Bad Heiress Day

“Look, Aunt Jenny, I know…” Darcy picked up a Handi Wipes and began mopping up crumbs in an effort to keep from jumping down Aunt Jenny’s throat.

“You know I would have wanted to be there. We’re all that Paul had left. Would it have killed you to put off the service until the family could come pay their respects?”

All that Paul had left, huh? “Aunt Jenny…” For a second, she considered that hanging up might be the wisest course of action—she was sure to say something she’d regret if Aunt Jenny kept it up.

“I just wanted to ask how you could be so inconsiderate. Why, Charles is just livid.” Darcy could imagine just how livid Uncle Chuck could be. The man rarely got off his La-Z-Boy for anything. One of Aunt Jenny’s favorite tactics was to project her self-righteous anger onto Chuck—whom everyone knew to be permanently disinterested—as if he were some sort of emotional ventriloquist’s dummy. Darcy doubted that Chuck had done much more than hoist a beer in her dad’s honor and tell Jenny to go buy a nice card and send flowers.

And she hadn’t even done that much.

Darcy wrung out the cloth, trying not to visualize it as Jenny’s neck. “There didn’t seem to be much point in waiting. We didn’t know how long travel would be disrupted. We can always have a nice little family service in the summer.”

“How very convenient for you. I don’t see the hurry in all this.”

Darcy whirled around at the harshness of the woman’s words, the phone cord knocking over a glass of juice Paula had left too near the edge of the counter. Her patience shattered with the glass. “I’m sorry you’re upset, Aunt Jenny, but Dad had said his goodbyes. Perhaps you should have paid your respects to him while he was still alive.” She hadn’t intended to be so cruel, but her anger at all the people who stayed away because it was hard to be with Dad came tumbling out. Jenny had never come. Not once in two years. “You never once came to visit him while he was sick, why start now?”

Jack looked up from the breakfast nook and began to ease himself off the chair. Aunt Jenny’s wounded silence filled the phone. Darcy shut her eyes, fighting for control. Acting like this wouldn’t solve anything. She didn’t fight Jack when he took the phone from her hands.

“Jenny, perhaps we should leave this conversation for another day. You can understand it has been a hard time.”

“Jack, I’d have thought you would have been—” came the woman’s shrill voice through the receiver.

“I’m sorry, Jenny, but Darcy and I have an appointment and we really need to go.”

Darcy shut her eyes. She heard Jack mutter something less than kind as he thrust the handset back into the cradle.

“You knew she’d react that way,” he said as he bent over the broken glass, picking shards out of the puddle of orange juice with his fingers.

Darcy sniffed. “I can hope.”

“It’s gonna get worse when she finds out about the money.”

“She’s not going to find out about the money,” Darcy replied. It was hard enough to deal with her own reaction, she wasn’t going to add vicious Aunt Jenny into the mix. “Dar—”

“I’m not dealing with her. Not now. She’s been invisible for two years, she doesn’t get to show up and play loving sister now.”

“Yes, I know she’s horrible, but she was horrible before. She’s always been—”

Darcy cut him off. “Who’s side are you on, anyway?”

He tossed the shards into the garbage. “Yours. Ours. But we’re all just going to have to try to be reasonable….”

“Don’t do that!” Darcy snapped. She wasn’t ready to be reasonable. She’d been reasonable and responsible and reliable for months, and she’d been repaid with deception and death. There was nothing reasonable about that. She’d earned the right to act out. To be unreasonable.

But not to Jack. For God’s sake, he didn’t deserve this. She wasn’t handling this well. Tears tightened her throat.

“Jack, I’m…”

“Not handling this well,” he said softly, as he stepped over the juice puddle to take her in his arms. “But it’s only your first week on tour as Little Orphan Heiress.” He’d coined the term late last night after they lay in bed talking. It was so crass, so full of disrespect for the situation at hand, that it made her laugh. Awful but truthful. She should have slapped him on the cheek for the hideous remark, but somehow she loved him for daring to say it. For the absurd honesty of it. “We’ve got a lot to work out here, and that last remnant of your bonkers family isn’t helping.” He kissed her forehead. “But I’m on your side, here, remember?”

“No, I’m on the side. You’re standing in the middle of the orange juice.”

Chapter 4

Comfortably Drastic

Despite death and national security, Monday came.

