UM.... i JUST REALIZED THAT DUE TO A CUT A PASTE ACCIDENT, LAST NIGHT'S CLIFF HANGER WAS MORE OF A CLIFFHANGER THAN i INTENDED.
Meg looked at him.
“Fenn,” he said. “I’m Fenn Houghton.”
“Well, Fenn, can you tell me anything more? We weren’t close, but I’d love to know more.”
Tara looked at him for a long time, and then Fenn said, “Yes, I can, Meg. I can tell you he’s dead.”
When they came into the house, Layla had just arrived, and Adele came behind Tara and Melanie.
“Who is Ed Callan? What is all this about?” Adele said. “And is that girl all right?”
“Danny and Lee stayed back with her.”
“Ed Callan?” Brian turned from the salad he was making.
“You know him too?”
Brian, who knew Adele had no love for him, turned away and Layla murmured, “Who came looking for him?”
“You know him?” Adele said.
“Yeah,” Layla shrugged.
“Who is this man?”
“We need Noah for this,” Layla said.
“We need Claire and Paul,” Todd added. “Actually we need Barb.”
“No,” Adele said. “You all need to tell me who the hell Ed Callan is.”
“Ed Callan was a gangster—sort of—” Todd said, “who we took five hundred thousand dollars from.”
“What?” Melanie and Adele shouted. And then Melanie turned to Tara. “You knew?”
Tara shrugged and murmured, “Kinda.”
“Look, we didn’t so much steal it as find it,” Todd began.
“You all,” said Adele, “found it? Together?”
“Yes. The night we met Paul and Noah. Or rather the night we met Noah. When we were at Guy McClintock’s house and the police busted the party.”
Adele waved her hand and made for a chair.
“I need to sit down.”
“When Todd went to shoot that film, about a year and a half back, at Guy’s?”
“Yes,” Adele murmured, “I always thought that was a bad idea.”
“Well, it was a good idea,” Fenn said. “It was a good idea and the party got busted, and a bag of drug money was beside Noah. So after we brought out Noah, I brought of the money.”
“You didn’t tell me!”
“Well, no I guess I didn’t.”
“I’m your sister! Everyone in this room knows it.”
“I don’t know it,” Melanie said.
“Everyone knows it,” Adele continued, “but me. Brian,” she said, forcing all the violence she could into his name, “knows.”
“There’s a good reason for that,” Brian said.
“No there isn’t.”
“Yes,” Fenn said, “there is. But at first, he didn’t know it. Basically no one knew it. But then Ed Callan suspected that Noah had the money. I don’t know why.”
“Wait a minute?” Adele put up a hand. “Who the hell else knew?”
Sheepishly, or as sheepish as she could be, Layla put up her hand.
“What?” Adele snapped, turning around. “Oh, I don’t fucking believe this!”
“I found the body,” Layla said, as if she’d found a stray sock.
“Shit,” Adele said.
At this point they all went quiet when the door opened, but it was just Lee and a subdued Danasia.
Fenn nodded to his cousin and then said, “Anyway—”
“Fenn!” Adele interrupted.
“Anyway,” he continued, “We don’t know how this man found out. Maybe Noah let it slip. He was different back then. Anyway, he found out and he found Noah the day that Noah came back to Rossford. I was out at the church with Barb Affren, and we were coming back here, and Lee was on his way here with a gun, and well, this Ed Callan had Noah at gunpoint. We snuck around the house to sort of, you know, catch him off guard, save Noah.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
“We couldn’t have called the police!” Fenn said. And then he said, “Well, maybe we could have. Anyway,” he waved it off, “Ed Callan was sort of crazy and one thing led to another.”
“Oh, God,” Adele shook her head and began fanning herself, “Fenn, you killed this girl’s father?”
“No, you crazy bitch!” he fired back taking Dylan from Tom’s arms.
It was Lee who said, “Actually, I did.”
“So, I still don’t get why Brian knew,” Adele said, sulking on the sofa.
Fenn, who was merciless, said nothing, but sipped his tea. Todd said, “We found Ed Callan’s bank card, and Brian is good at numbers.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“How did he even know about the card?”
“Because we told him about it,” Fenn said, in exasperation. “He walked in on us trying to open it.”
