Page 9 of The Deadbeat Next Door

Her question shouldn’t have surprised me, based on what she’d witnessed that morning, but I hadn’t been at all prepared for it. “I’m not looking for a relationship. Once I get the property I need, I won’t have time for a social life.”

Norma Jane took a sip of her iced tea and set down the glass, as though a decision had been made. “That’s too bad. I think you’re exactly the sort of guy Carrie Harrison needs. She needs some fun in her life, someone to take care of her.”

“I’m positive she’d disagree.”

Norma Jane wrinkled her nose. “Carrie Harrison is a good girl, but she has terrible taste in men. Lord knows Carrie deserves someone to think about her after all she’s done for…” She stuffed a bite of cake in her mouth like she was stopping herself from saying more, but my interest was piqued.

“All she’s done for who?”

Norma Jane waved a hand. “Well, you know, her students of course. She genuinely cares about them and looks out for them, she even tutors them.”

I knew there was more she wasn’t telling me, but I wasn’t going to pry. Carrie’s business was Carrie’s business. I didn’t need to know…I didn’t need. . . “Who else has she looked out for?”

Norma Jane smiled, her eyes lighting up like the spider who’d just caught an unsuspecting fly in her web. “Well, you probably have better things to do than sit around and listen to me talk about Carrie Harrison. You’ve made it very clear you have no interest in dating her.” She pushed back her chair and stood.

I stood, too. I wasn’t going to fall into this trap. Still…“I’m her neighbor. I might not want to date her, but I could be her friend.”

She sat back down, her smile widening, and she told me about Carrie Harrison. She’d been a surprise baby, born when her parents were in their late-forties and her sister was twelve. She and her sister had been incredibly close and, when her older sister had left for college, Norma Jane said Carrie cried for days. When Carrie was twelve, her father was injured at work and couldn’t go back. Carrie’s mother had continued working and Carrie had done most of the care-taking of her father until he was back on his feet.

When Carrie was fourteen, her sister was killed in a tragic and horrible accident, about which Norma Jane gave me very few details. But the details about what happened to her sister didn’t matter. What mattered was that Carrie was absolutely shattered by the death of her sister, but she held it together and helped her parents, who were both in their mid-sixties, as they grieved and fell apart for a little while. Right after college, Carrie took in her teenage nephew, Harrison, and became his sole guardian. According to Norma Jane, Carrie had given and given and given and rarely gotten back much of anything in return. I suspected Norma Jane was biased about the little girl she’d watched grow to an adult, but I didn’t doubt the facts of the story and I found myself believing Norma Jane might be right and Carrie did need someone to put her first. I couldn’t be her forever guy, but I could inject a bit of fun into her life. I could make time for that.

My phone rang just as I walked through the door of my rental house. I sank into a seat at the kitchen table. “Cody,” my youngest sister May said. “When are you coming home?”

“Not anytime soon, May. What’s up?” May was twenty-four, just out of college, and the baby of the family. She didn’t like it when she didn’t get her way and she hadn’t been getting her way lately.

“Have you found land for your winery?” Out of all my siblings, May was the most supportive of my plans, but that wasn’t saying much.

“Not yet.”

“Why don’t you come back?” she asked. “Jill just found land that would be perfect for your winery and it’s right next to the Burnside unit.”

The Burnside unit was our flagship hotel in a fleet of hotels my family owned and managed. I’d been expected to go into the family business and had for a bit, to please my father, before everything had gone to hell. “I’m sure Jill already has other plans for it.”

“Well, sure, she wants to build another golf course, but she’d let you have it if you came home.”

That was the logic of a woman whose relations had never told her no, but I knew better. My family thought I was crazy to start a winery, despite my dual degrees in wine business management and enology. Not that I could blame them considering my track record. And I even got where they were coming from. The typical winery took five years just to break even and that was if it didn’t fail miserably. But the risks were worth it to me. “I’m not quite ready to come home with my tail between my legs, May, what’s up?”

“I want to go back to school and get a degree in photojournalism and Mom is refusing to let me go. Can you talk to her?”

I debated pretending the phone had dropped her call, or creating a static noise with my mouth and pretending I hadn’t heard her question, but I’m not a coward, so I stayed on the line. I didn’t say anything, but I stayed on the line.

“Cody? Cody are you even listening to anything I’ve been saying?”

“No.”

“No, you haven’t been listening or no you won’t talk to Mom?”

“No, I won’t talk to Mom. I love you, but as your big brother it’s my job to tell you to pull your head out of your ass.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” May’s voice was a bit heated, but she wasn’t prone to drama. She should be prone to drama as the youngest, but she’d never had to resort to it to get what she wanted and had ended up being a relatively calm person.

“How many degrees do you have, May?”

“Three?” she said, like it was a question. Nothing about May was submissive or shy or stupid, so I knew the question in her voice was about where I was going with this.

“And how many jobs have you had using any one of those degrees?”

“None, but that’s because I hadn’t figured out what I really wanted to do, yet. Now I know. I want to be a photojournalist.”

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