UnWritten

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  He held out another book; Nightshade, by Andrea Cremer.

  “Thanks. Again,” I said, stroking the cover of the book.

  “You don’t have to thank me.”

  Raine cleared her throat.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Raine.” Declan said, nodding to her.

  “Likewise. Wine?” He held up a bottle he’d brought of his own and Raine grinned.

  “Yes, please.”

  “So here’s a question for you,” Raine said as she poured Declan a glass of wine. “What are your views on vajazzling?” He nearly dropped the glass when I choked on my own swallow of wine, spraying it all over the counter.

  Declan’s response was cut off by him getting up and patting my back and asking if I was okay. I nodded and went to clean up the mess. Raine grabbed some paper towels and I snatched them from her.

  “Raine. Are you serious?” I said.

  “What? I’m curious about the male perspective,” she said.

  Declan drank a gulp of wine and swallowed before he answered.

  “I’m afraid I’m not quite familiar with what exactly that is.”

  With my eyes, I begged Raine to stop. She was supposed to be trying to make me feel better. Not embarrassing me in front of Declan.

  She seemed to get the gist.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Never mind.”

  I re-filled my glass to replace the wine I’d wasted.

  “Well, now I’m curious. Blair?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  Declan smiled and pulled out his phone. Thanks, technology. He typed something in and then his eyes went wide.

  “Oh, that’s . . . that’s well . . . That’s something.”

  He shook his head and put the phone away. Now it was his turn to be embarrassed.

  “So, what did you think?” Raine said, leaning on the counter.

  “I prefer the natural look, I suppose. Why adorn something that’s fine as it is? Seems like gilding the lily.” That made me snort with laughter. My lily definitely wasn’t gilded and he’d seemed more than okay with it.

  “Good answer, Brit. Good answer.” She held up her glass and they clinked them together.

  “Are you two ganging up on me now?” I said.

  “No,” Raine said at the exact same time Declan said “Absolutely not.”

  “It feels wrong to be goofing around like this,” I said as I sat on the couch next to Declan. It was a bit awkward, with the two of us on the couch and Raine in her favorite chair. I tried not to snuggle too close to Declan because I didn’t want to rub being with him in her face. She’d say I was being silly if she knew that’s what I was doing, but it wasn’t silly. She was currently fiddling with the cookies, which smelled amazing, but I was dubious about their quality.

  “With your grandmother in such dire circumstances?” he finished.

  “Yes.”

  “What should you be doing?”

  “Staying by her bedside and wailing and crying and carrying on. I should be there with her. Not here laughing and drinking wine with you. It’s just wrong.” There. I said it.

  “There is no right or wrong way to experience grief. Feel however you want to feel about it. Anyone who says you should act a certain way hasn’t been through what you’re going through.” What was it about advice told in a British accent? It sounded so much more wise and right.

  I kissed him on the cheek. I wanted to do more, but Raine came back with the cookies.

  “None of that, you two. Your heterosexual display of affection makes me sick,” she said with a wink, holding out the plate of cookies, which turned out to be chocolate chip.

  “They’re not going to kill you, Blair,” Raine said when I didn’t immediately snatch one up.

  “I know that,” I said, reluctantly picking one up. Declan followed suit, sensing my hesitance.

  I nibbled a corner of the cookie and waited for it to be awful.

  “Holy shit, this is amazing!” The gooey deliciousness melted in my mouth and I hurried to take a bigger bite.

  “This is fantastic,” Declan said, mid-chew. “Top notch.”

  “Thank you, Declan,” Raine said, flashing him a brilliant smile. “And you. How dare you doubt my baking skills?” She turned the smile off and pointed accusingly at me.

  “Um, because the only stuff I’ve ever seen you bake comes from a box, and it was never very good. How is it possible that you’ve been holding out on me for this many years?” I said.

  She smirked.

  “Maybe you don’t know everything about me, Walt. I still have my secrets.” Guess so.

  I finished my first cookie in a few bites and went for a second and then a third. Raine finally sat down and joined us. Between the three of us, we finished off the first plate in less than ten minutes.

  “So how does it work, exactly? The two of you writing?” Declan said. I could tell he’d been curious about it since I told him.

  “Um, it’s a process. We usually write specific scenes and trade them back and forth. Sometimes one of us will write using a Google document so the other can read it as we’re going and make suggestions. It’s a mishmash of crazy. I really have no idea how we do it,” I said, looking at Raine for help.

  “It’s easier when we write two points of view. We each take one character and write back and forth. It works.” She shrugged. That was the best explanation. It worked.

  “Sounds interesting. I can’t imagine working that closely with someone,” he said. Raine got a second plate of cookies and we started working on those.

  “I guess we’re just used to it. At first I thought we’d kill each other, but now we’ve got our system down,” I said. Declan asked more questions about our process and our books and so forth.

  “What are you working on right now?” I didn’t really want to talk about that because it just reminded me of the reason I’d agreed to go out with him in the first place and the whole dossier debacle. Raine saved me.

  “We could tell you, but we’d have to kill you. Only our agent and editor know.” She winked at him and I’d have to thank her later.