“And you told him,” Adele said. “The man, who… You know what he did.”
“Everyone knows what I did,” Brian said, walking into the room. “They did it,” Brian turned to them, “because they wanted me to know they trusted me.”
Adele opened her mouth, and then snapped it shut, not trusting herself to speak.
“They trusted me,” Brian went on. “Even though there was never any reason I had given to be trusted. All Fenn knew was I wanted someone to trust me. And so he did. With everything.”
“You don’t have to go on like that,” Fenn said crabbily. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Brian said, “It was everything.
“That’s why he told me, Adele. I opened the accounts and found… A lot of money.”
“Which he has never touched,” Todd said.
“I touched a little bit,” Brian said. “I got that new car. Remember?”
Fenn sent him a longsuffering glance.
“And now,” Adele said, “all of that money belongs to that little waitress. So what are you going to do?”
“Indeed,” Todd said, nodding his head slowly and rocking back and forth on the edge of the sofa. “Indeed.”
“It’s so strange.”
“Me being married?”
“No, Mama. That’ll be a relief. Simon’s a good man, and I’m glad he’s moving in here.”
“Well, where else would he go? We can’t move into his apartment.”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought you’d sell the house and get a new one.”
Adele laughed. “I’m not selling this house. The one good thing Hoot ever did was finish paying the mortgage.”
“What I meant,” Layla said, “about it being so strange was it’s strange I’m not going to school tomorrow. Claire, Radha, they’re going to school. Bren is going to school. Me and Dena? We’re here till the wedding?
“I miss Brendan already. He’s been around every day since I was five.”
“Well, he’ll be at the wedding, and that’s a week away, Layla.”
“I know, Mom. But it’s not the same. Nothing’s the same.”
“Layla?”
Her daughter looked at her.
“I can’t believe you and Fenn knew about this.”
“Lee knew about it too.”
“Everybody knew.”
“No, not everybody. People who found out knew.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
Adele didn’t argue with that.
“I didn’t even tell Dena,” Layla said.
Then she said, “But I did tell Dena something.”
“Like what?”
“I told her I was sleeping with Aidan.”
“Layla!”
“I’m not,” she said. Layla sat up straight, “Mama, I repeat, I reiterate, I state, I fully declare that I am not really sleeping with Aidan Michaelson.”
“Then why… why did you tell her you were. She’s your best friend.”
“Because she’s sleeping with Milo.”
“What!”
“And she slept with Brendan.”
“Brendan! Brendan’s—”
“Gay guys can do it too, Mama.”
“Well, shit,” Adele said, folding her hands over her chest. “I don’t know a goddamn thing.”
“And her mother doesn’t know either,” Layla said. And then with a meaningful look she added, “And she won’t.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Well, she is eighteen. And so am I. And… not that I’m tired of being a virgin, but I am tired of feeling like one. If that makes any sense.”
Adele looked at her daughter, strangely for a moment, and then said, “Yes. It does, actually.”
Suddenly Adele Lawden hugged her daughter until Layla’s face was in her bosom.
“Layla, promise me that when it’s time for you to have sex, you come and talk to me, all right?”
“No, Mama,” Layla said from her mother’s bosom. “I probably won’t. Because that would be awkward and weird.”
Adele pulled her away and said, after some thought: “Yes, you’re probably right.”
“Where’s Fenn?” Noah said.
“He’s at home,” Dan Malloy said.
“Because, we’re planning his birthday party, and it wouldn’t make any sense for him to be here, now would it?” Brian looked at him.
They were in the rectory house, sitting around the large, shiny table in the dining room.
“I didn’t know that’s what it was?” Noah snapped. “I thought we were here to talk about the money.”
“The money. And the birthday party,” Brian said.
“Well, since they both belong to Fenn, it’s all the same.” Tom shrugged.
“Okay, the money… the last bit, the part Brian found, that is, most of it, does not belong to Fenn.”
“It kind of does,” Brian disagreed.
“I thought we agreed it was for all of us,” Lee said. “It could not have been found without all of us.”
“And now Ed Callan’s daughter has found all of us,” Lee said.
“We need to give her that money back,” Noah said.
“Bullshit!” Brian snapped.