After seeing everyone off to work and school, Darcy sat alone in the quiet of her deserted kitchen, watching the steam make graceful curls out of her teacup. The frenzied desperation of the last week had filtered down to a kind of dead calm. A low tide, still and dry. Darcy remembered the feeling from her childhood home on the Gulf Coast. A flat void of mud and tidal leftovers, baking to a slightly foul smell in the hot summer afternoon.

Low tide.

If life had a low tide, she had hit it.

Her dad was right about one thing: the money meant almost nothing in the face of her life’s tangled messes. It offered no real comfort, just complication. Darcy wondered if the odd sensation of useless abundance had struck her father when the lawsuit had been won. Money, she guessed, was a poor substitute for a living wife. She sure knew it was a poor substitute for a living father.

The house gaped open and empty around her. She wondered, aimlessly, when the last time was she washed this bathrobe? Or when was the last time she’d bought anything new for the house? Had a haircut? Put on lipstick?

The idea rose in her chest and surfaced with a small, quiet, pop. Today was Monday. Mike had science club, Paula had dance lessons. And, for once, it was everybody else’s turn to carpool. She cast a hopeful eye at the kitchen calendar, grateful to see a blank square. She had the whole day.

Granted, there were about two dozen responsible things Darcy ought to be doing today, not counting the massive stack of paperwork for her father’s estate.

But responsibility wasn’t coming along today. Darcy Nightengale was going to be her own best friend today, and the rest of the world could just wait until tomorrow.

She grabbed her address book and the yellow pages and made three phone calls, not taking no for an answer on any of them.

She was out the door in seventeen minutes flat.

“Mercy! What have you done with Darcy Nightengale? I know she went in there half an hour ago. Where’d you put her?” Kate let the magazine she was holding fall into her lap. Darcy reveled in the way Kate’s eyes lit up. Kate’s look was exactly the way she felt.

Ernestine came up behind her. Ernestine, whom she’d never met before today. Yet, the minute she sat in her salon chair, Darcy felt one of those instantaneous, giftlike connections with the woman. Ernestine picked up immediately why Darcy had come to the salon and seemed to know just what to do. A large woman with complicated black hair and a South Seas type of accent, Ernestine winked at Kate and made a clucking sound with her tongue.

“It does do wonders for the woman, don’t you think?”

Kate nodded from above her pedicure. “Dar, you look wonderful.”

“Comfortably drastic,” Darcy quoted, using Ernestine’s perfect phrase for what she needed. Turning to the mirror, she admired again the oh-so-up-to-date flippy thing her hair was doing. “I’m just hoping I can achieve the home version. What do you think about the color? I’ve never done highlighting before.”

“It suits you. Really. Hey, when do I get to do ‘comfortably drastic’? And Ernestine, would you consider moving closer to Cincinnati? Tomorrow? One look at Darcy and I could garner you a full client base in about forty minutes.”

Ernestine smiled. “You drove out here once. You’ll drive it again. I don’t plan to be going anywhere. And as for you, redhead, I get my hands on you in twenty minutes—after your toes dry.”

“Mmm,” sighed Kate, wiggling her toes, “I can hardly wait.”

The idea to come here had sprung itself on Darcy in a heartbeat. She’d scrambled through the yellow pages to find a full-scale salon sufficiently out of town and ordered the works for two. She wanted no chance of encountering a judgmental eye wondering why a grieving daughter was popping for beauty treatments two days after the funeral.

Darcy eased into the pedicure chair next to Kate and accepted a fantastic-smelling cup of tea. “I feel like a snake shedding its skin.”

The hip young man filling her tub, who looked suspiciously like a relative of Ernestine’s, gave her a wide grin. “I am looking at these heels and thinking you are not too far off. These feet have been through a lot, mmm?” Somehow he managed to make such a potentially judgmental comment come off as warm and understanding. That made Darcy sure he was a relative of Ernestine’s.

“Uh-huh.” Both women agreed simultaneously, and then broke into a giggle fit worthy of middle school girls.

“Oh, I can’t believe how good this feels,” murmured Darcy as her feet slid into the warm bubbles. “I swear, I feel like I’ve just joined the human race again.”

Kate looked at her. “I think you have. Welcome back.” She hesitated just a moment before adding softly, “We’ve missed you.”

