I’ve never lived in a world without Jules.
Not once did it occur to me that I would need to.
“At least that part’s over.” Danny sighs with relief and locks the front door.
He looks like hell and he smells like a bar. He has offered no apologies for disappearing after the burial service and leaving me alone to deal with the morbid host chores.
But I will not complain because Danny wasn’t expecting to be pulled aside by the family attorney this morning. He wasn’t expecting to hear that he’s been saddled with the joint guardianship of our two nieces.
“What now?” Danny wants to know and the question feels like a significant one but I act like it’s not.
“Let’s dump all the food trays.” I’m already moving toward the pantry in the hopes of locating some trash bags. “It’s all been sitting out for hours anyway.”
“You don’t need to do that, Gretch. I can do it.”
“Fine.” I find a yellow box of trash bags and toss it at him. “Then do it.”
He catches the box neatly in one hand.
We exchange miserable looks.
Music floats out of the den. Mara and Caitlin’s high, sweet voices join the chorus.
Danny stuffs all the food remnants into two black bags and carries them outside while I listen to the girls sing.
A few weeks before I graduated from high school, Jules told me she was pregnant. I was speechless. After all, Jules didn’t date. Jules hardly ever went out at all. Since our parents were basically out of the picture, she had devoted herself to getting me and Danny through high school. With Danny playing college ball in Michigan, she’d be free to do as she pleased now that I was also going off to college. Jules had put her own life on hold for us and I assumed once I graduated she’d leave Lake Stuart, hopefully embarking on the big plans she had before her future was derailed. There was no reason for her to stay.
Until there was.
Jules, though only twenty-one, was thrilled with the idea of becoming a mother. She announced she would remain in Lake Stuart, where she had the house and the familiarity of the only place she’d ever known. She’d keep her job at the physical therapy clinic and she would raise her child right here. She insisted she was happy. Lake Stuart and the baby were what she wanted. She refused to allow me to alter my college plans in any way.
So I left.
And Jules stayed.
Danny finishes dumping the trash and returns through the kitchen door. He brings the cold air with him and looks around like this is a place he’s never seen before and wishes he didn’t have to visit now. He catches me looking at him and nods in my direction.
“What did the ax wound have to say before she stormed out of here?”
I stifle a yawn. I’ve probably managed to get six hours of sleep in the last three days. “Mom was Mom. She complained about the food and the funeral service and said she had a long drive back to Rochester.”
He grunts. “Was she pissed that Jules didn’t want her to have the girls?”
“I’m sure she was pissed but only because of the optics.”
She shouldn’t have expected any different. Our mother didn’t even feel like finishing the job of raising her own kids. She handed us over to Jules and checked out.
“And what about him?”
“Dad? He was allowed to make a phone call this morning but I could only deal with him for a minute. He wanted to be reassured that Jules was laid to rest beside his parents.”
Danny nods. “I guess that was supposed to be his plot.”
“Well, I don’t think it matters much where your body ends up once you’re not in it anymore.”
I wish I hadn’t said that. Danny grimaces over my bitterness.
He moves closer to the antique end table that belonged to our great grandmother. There’s a framed picture sitting in the middle. I have a wallet sized shot of that same photo. Jules with the girls. Lake Stuart in the background.
Danny’s face sags as he stares at our sister’s vanished smile. “Do you have any idea who their father is, Gretch?”
I shake my head. “None.”
“But she told you everything.”
“She never told me that.”
“You think she knew who he was?”
I want to slap him for asking that question. “Jules didn’t sleep around!”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“She must have had her reasons for keeping his identity a secret. Maybe he was one of the summer people. Maybe he was a jerk. It doesn’t matter.”
He rakes a hand through the thick brown hair that could use an appointment with a pair of scissors. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“I don’t know but we’ll have to figure it out. Mara and Caitlin don’t have anyone else.”
“Maybe you should think about taking them back to the city.”
“A Brooklyn studio apartment isn’t a fantastic place to raise two kids.”
“Well, neither are second rate ballparks and cheap motels. I can’t very well bring them on the road.”
“And I’ve got another three semesters of law school,” I snap. “But I think it’s fair to say we’ll both have to make some changes.”
He crosses his arms and snaps back. “Right. I’ll just play baseball online.”
We’re falling back into our old bickering ways and there’s no Jules here to get in the middle and make us behave.
There’s no Jules.
That sentence will never stop being a kick to the chest.
I see a brand new wet splash of soda on the beige area rug and I feel a surge of intense annoyance for whoever carelessly spilled it today.
“The girls can’t hear us arguing about this,” I warn Danny. “We’re all they’ve got.”
He breathes out and hangs his head. “You’re right.”
“I guess our first act of irresponsible guardianship is saddling Trent Cassini with babysitting duties.”
“That old accusation against him was a crock of shit.”
Liam Cassini swore that he found Trent trying to smother their bedridden father with a couch pillow.
A painful pulse begins to grind against my right temple. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth for few seconds and feel the threat of the migraine recede slightly.
“I know. But he’s probably also not equipped to entertain children indefinitely.”
The allegation against Trent was never believable, even to someone who disliked him. For starters, Trent’s relationship with his father always appeared to be comfortable. After the elder Mr. Cassini began to succumb to his physical and mental ailments, Trent could be seen pushing his father’s wheelchair slowly down to the lakefront boardwalk. Despite all the gossip about him, Trent could show humanity when he chose to.
In the end, there were no formal charges filed but Trent got sent away to some reform school on the other side of the country and no one heard from him for two years. He was never seen again in Lake Stuart. Danny has always said that when Trent finally did get out, he wasn’t the same guy. There’s no telling what he’s really like now. Trent doesn’t visit and I was caught off guard by his sudden presence. His good looks have sharpened into a broad-shouldered, smoldering sexiness. He is exactly the kind of man I would drool over.