They all looked at him.”
“Bull—” Brian began, “Shit!”
“We need to tell her the truth.”
They all looked at Noah.
“You,” Lee said, dipping his ashes, “want to tell that girl, oh your father was a gangster—”
“She already knows that. Pretty much.”
“Involved in gay porn,” Lee continued. “Who—wait—there’s more—sold drugs and got you fucked up and left you for dead when the house was broken into and then—”
“Wait,” Brian sang, sarcastically, along with Lee, “there’s more!”
“Held you at gunpoint and almost killed you until—and this really is more. I walked in and blew his head off.”
“What!” Brian and Dan said together.
“Oh,” said Lee, “I thought you knew. Well, anyway? Is that what you want to tell her?”
“And do you want to give to one person,” Brian added, “everything we’ve been sharing—”
“Hoarding,” Noah said. “We don’t know what to do with all of that. There’s got to be… taxes. Or something on the houses.”
“I can’t believe that,” Brian said. “I just can’t believe it’s right to turn everything over to her.”
“Except,” and it was Dan who finally spoke. “It is.”
“Baby,” Todd said, kissing his chest, “you’re not even here. How’m I supposed to fuck the life out of you if you’re not even here?” He put his chin on Fenn’s shoulder.
“I was just thinking about that girl. And the money. And things. I mean… If we tell her the whole truth….”
“If you tell her the whole truth that’s Lee Philips in jail for manslaughter.”
“You don’t know that.”
Todd straightened himself and reclined on one elbow.
“Do you trust the law to do the right thing?”
“No.”
“I trust us to do the right thing.”
“And what’s the right thing? Hand over the money and everything to this Meg girl?”
“No,” Todd shook his head and sat up, running his hands over his hairy chest. “Fuck no.”
Fenn looked at him, waiting for his lover’s solution.
“The right thing is to find a way to leave her the old guy’s ATM card and maybe the PIN number so she can get his funds and stuff and report them, and… all of that.”
“She’ll have to go to court for all that. I think we should let her into the secret or something.”
“No. No. No!” Todd said.
“Listen to you. At first you were the one who said we shouldn’t have anything to do with this money, but now—”
“But now we do, and now we’ve got to find a good way to give this gal something. But, everything? And an everything she wouldn’t know what to do with? The police and FBI would probably take all this shit away from her. No.”
“Fenn, what did you tell her. About her father being dead?”
“I said we had seen him. He had come to town. I even said he was looking for Noah. I said we were sure he was dead.”
“Tell her you’ve got the wallet. Give her the card.”
“What about all the work Brian did? The houses? The secret money?”
“This is above us right now,” Todd said. “All I know is we should give her the card and the money left in the account—which isn’t much of what it was, but more than enough to make a girl happy.”
“And the houses?”
“Like I said. That’s sort of above me. We need the master mind of a criminal.”
In bed, beside him, Fenn nodded. “We need Barb Affren.”
“Oh, dear,” Barb Affren said in her living room. “By which I mean, oh shit. This is not good.”
“What do we do about the houses, about all the hidden assets?” Brian said.
“She ought to have those things.”
“She ought to have a lot of things. This was her father’s money,” Noah said.
“Except,” Barb Affren said in her old wheedling voice, “that she will ask, how did you know about all of these houses, and you’ll have to say, because we broke into your father’s bank account. And then she’ll ask, ‘But how did you break into it?’ And you’ll say by using his ATM card. And then her eyes will get very big and she will say, ‘Oh deeear, how did you get the ATM card!’ And you will say: by robbing his dead body my dear.
“This,” Barb said tapping one bony finger on the table beside her, “will be when she asks how you got the ATM card from said dead body and, from then on, the answers get very, very bad for us. And bad for Lee. Because he shot the son of a bitch.”
“Well, we’ve got to find a way to do right by her,” Noah said.
“When did this kid have to start doing right by folks?” Barb shot her thumb at Noah. “We can do right by her, but we’ve gotta do right by us too! Namely by me. We’ve got to keep us and me and Lee, the hell out of jail!”
And then they all heard Milo Affren behind them, Dena beside him, say, “Why are you going to jail?”
I look forward to Eden and eventually The City Of Rossford.
