Last Breath (The Good Daughter 0.5)(21)

The peas/pod thing was like a mantra to this family. In fact, it had almost a rehearsed quality.

Charlie asked, “What about food? Clothing? School fees?”

“Not an issue,” Mark said. “Flora is already like a daughter to us. We’ll gladly provide for her. She’s an amazing girl. We couldn’t love her more if we tried.”

Charlie saw Jo wince at the statement, which employed the exact same words the woman had used before.



It’s like they were going off a script.

Charlie asked Mark, “They get along like a house on fire, do they?”

“Exactly.” He beamed, as if he’d passed a test. “Like a house on fire.”

“Anyway,” Jo said, trying to do clean-up. “The Faulkners, her grandparents, are not good people. I’m sorry to say that, but we are talking about Flora’s future here, her college education, her life as a young woman. They try, but their character is—” She stopped herself, probably about to repeat the same line Flora had given Charlie in the bathroom at the Y this morning.

Instead, Jo said, “I know Flora won’t say a word against her Meemaw and Paw, but Leroy has a drug problem and Maude is … well, you’ve met Maude. You know what she’s like. I wouldn’t cross her for all the tea in China, but we love Flora so much. She’s an amazing girl. We couldn’t—”

“Love her more if you tried?” Charlie asked.

“N-no,” Jo stammered.

Mark jumped back in. “I imagine what my wife was going to say is, we couldn’t live with ourselves if we let Flora stay in that awful situation.”

“What’s so awful about it?”

Mark’s well-tanned nose wrinkled in distaste. “That apartment complex is horrible. It’s directly off the highway.”

“I think that’s all they can afford. There’s no crime in being poor, is there?” Charlie watched their expressions, which were as fixed as a marble statue. “Unless you mean the trust?”

“Trust?” Mark said, his voice going up at the end. “Why wouldn’t we trust her?”

Charlie almost laughed at the poor attempt. “Flora told me that she told you guys about the trust.”

The lie made them both relax a tiny bit.

Jo laughed uncomfortably, which was the second laugh in her arsenal, right behind the belly brawl.



Mark said, “Well, we weren’t thinking of the trust because, obviously, that’s for Flora’s college, and to help her get started in life. She’s a very smart girl. She could go to any school, really.” He indicated the house. “I don’t want to sound crass, but, obviously, we don’t need the money.”

“Obviously,” Charlie said.

Jo laughed again, but only twice—a “ha ha” that literally sounded like she was reading it off the back of a box of cereal.

“One more thing—” Charlie always loved the one more thing, because it was usually the thing. “I’m sorry to say this, but Leroy had some unkind words to say about you, Mark. Something about your being crooked?”

“Oh, dear.” Jo gave laugh number one, deep from the belly. “We’re standing in the middle of a joke here: a builder and a lawyer walk into a bar…”

Mark joined in, actually clutching his stomach.

Charlie stared at them both until their guffaws gurgled down the drain.

“Ah.” Mark wiped bogus laugh tears from his eyes. “Well, you know how people feel about builders. They paint us all with the same brush.”

“I thought you were a developer?”

“Builder, developer. Same difference.”

“Really? One seems much more speculative than the other,” Charlie said. “And financially risky.”

Jo said, “We do all right. Mark is really good at his job.”

“That’s great.” Charlie waited, looking at Mark as if she expected him to add more.

His mouth was so dry that his lips caught on his teeth when he smiled. “Is there anything else?”

“Nope. Thank you.” Charlie closed her notebook. She capped her pen. She pretended not to notice them both exhale in unison. “I’ll just need you to put what you said in the affidavit, that you won’t ever take any money from the trust.”



They did the look again, their eyes bouncing in their heads.

“A letter, you mean?” Jo’s voice had gone up, too.

“No.” Charlie drank a sip of tea, but only to make them wait. “I’ll need a sworn affidavit from both of you saying that you’ll never receive any money, directly or indirectly, from Flora’s trust.” Charlie smiled. “And of course you’ll need to take the stand in court and say the same thing, which shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

Mark sucked on his bottom lip. “Mm-hm.”

She tightened the screw. “Because that would be perjury, if you said that you weren’t going to take any money from the trust, but then you did.”

“Perjury,” Mark repeated.

“Well.” Jo cleared her throat. “I’m not a lawyer, but as I understand it, Flora will be emancipated.” She smiled weakly at Charlie. “She’ll control the money, not us. She can do with it whatever she likes.”