  “Oh, well in that case.”

  “It’s true,” I said with a serious expression. “We can’t tell anyone about anything.” About to say something else, I was cut off by my phone. It was my mother.

  I answered it right away.

  “Mom?”

  “She’s gone, Blair. She’s gone.”

  No matter how much you try to imagine seeing someone who’s died, nothing can prepare you for actually living through it. Not even writing about it.

  Gran looked the same, small and fragile in her bed, but there was something missing. Her spirit. I didn’t believe in a lot of that mumbo jumbo, but it was so obvious that she was gone wherever people went when they weren’t alive anymore.

  I kissed her cheek again. It was cool, and I tried not to shudder.

  “Bye, Gran. I love you.” She couldn’t hear me, but I needed to say it anyway.

  “It’s like she waited until we were all gone,” Dad said. So she’d died alone. But I guess we all did, when it came down to it. We came into this world alone and we left it alone.

  Everyone was crying and hugging, but I couldn’t. My eyes were dry. But to save face, I kept wiping my eyes anyway.

  Raine was here too, but I’d told Declan I didn’t want him here. It was too weird for him to see me like this. Too intimate and too soon.

  “We’ll have to start making arrangements,” Mom whispered to Dad and I knew we were in for a whole lot more fighting.

  A social worker came to talk to Dad, Gerald and Pearl and the rest of us were shoved into a room to talk with another social worker.

  Most of it was a blur. I tuned out the social worker and tried to force myself to cry. Just a few tears. I couldn’t manage to cry for my deceased grandmother? What kind of horrible person was I?

  The talking went late into t
he night and I struggled to keep my eyes open.

  “I don’t think there’s much we can do,” Raine said, letting me lean on her shoulder. “And your mother keeps giving me weird looks. She still scares the shit out of me.” She whispered the last part.

  She was right. There was nothing I could do, and I felt like I was in the way.

  Mom and Dad hugged me goodbye.

  “We’ll call you when we figure out the arrangements. Thank goodness she had a will,” Mom said. Because that was the most important thing right now. Her will and who was going to get what. I hadn’t even thought about it until Mom mentioned it. She dabbed at her eyes and Dad patted her on the shoulder.

  “Okay,” I said numbly, letting Raine lead me away.

  “She had a long life,” Raine said, rubbing my back as I lay in bed, trying to cry. “I really don’t know what to say here, so I’m stealing all my lines from movies and books. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m the girl who can’t cry. I’m the terrible, awful, no-good person who can’t cry about her grandmother’s death.” Raine made a tsk-ing sound and just kept feeding me lines from movies and books that weren’t really helpful, but I appreciated the effort all the same.

  “I just want to sleep, but I’m too tired,” I said.

  “I hear that. Do you want a pill or something? I’ve still got some from the last time we needed to crash after finishing one of our books.” Sometimes we worked so long that we just needed to catch up on sleep. It probably wasn’t healthy, but we were young and if we couldn’t do it now, when could we?

  “Yeah, thanks.” She got me a glass of water and two pills and I took them, hoping they’d kick in ASAP.

  “Okay, I’m going to bed. If you need anything, text me. I’ll keep my phone on.”

  “Thanks,” I said, closing my eyes. She gave me a kiss on the forehead and then left. All I wanted was to fall asleep for weeks.

  So I didn’t sleep for weeks, but it was definitely at least thirteen hours. I woke when Raine told me my mother was on the phone and she wasn’t accepting the excuse that I was sleeping. Even though I was sleeping.

  Mom had gone into one of her more manic modes. That was her go-to reaction when something bad happened. Organize things.

  “You need to get over here right away. They’re going to be reading the will.” That didn’t take long.

  “Okay, okay.” I just agreed and she gave me the address of Gran’s lawyer.

  “I wonder if she’ll leave me anything,” I said as Raine made breakfast. “I mean, not that I want her to. That sounds bad.”

  “Babe, you have got to stop worrying about what you should or shouldn’t be feeling. It’s me. I don’t judge you, and especially not now. If you’re a gold digger, I’ve yet to see evidence of it. I mean, if one of us is in it for the money, it’s me.” She had me there.

  “I can’t help it,” I mumbled as she filled my plate with eggs.

  “Do you want me to come?” Writing was a lot of frantic work under extreme deadlines, followed by waiting and not being able to work until you got edits back. We were in the waiting stage, but it didn’t mean we couldn’t start our next project.

  “No, it’s fine. I’ve got to be a big girl and do this on my own. You’ve been so supportive.” She brushed off my praise.

  “It’s what you would do for me. And someday, you’ll pay me back. That’s how friendship works.”

  I gave her a hug and tried to eat.

  Mom’s no-doubt swollen eyes were hidden behind enormous Jackie O sunglasses. She was the picture of mourning in her black sweater set. Gerald and Pearl were also in their black best. I thought you didn’t do the black thing until the funeral, but it seemed they’d started early.

  My clothes were subdued, but I still felt out of place. Like a blinking neon sign. The lawyer introduced himself and we all sat down at a large round table. I was the youngest one, since my aunt and uncle had decided their children probably didn’t need to participate in this. Good plan.

