Come in. You haven't eaten."

"I'm fine."

"There's meatloaf."

I stared at my mother.

He came in. He stood in the middle of our kitchen, taking up most of it, and said to Dad, "Sir, I'm not here to lean on you. I want you to know who you can call."

Dad nodded without a word.

Mom put a plate in front of Caleb and he sat down in the chair across from me.

He had been on a ladder since five that morning, and he ate everything on the plate.

"How did a Dunleavy end up with a contractor who works on credit?" I asked.

"I didn't know he was a Dunleavy when I signed. His wife said the money was coming from family."

"And you believed her?"

"I believed a signed contract and two deposit checks. They cleared." He ate another bite. "Those were Dennis's. The last three were your grandmother's, and they bounced."

"Grandma's checks bounced?"

"Every one."

Mom set a glass of milk down beside him. She didn't ask a question.

"So you came here to collect from my father," I said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because he's not the one who ordered a wine fridge." Caleb put his fork down. "Your uncle owes me. Your father is a decent man who got talked into it. I do know the difference."

I didn't expect that.

"Give me the invoice," I said, and held out my hand.

"You already read it to thirty people."

"I want the original. I want to see the dates."

He slid it across the table.

His fingers were warm and rough, and they brushed mine for about a second before he let go.

I noticed that, and I told myself it was only because the kitchen was small.

Under the numbers was a line in blue pen. Payment terms: net thirty. Signed, Dennis.

He had signed it on the fourteenth of August, so it came due on the thirteenth of September.

It was now the twelfth of October.

"He's a month late," I said.

"Twenty-nine days," said Caleb. "I'm generous."

Mom made a small noise in her throat, and it was close to a laugh.

Dad's phone buzzed on the table.

He read the screen, and the color went out of him.

"It's Ma," he said. "She says Sunday dinner is at six and I'm to bring the check."

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