She had been gone, hadn’t she? Lost to a world of crisis and catheters. Far away from many of the people she loved. Who loved her. Caught up in her dad’s ever-tightening world until she couldn’t see beyond its edges. And Darcy was just now coming to see the cost. That didn’t mean the attention she gave her father wasn’t worth it, but somehow—maybe even for her own sanity—she’d managed to ignore the consequence of that drastically narrow focus.

She fingered her wispy hair again. “Do you think Jack will like it?”

Darcy was sure Kate was going to say something like, “He’s missed you most of all.” But she didn’t. As a matter of fact, she didn’t say anything. She just sneaked her hand over to give Darcy’s hand a quick squeeze. The gesture said a million things at once.

Something was happening. Something was seeping into Darcy’s skin along with the creams, lotions and treatments. The outward pampering was becoming a foothold of sorts back into a life she’d almost forgotten. The non-urgent facets of life. Something inside her was remaking itself. Coming up for air out of the deep sea of crisis. It was hard to describe and felt a bit shallow coming from hand cream and hair dye. But it was there. And remarkably potent. Almost magical in how the outward care changed her on the inside.

“I’d have to say you’ve pretty much covered Christmas and my birthday on this one. I’m definitely liking the best-friend-of-heiress gig. Although, I’m rather certain this isn’t what your dad had in mind when he told you to ‘give it all away.’”

Darcy’s heart felt like it stopped beating momentarily.

There.

Yes, that. That was it.

Kate kept gushing on about marvelous everythings but Darcy didn’t hear her. She was staring into thin air, watching the pieces of an extraordinary idea weave themselves together in front of her.

As if it wasn’t even her own thinking. As if the concept came pouring down out of somewhere to coat her consciousness. Faces came into view. Faces from the hospice center. Hands cracked and drying from the disinfectant and endless washing. Bodies aching from nights in vinyl armchairs. Drawn cheeks and red eyes. The haphazard griminess of clothes and bodies roused in the middle of the night for what might be a loved one’s final hours. Unkempt. Ignored. Unnurtured while nurturing someone else. They were like dried leaves, all of these people—herself included, colorless and brittle and swirling at the mercy of the death’s unpredictable wind.

Within the space of four seconds she could name six women who needed this as much as she. Needed that inexplicable renewal that comes from caring for a body long overlooked. And the faces and names kept coming. Piling into her thoughts. The gallery of faces became like walking through a brown and sere garden….

…And…

…And…

She’d just been handed water.

Gallons and gallons of it.

Darcy’s body hummed with the realization. She stretched her limbs, practically testing their pliancy. She wasn’t dry and brittle anymore. Certainly not on the outside, and less than she had been on the inside. There was something about this reckless luxury—the pampering, the time with Kate, the permission to do something nice for herself—that healed her.

“Kate. Oh, Kate, I’ve got it.”

“Got what?”

“The Dad thing. What I’m going to do. I’ve got it.”

“Who knew a good manicure could solve life’s major problems?” quipped Kate, staring a bit quizzically at Darcy.

“I got it,” Darcy said again softly, still reeling from the power of this idea. And it was powerful. She recognized its power the moment it sprung into her thoughts.

“Okay,” Kate said slowly, cueing, “So you got it. And it is…”

“Time to do something with this amazing red hair of yours, madam,” came Ernestine’s voice from the next room. Her wild braids popped around the doorframe. “It’s Kate, isn’t it? Come, lady Kate, let’s see what we can do for you.”

Kate eased up out of her chair. “Dar, you look like you’re going to explode. You okay?”

“Fabulous,” said Darcy. “I’ll tell you all about it over lunch.”

Darcy didn’t even remember the rest of the pedicure. Her brain launched somewhere far away. This was the right thing to do. She knew it, down to her newly cranberry toenails. It felt right. The plans kept zinging into her thoughts until she was working it out to the small details by the time Kate appeared from under Ernestine’s magic hands.

And appear Kate did. Ernestine was an artist. Kate’s hair had always been beautiful before, but it was just plain stunning under Ernestine’s hand. Silky red layers framed Kate’s face and made her look younger. In the space of twenty minutes Kate had gone from suburban mom to babe. Major, head-turning, knock-your-socks-off babe. Kate knew it, too, for a swingy little bounce had found its way into her walk. In fact, it was edging closer to a strut. Who could argue with the woman? Darcy had to admit she felt the same way.

