The Nest(13)

Hands shoved in his pockets against the cold, Leo felt like a character from an Edith Wharton novel as he lifted the latch of the black iron front gate and walked past the gas lamplight in front of Stephanie’s house. The wooden shutters lining the curved bay window were open, and as he climbed the stoop, he could see into the living room where she had a fire going. He should have stopped to buy flowers or wine or something. He stood before the massive mahogany and glass front doors. Stephanie had hung life-size plastic glow-in-the-dark skeletons in the two center panes. He hesitated a minute and then rang the bell—three short ones, two long—the buzzer code they used for each other back in the day. One of the doors swung open. The skeletons clicked and swayed in the stormy breeze, and there she was. Stephanie.

He always forgot, when he hadn’t seen her in a while, how attractive she was. Not standard-issue beautiful, better. She was nearly his height and he was almost six foot. Her coppery hair and tawny skin made her a peculiar brand of redhead: no freckles, quick to tan if she ever spent time in the sun, which she didn’t. She was the only person he’d ever met who had one brown eye and one that was flecked with green. She was wearing admirably fitted jeans. He wished she would turn around so he could become reacquainted with her ass.

She greeted him by raising her hand, blocking him from crossing the threshold of the foyer. “Three conditions, Leo,” she said. “No drugs. No borrowing money. No f*cking.”

“When have I ever borrowed money from you?” Leo said, feeling the welcome blast of heat from the house. “In the last decade, anyway.”

“I mean it.” Stephanie opened the door wider. She smiled at him then, offered her cheek for a kiss. “It’s nice to see you, *.”





CHAPTER FOUR


That Leo had messed up so enormously was disturbing but, his siblings reluctantly agreed, not surprising. That Leo’s f*ckup had activated their disengaged mother to exercise her power of attorney and nearly drain The Nest, however, was shocking. It was the one threat to The Nest none of them had imagined. It had been, simply, unthinkable.

“Obviously it wasn’t unthinkable because I thought of it and your father set it up that way,” Francie said, the day she finally agreed to meet them, briefly, in George’s New York office, while Leo was still in rehab.

“It was our money, too,” Jack said. His voice wasn’t forceful as he’d intended, more whiney than outraged. “And we weren’t consulted or even informed until it was too late.”

“It’s not your money until next March,” Francie said.

“February,” Melody said.

“Excuse me?” Francie looked slightly taken aback to hear Melody, as if just realizing she was there.

“My birthday’s in February,” Melody said. “Not March.”

Bea stopped knitting and raised her hand. “I’m March.”

Francie did the thing she always did when wrong, pretended not to be and corrected whoever had corrected her. “Yes, that’s exactly what I said. The money doesn’t become yours until February. It’s also not completely gone. You will all get fifty thousand, more or less. Is that correct, George?”

“In that neighborhood, yes.” George was walking around the conference table pouring everyone coffee, clearly uncomfortable.

Melody couldn’t stop staring at her mother; she was starting to look old. How old was she? Seventy-one? Seventy-two? Her long, elegant fingers trembled a bit, the veins on the back of her hands were dark and prominent, the slackening skin marred with age spots, like a quail’s egg. Francie had always been so vain about her hands, demonstrating the reach of her fingers by bending them forward and touching the tips to the inside of her wrists. “Pianist’s hands,” she used to tell Melody when Melody was little. Melody noticed now that Francie consciously placed the left (which was slightly less mottled) atop the right. Her voice had thinned, too; the slightest difference in treble had crept in, not a rasp or a scratch, but a waver that troubled Melody. Francie’s decline meant they were all declining.

“You are still receiving a sum of money,” Francie continued, “that would make most people incredibly grateful.”

“A sum that is ten percent of what we were expecting. Is that correct, George?” Jack asked.

“Sounds about right,” George said.

“Ten percent!” Jack said, practically spitting across the table at Francie.

Francie removed a slender gold watch from her wrist and placed it on the table in front of her, as if putting them all on notice that their time was nearly up. “Your father would have been horrified by that amount. You know he meant the fund to provide a modest assist, not a true inheritance.”

“That’s entirely beside the point,” Jack said. “He set up an account. He deposited money. George managed it—very well. Now the deadline is approaching and it’s supposed to—wait a second—” Jack turned to George. “Leo still isn’t getting fifty thousand, is he? Because if he is? That is truly f*cked.”

“Watch your language,” Francie said.

Jack looked at Bea and Melody, mouth agape, and spread his hands wide. Melody wasn’t sure if he was gesturing in frustration or beckoning them to join in the conversation. She looked over at Bea who was intently counting stitches on whatever it was she was knitting.