Money To Burn (43 page)

They could last forever this way. Who knows? In the meantime, Bobby’s racking up the frequent flier miles each time he goes to see her.

Burly and I are a different matter entirely. Burly has a lot of money now, but I wouldn’t dream of complaining. He paid for restoring my old Porsche, then bought a farmhouse in Chatham County where I can go whenever I get homesick for fresh air or the smell of pond mud. I also head his way when I’m in the mood for a long night of endless foreplay and incredibly imaginative sex. When people get nosy about our sex life, I tell them to mind their own business. It all comes down to one word anyway: “accouterments.” You ought to give them a try.

I love Burly, no doubt about that, but I still see Jack every now and then for a tumble. He’s a hard habit to give up. Burly doesn’t ask me about him and I never tell. Besides, it’s a different animal entirely, so the question of choosing one over the other never quite comes up.

When I am with Burly, it matters. It matters all the way down to my toes and in every cell in my body. I am never more alive. And when I’m with Jack, it doesn’t matter at all—and sometimes that’s a good thing. I’ve found that I need both in my life.

So Burly and I are building a life together that I suspect will end up somewhere in between a lifelong truce and a lifelong love affair.

We had two big hurdles to get over first. I helped him with his and he helped me with mine.

First, we took Randolph Talbot’s check for $25,000 and burned it in the kitchen sink. We sprinkled it with jubi-jubi powder that Marcus’s Aunt Clarissa sent me from New Orleans, causing the fire to spark and dance. As I watched the official bank paper curl, scorch and finally burst into flame, I felt released.

Randolph Talbot had many things in this world, but he did not have me. When his check was never cashed, he would notice—and he would know.

Plus, while I had no money, I could honestly say that money had no hold over me. I’d burned away being the girl from the poor white trash background forever. From now on, I’d just be me.

It was a grand gesture, but one I could afford. After all, Marie Talbot had sent me a check for $5,000 to cover my fee and expenses. She had given me the choice.

Burly exorcised his demons in a more difficult way. We drove down together to the perpetual care facility near Southern Pines, one of the few in the state. While he went into the room of the young girl whose life he had changed forever, I visited the youngest son of Sanford Hale.

The boy had been there for over five years. He was lying in his bed, a ghost of a human being, his dark body wasting away beneath the starched hospital sheet, curled up like a leaf drying in autumn. I wondered if any part of him was still left, and if there was a point in keeping him alive. Then I thought of his mother singing beneath the hot sun, of the hope in her face and the faith in her heart. And I thought about how, for some of us, the hope alone is enough.

When I made my way back down the hall, Burly was waiting for me in the lobby. He’d met his demon face-to-face, and she’d turned out to be an eighty-pound blonde in a twenty-thousand-dollar state-of-the-art plastic body suit. She’d been unable to speak, but Burly felt sure she had listened. She’d given him a signal, he said, one he thought was a sign of forgiveness.

But he would not tell me what it was.

Burly is like that. He has his secrets. He has a lot of things he likes to keep private. He, like Lydia, needs his barriers in order to deal with life.

I’m trying to respect that. I’m trying not to keep crashing through those barriers. But it’s hard for me. Burly knows that. He says he loves me just for trying, then adds that sometimes I am more t {s I0”>

Sometimes at night, we sit alone on his back porch and talk about maybe getting a dog. It has to be a hound, of course, preferably one so lazy it urinates lying down so neither one of us has to mess with walking the damn thing. But we agree that a dog might make us a family, and that’s something we both kind of crave. I don’t have a family, of course, except for my grandfather. And I still haven’t found the courage to go home and look him in the eye. And while Burly may have parents, he doesn’t really have a family. They’re still just as disapproving as ever, doing wrong in their desire to do good.

So it looks like it’s going to be a dog for us, as we search for a way to build a family. Burly thinks family is the most important thing in the world, he says realizing that was the one thing he gained from his brother’s death.

I told him that it was easy for him to say, since he’s rolling in the bucks.

“So what?” he said. “You and I both know that money can’t buy you happiness.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded. “But you have to admit that—for some people—it sure as hell buys enough.”

# # #

Copyright © 1999 by Katy Munger

e-book version published by Thalia Books February 2011

Visit 
http://www.katymunger.com
 for more information on the author and her books.

Books by Katy Munger, writing as Gallagher Gray

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A CAST OF KILLERS

DEATH OF A DREAM MAKER

A MOTIVE FOR MURDER

Casey Jones books by Katy Munger:

LEGWORK

OUT OF TIME

MONEY TO BURN

BAD TO THE BONE

BETTER OFF DEAD

BAD MOON ON THE RISE

Books by Katy Munger, writing as Chaz McGee

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ANGEL INTERRUPTED

ANGEL OF DARKNESS (2012)

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.