  Gran was apparently aware that her time was dwindling, because she’d updated her will only two months ago. The first things listed were her house, her vacation condo, car, jewelry and investments. As the lawyer read how much each was worth, I tried to not let my eyes bug out of my head. Sure, I knew she had money, but I never knew it was THAT much. She’d done her best to divide everything evenly between her three children. Dad was going to be her executor, since he was the oldest, and I waited for Gerald and Pearl to have a problem with that. He’d been her Power of Attorney and that had caused all kinds of drama.

  The tension in the room ratcheted up higher and higher and I was just waiting for an explosion. And then I heard my name.

  “To my granddaughter, Blair, I leave my emerald necklace, my freshwater pearl earrings, my diamond watch . . .” he went on for a while and then he said something about a trust fund in my name. What now?

  “Can you repeat that?” I asked, making the lawyer look up from the pages of documents.

  “Your grandmother had a trust fund set up in your name, to be transferred to you upon her death. The current value is three hundred thousand dollars.” My knees started shaking under the table. I wanted to ask him to repeat the number again. Or write it out, or something.

  “Shall I continue?” The lawyer asked, all business.

  “Yes,” Mom said, pinching my arm.

  Three. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars.

  That was . . . that was a lot of money. What the hell was I going to do with that much money? I didn’t ask for it. Raine and I were doing fine on our own.

  My thoughts were a jumbled mess of guilt that I couldn’t cry, shock over the money and irritation that Gran’s life was being reduced to the things she owned, and not how she’d lived.

  Once we got through the will, everyone was silent.

  Mom burst into fresh tears, as did Pearl. That made Dad and Gerald cry and soon I was the only dry-eyed one, apart from the lawyer. I ducked my head and kicked myself for not wearing sunglasses to cover my non-teary eyes.

  “I’ll give you some time,” the lawyer said, and left the room, but not before handing around a box of tissues.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I said under my breath as the sound of nose-blowing filled the room.

  “I think we all need to take some time to absorb this. How about we call it a day and come back to this some other day?” Dad said, finally taking the lead. “Come on, Camille. Let’s get you home.” He helped Mom get to her feet and the meeting broke up without a resolution.

  “But we have so much to do!” Mom protested. “We need to talk about flowers and what kind of music to have at the service, and I don’t know where we’re going to have it so we can get everyone there and then there’s the obituary.” Dad shushed her and I walked out behind them.

  The obituary.

  “I could do the obituary,” I said, and they both turned to look at me as if they’d forgotten I was there.

  “You?” Mom said.

  “Yeah. I mean, I want to do something. I’m a good writer. I could do it justice.” Plus, I could make it about her life, and not about the end.

  Mom wiped her eyes again and Dad nodded.

  “I think that’s a lovely idea, Blair. I’ll let Gerald and Pearl know that you’re going to take care of it. You should probably go through some of her albums. She kept impeccable records of everything.” He gave me a key to her place and said to call him if I had any questions on specifics.

  Finally. Something I could do. A task I could complete. Writing. I could do that.

  “Let me help you!” Raine said when I told her about the obituary. “Remember that time we had to write our own obits in college?” We’d taken a few journalism classes and one of our assignments had been to write our own obituary. I’d just done it to get it done, but Raine had gone all out, including her time in the Peace Corps, her marriage to Prince Harry and her successful business ventures.

  “Yes, I do, which is why
I think you should stay out of this. But if you want, you can come with me to her house. I need to get a bunch of pictures and so forth together and get correct dates on everything.”

  “Anything I can do to help,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said with a sigh. I hadn’t told her about the money yet. I felt weird about it. Even though the two of us had done well financially with our books, this money was huge. I could buy a house with it. And a car.

  So I kept my mouth shut about the trust fund. I wasn’t going to get it right away, anyway. There were legal hoops to jump through, and I was probably going to put it off as long as possible.

  “Oh, someone, who is probably British, left this at the front door.” She pointed to a package on the coffee table.

  What had he done now?

  I opened the box slowly. On the top was a card with a butterfly on it. I opened it to find a sweet note from Declan, expressing his condolences. The words were sincere, and they made me wish I could cry. Alas. Not one tear.

  Under the card was a small jewelry box. He’d really upped his present game. Nestled in the box was a set of silver earrings shaped like wings. They were perfect.

  “Ooohhh, pretty,” Raine said, peering over my shoulder. “He’s good.”

  “I know. And I’m not even his girlfriend.”

  “Well, you’re something.” I put the earrings in my ears and went to the bathroom to look at them. They were so pretty.

  I immediately texted him a thank you.

  It’s the least I could do. How did it go today? I’d been keeping him apprised of what was going on.

  Awful. Don’t really want to talk about it.

  At least not via text.

  Let me know if you need anything, Blair.

  Other than what he’d already given me? I couldn’t need anything.

  Ttyl.

  Just then Madeline called with the news that not only had the library found a temporary space, but someone had donated thousands of dollars to the rebuild fund.

  “That’s amazing. Do you know who it was?”