“Man alive, Kate, Don is going to go nuts when he sees you tonight. You look fantastic.”

Kate admired herself in the same mirror that Darcy had. “I do, don’t I? Ernestine, you sure you won’t move to Cincinnati? Today?”

“You sure you’re going to come back to me again?”

“Uh-huh,” confirmed Kate, still eyeing herself in the mirror from different angles.

“Then I don’t have to go anywhere, now do I?”

“No, ma’am, I think I’d probably crawl over broken glass to get back to you.”

Ernestine clasped her hands together like a teacher making an announcement. “Now, you go two doors down to Stephano’s for lunch, there are some splendid salads waiting for you and some dessert that’s going to make you feel like the treasures you are. I’ve had his chocolate mousse, dears, and it’s absolutely heavenly. Off with you now. You come back at one-thirty for facials and massage.”

“Oh. Oh, this is fantastic. I’d ask for seconds if I didn’t feel like such a pig already. And even that might not stop me.” Kate was leaning back, eyes closed, savoring the chocolate dessert before her.

“Worth every despicable calorie,” murmured Darcy, her own mouth full of the spectacularly smooth, silky mousse. The meal had been wonderful. What she’d eaten of it, that was. She’d spent the majority of the time outlining her brainstorm to Kate. Darcy was glad Kate seemed to like the idea as much as she did.

“Really.” Kate finished off another spoonful and licked her fingers. “I love your idea of giving women under the strain of care a day of respite just like the one we’re having. Who knows better than you what happens to people when they spend such a long time in dying-loved-one mode? It’s taken so much out of you, Dar. And not just you. Jack and the kids, too.”

“I know,” agreed Darcy, thinking of the way Jack looked the other week. “Even with everybody trying to make the best of it, things have been wearing pretty thin at our house. Jack and I have argued more in the last six months than in our whole marriage. I’m fried, he’s tired of my being fried, the kids act up, and no one wants to say anything because how can you blame a man for dying? Nobody wants it, but it…rots—” she pointed her spoon for emphasis on their new catchphrase “—just the same.”

Kate leaned in. “But you see, that’s the great thing about this. It does rot and you can’t blame anyone. Near as I can tell, there’s this sort of unwritten rule that you can’t get angry at it. You have to be noble and enduring, because it’s your parent and all, but it shreds people from the inside out.” Kate sucked in a breath and looked down, as if she hadn’t meant to be so direct about the state of affairs at the Nightengale house. “It’s been hard to watch all of you. There’s nothing I can do to make it better. Your dad was going to die, you had to practically put your life on hold to deal with it, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to change it. If someone had given you a nudge to take care of yourself, the kind of reminder you’re talking about, then things might not have gotten so bad.”

Darcy swirled her spoon in the rich, brown ripples. “Things have gotten ‘so bad,’ haven’t they?” she asked softly.

“Jack’s been a saint, but he’s human. You can see the frustration in his eyes. Look, Dar, no one can blame anyone. There doesn’t seem to be a painless way to do this. Damage happens. I don’t know that I wouldn’t turn into an absolute shrew under the circumstances. I’d doubt anyone can guess what it’s like to go through what you’ve been through.”

“Things are still messy. But I feel better. Loads better. Maybe if I feel better, than things can get better. Or at least I can start making them better.” She paused for a moment before adding, “Dad had his daughter’s attention for a long time. Maybe it’s time Jack gets his wife back.”

Kate winked. “Oh, but he’s not getting his wife. He’s getting a new, improved version. I’d give anything to see the look on his face when he sees you.”

They laughed. And Darcy realized things were already on their way to getting better. She pulled a pen from her purse and snatched a paper place mat from the next table, flipping over to the blank side. She wrote a number one in a big, bold hand.

“First, I think we need to run a test. See if every woman gets the same boost from the pampering. Today ran us about four hundred dollars, including lunch. It’s got to be the women and a friend—this would be no fun alone, and I’m betting these ladies haven’t had lunch with a friend in weeks, if not months. If we pull two thousand dollars, we can run a five-pair test group. I thought of more than six names off the top of my head from women at the hospice center. They run a gamut of ages, too, so we can try a good mix.” She wrote “Test Group” in capital letters after the number one.

