As I take my seat, I hear shouting from the hallway. A moment later, my uncle rushes in, with two security guards chasing after him. He slams the door shut behind him and locks it.
He’s unshaven, eyes bloodshot and tie askew. I can smell the booze reeking off him from halfway across the room.
“You can’t do this to me!” he shouts.
Cyril, the board member who used to be his biggest cheerleader, winces and fans the air with his hand.
I stand up. “You’ve already been instructed to direct all communications to Hudson, Incorporated’s attorneys.”
“I am Hudson!” he bellows. “They’re my attorneys!”
“Talk to our attorneys.”
“I had the right to that money! I wasn’t stealing; it’s my damn company!” His face is flushing dangerously red. There’s a pounding on the door. The doorknob rattles.
“Why did you hide it, then?” Cyril glowers. Earl puts his hand on Cyril’s arm. Cyril nods. “Right. Talk to our attorneys.”
My uncle swings his furious gaze towards Cyril. “Traitor.”
“You made me look like a fool!”
Earl nudges Cyril, and Cyril falls sullenly silent.
“That’s not much of a stretch,” my uncle sneers. He sways where he’s standing. The pounding grows louder; the door is shaking.
He swings to face me. “Your father was a drunk and a liar and a cheat!” he bellows. “He was a thief and a loser and a…a liar!” He juts his jaw out belligerently.
Instinctively, I clench my fists, then I summon up strength from some unknown place inside me and relax my hands. A sensation of chilling calm washes through me, sweeping aside the burning rage. My uncle will never jerk my strings again.
“Yes, he was,” I say mildly. “And now it’s up to me to try to repair the damage you two have done to our family legacy.”
The door flies open, and four security guards rush in. They drag my uncle out, and his screams and threats ring in our ears until they’ve hustled him onto the elevator.
I sink back down in my chair. I’m dazed and heartsick, and I feel like I’m floating, like there’s no ground underneath my feet, but I think of Alice and Tamara and the legacy that I want to build for them.
I take a deep, shaky breath and nod at the board members. “Gentlemen, I call this meeting to order.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Winona
The cab driver’s air conditioning is on the fritz, so I have the windows rolled down. It’s been years since I’ve been back home, and I’d forgotten how humid it is in late August. I’m sitting in the back seat with my hair exploding into an atomic frizzball, sweat running down the sides of my face, wishing I’d remembered to pack a snorkel.
My stomach churns as we round the corner, but it’s not just the heat that’s making me queasy. I have no idea what I’ll be facing when I walk into the house. My parents have straight-up refused to speak to me for the last ten days. They wouldn’t even pick up the phone.
And up until this afternoon, when I climbed on the plane to Georgia, I’ve let it go, because I knew they needed time to simmer down. I crashed at Ariel’s apartment, hiding from Blake and reality in general, leaving apology messages on my parents’ answering machine several times a day. Isabella’s fiancé is back anyway, and I’m going to need to find a new place soon.
I wipe my forehead with my sleeve, wondering if I should have called my parents to warn them I was coming today. Then again, they’re not answering the stinking phone.
All my life, I’ve had typical helicopter parents. They were always calling me, checking up on me, freaking out if they didn’t hear back from me right away. When I was a teenager, I wished my parents would ignore me. Now that my teenage wish has come true, I’m ready to tear my hair out.
Still, I understand, because I hurt them in the worst way possible. I mean, Blake only revealed that I’d said their peach products make me sick, that I don’t want to live in my own home town, and that I’ve been sneaking charity orders to them for the last several years. I hit them right in the pride.
But we’re family, and we need to repair this. I have no qualms whatsoever about showing up and doing some groveling. I know sooner or later they’ll pick up the phone, but I don’t want to wait any longer, and this is the kind of apology best delivered in person anyway.
As we round the corner onto Peach Tree Lane, I’m bracing myself for all kinds of things – but not for what I see up ahead of me.
News trucks. A forest of antenna masts pointed at the sky. A group of reporters milling around outside the white picket fence. And, as we glide to a stop…my mother throwing a pie over the fence, splatting into the face of a reporter.
Oh, cow flops. Just what my parents need.
Whatever’s happening, I’m sure Blake’s behind it somehow.
“Stop here,” I say hastily. I throw a handful of money at the cab driver, grab my suitcase from the seat next to me, and leap out of the car.
The reporters all swivel to stare at me. The front door of my parents’ white bungalow-style cottage flies open, and my father comes barreling out. He dashes across the yard, flying past my mother, and throws open the gate. I lower my head like a linebacker and run towards it. When one of the reporters tries to block me, I slam the corner of my suitcase into his crotch, and he doubles over, howling in pain.
“Are you Winona?” a man in a seersucker suit yells. “Are you going to forgive him?”
What has he done?
“What has he done?” a lady with a blonde perm shouts at me.
Exactly.
I leap nimbly through the gate, and my father slams it shut behind him.
“Dad, I came to say I’m sorry!”
“Forget that. We’ve got bigger problems.” He glowers at the reporters.
“Yeah we do,” I mutter.
They’re pressing up against the white picket fence, threatening to topple it. My mother comes dashing up, her garden hose clutched in her hand. Uh-oh. She’s got the pressure washer attachment clamped to the end of it, and as my father and I fly past her, she lets loose at the reporters.
“Run!” she howls. “Save yourselves!” I don’t even look back; the shrieks and squeals of outrage tell me she’s hitting her target.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see that my Aunt Loretta’s Range Rover is parked in the driveway to the side of my parent’s house, behind their pickup truck. This day just keeps increasing in awesomeness.
We scramble up the front porch steps. For some reason, there are ten enormous vases full of wilting flowers lined up by the porch swing, taking up half the porch. They’re easily waist high. The monster trucks of flower vases.
Oh. Blake. Of course.
My father and I fly into the house and watch through the front door as my mother sends the reporters running to the other side of the street. They end up standing on the Widow Baudelaire’s lawn. She’s a hundred years old and mean as a rattlesnake.
“Mistake,” I observe to my father.
He drops my suitcase on the floor and nods. “Wait for it.”
Five, four, three…
The sprinklers turn on, sending the reporters dancing and leaping.