“Ernestine?” Kate suggested.

“She’d be fabulous, but I think we’d better stick closer to home. Any ideas?”

“We can ask Ernestine to suggest someone, but I have a friend who does the spa thing all the time. The lady’s nails are perfect every waking moment. She’d know where to go.” Kate admired her own newly perfect nails.

“Okay, but not too posh. We want really nice, but not too over the top. I wouldn’t want to sit in the pedicure chair listening to a bunch of country club types talk about their latest trip to the Virgin Islands, would you?”

Kate pointed her spoon at Darcy. “Good point.”

Darcy penned a number two. She spread her hands on the table, her mind whirring. She didn’t even have words to describe the sparkling sensation in her chest. “We need a go-between. Someone to let the women know they’re receiving this gift. I think we have to do this anonymously.”

“What?” balked Kate. “You don’t want to be known as the patron saint of martyr beauty?”

“That’s a good one,” Darcy replied, laughing. “I’ll put it on my business cards. But I’m sure we need to do this without anyone knowing who we are. And we need someone who can convince these women that this is on the level, and that it is important and worth taking the time. Someone from the hospice, like…Meredith. She’s the hospice center’s executive director. Oh, she’d be perfect. She’s got that sage-wise-woman quality about her that makes you listen to what she has to say.” Darcy wrote “Contact—Meredith?” beside the two. She looked up to find Kate staring at her. “What?”

“Business cards. Dar, that’s the first joke I’ve heard you crack in nearly three months.”

Darcy thought. “It is, isn’t it?”

“And what’s with the ‘we’? Nobody left me a fortune to give away, you know,” Kate added, hesitantly.

Darcy stopped short. She’d never even considered that she ought to ask Kate if she wanted to be involved. Perhaps that was a bad assumption. But she needed her. Badly. She looked at Kate intently. “You’re in on this, aren’t you? Kate, I can’t do this without you. You’ve got to be in on this.”

Kate’s smile was as rich as the mousse. “You betcha. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She held out her hand. “Partners.”

Darcy shook it, manicure to manicure. “Maybe co-conspirators is more accurate. But that sounds too…I don’t know…too criminal.” Darcy pondered. “What’d Robin Hood call his buddies?”

Kate narrowed her eyes, thinking. “The Merry Men, wasn’t it?”

“Ick. We need something better than that.”

“Bandits of Beauty?”

“Ugh. Even worse.”

“Drive-by Pamperers.”

Darcy laughed. “That sounds like we’re chucking diapers out of a minivan window. Definitely not.”

“I’m stumped.”

“Me, too.”

Kate folded her hands under her chin. “Well, how do you feel? What word would you give to what’s happened to you today?”

Darcy considered the question for a long moment. She finally said, “Healed. Put back together. Restored.”

“Restored. I like the sound of that. That fits.”

Without another word, Darcy put her pen to the top of the page and wrote, “The Restoration Project.”

Kate nodded in agreement. “So it is written, so may it be done.”

Darcy raised an eyebrow. “Where in the world did that come from?”

“Prince of Egypt. Jessica watches it constantly. She loves the funny camel faces.”

Darcy held out the paper. “‘So it is written.’ Massage, partner dear?”

Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait until she had it worked out better before telling Jack. Dinner had been great fun. Jack’s ogling of the “new and improved Darcy” was a terrific high. Jack took in her hair and nails and generally saucier new demeanor with manly fascination. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d surprised Jack, much less with the kind of surprise that made him look like he’d give anything to have the kids somewhere else for a few hours.

All of which went out the window when she mentioned she’d had the beginnings of an idea of what to do about the money. Darcy hadn’t realized, until just that moment, that Jack had never even considered going along with her dad’s instructions. Granted, she still felt a long way from sure about her father’s request, but she hadn’t moved it completely from the realm of possibility—the way Jack obviously had.

What started out as a whopping pile of money was quickly turning itself into a whopping load of conflict. Oh, great. Just what we need. When she told him about The Restoration Project, Jack stared at her as though she’d mentioned it might be a nice idea to sell the children into slavery. He was still holding the glass of Cherry Coke halfway to his mouth, frozen in astonishment.

“You’re serious,” he said, almost under his breath.