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Authors: Elizabeth Bass

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BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed
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39
I
MPOSTOR
P
ARENTS
“B
ut we might not receive an offer on the house for months.” Judging by her expression, Muriel was not impressed with Grace’s logic. She had come to light a fire under Grace, to get the ball rolling. Grace was not showing can-do spirit. “We won’t get
any
offers while this place is crammed with junk,” Muriel declared, marching through the house, opening cabinets and tut-tutting over their contents.
Grace grew hot. “The possessions of a man’s lifetime are not junk.”
“Maybe not to the person who collected them, but to the rest of the world they’re junk.”
“S-so what are we supposed to do?” Grace sputtered. “Empty the place out?”
“You’re going to have to do it sometime.” Apparently there was no
we
when it came to accomplishing this. Muriel’s eagle eye fixed on an object on the counter—a push puppet of a little boy. She held it up as Exhibit A. “I mean—stuff like this. Honestly, Grace! People going through a house don’t want to think some creepy old pack rat lived here.”
Grace stepped forward and snatched the toy from her. It had been delivered the day before, along with a companion figurine of a black-and-white dog. The boy had round eyes and painted-on chestnut hair like Dominic’s. She still wasn’t quite sure who was sending these little gifts, but it chafed her to have Muriel calling them junk.
“You need to decide what’s actually worth something and find a way to dispose of all this stuff. The rest of it needs to be hauled away.” Muriel stood in the middle of the kitchen and turned, trying to imagine it. “Empty, this place might look like something.”
“It looks like something now. It looks like a home.”
“You can’t just bury your head in the sand, Grace. The sign is in the yard. For Sale
.
It’s going to happen.”
“I know,” Grace said, growing agitated. “But what am I supposed to do? How can I get rid of everything?”
“Craigslist.”
At the sound of an unexpected voice, the two women whirled toward the doorway where Jordan stood. Somehow she had managed to sneak up on them, which seemed remarkable considering the amount of leather and metal she was wearing, and her orange hair.
“I got rid of a lot of things on Craigslist last year.” Jordan smiled at Grace. “If you want, I could help you.”
“There!” Muriel looked thrilled to have someone on her side, even if that someone was a teenager with hair the color of a traffic cone. “You’ve already got a helper, Grace!”
“Kitchen stuff, clothes, and knickknacks you could probably get rid of at a garage sale,” Jordan said. She pointed at the little toys on the counter. “Like those goofy things. Those would probably be snapped right up.”
Grace snapped them up now. “They’re not for sale.”
Jordan shrugged. “The bigger stuff you should probably list individually. Last year I advertised a partial estate sale and sold everything all at once. But I think I could have done better if I’d planned ahead better.”
Muriel was still grinning, totally entranced by this punk fairy godmother providence had sent to bolster her argument. “Isn’t this incredible, Grace? Who would have guessed there was a Craigslist genie right in our midst! This will be perfect.” She beamed her Pepsodent smile at Jordan. “I’m going to tell your dad about this next time I see him! He’ll be so proud!”
When Muriel finally left, Jordan glowered after her. “
That woman
is a walking billboard for Preparation-H.”
Grace would have laughed if she hadn’t been so confused. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh! I brought you cookies.” She dug through her leather bike messenger bag and produced a cellophane-wrapped plate of cookies. She placed it in the middle of the chrome dinette, pulling off the cellophane and making a little ta-da gesture.
“Why?” Grace couldn’t help asking.
Were they poisoned? What was Jordan doing here?
“’Cause we had some and I thought you might like them.” She shrugged. “Dominic’s really upset that you guys are leaving.” She tilted her head. “He said the professor’s going to an old folks’ home.”
“It’s an assisted living facility.”
Jordan’s lips compressed at the distinction. “Yeah, right. Okay. But where are
you
going to live?”
The question had been in the back of Grace’s mind for weeks now. She hadn’t allowed it full volume because she didn’t want to be swamped by panic and despair.
Back to Portland?
That was the most obvious answer. Her mother would be happy to have Grace out of the Olivers’ clutches again. But she couldn’t leave the city where her dad was.
Rent an apartment, find a new job, start over?
“I’ll figure something out,” she said finally.
“Seems to me this really sucks from your point of view,” Jordan said. “That’s why I thought you might like some chocolate chip therapy.”
Grace was still looking askance at those cookies.
“Also,” Jordan said in a rush, “I wanted to apologize for being such an asshat. Last spring. And a couple of weeks ago. And, well, basically 24/7 my entire life. I’m sorry. Seriously.”
Grace shifted.
“And I really will help you with getting rid of your stuff,” she added. “If you want me to.”
“That’s okay,” Grace said. “That is, I still don’t know what I’m doing. But thank you.”
Jordan shrugged. “Up to you. You know where to find me.”
She slunk out just as quickly as she’d come in, leaving Grace in a semidaze. She couldn’t look at those cookies without feeling a shiver of paranoia. What was going on?
When her father came through, he looked at the cookies and reached for one. “Who brought these?”
“Jordan.”
“Who?”
“Dominic’s sister.”
His hand froze. “The hoyden?”
After a perfunctory knock, the side door opened and Dominic came in. He headed straight for the cookies and sat down. “Can I have one? Jordan wouldn’t let me eat them over at our house.”
Grace frowned. “Why not?” Maybe they really were laced with cyanide or something.
But he gulped one down with no visible harm and reached for another. Iago came trotting in, and Dominic petted his head and grinned as the dog snuffled around the floor, anticipating crumbs. “Can y’all come to my school on the night of the twenty-second?”
That was two weeks away. “What for? Are you doing some sort of presentation?”
“Not really. It’s St. Xavier’s Parent Night.”
“We’d love to go!” Lou exclaimed, before Grace could signal caution. “Thank you for inviting us.”
“Wait,” Grace said. “Shouldn’t I talk to Ray?”
Dominic looked at her as if she were crazy. “Dad? Why?”
Grace shifted awkwardly. “Maybe he would think we were being . . . intrusive.”
“Lots of kids have other people besides their parents come,” Dominic said. “Grandparents or aunts, stepparents. Last year Jonah Renfrew brought his nanny . . . but that
was
sort of weird, actually.”
“Yes, but—”
“Dad’s probably not even going to make it, so if y’all don’t come, I won’t have anybody.”
It was settled, then, that they would go. Lou seemed to look forward to it, and despite her own misgivings about overstepping into Ray’s territory again, Grace couldn’t bring herself to rain on her dad’s parade, or Dominic’s. What did it matter? They would just pop in, smile at a teacher or two, and pop out before too many people absorbed the fact that they were impostors. No biggie.
“Do you need us to drive you to school on Parent Night?” Grace asked him.
He shook his head. “No, I have a ride.”
During the intervening days, she barely had time to think of Parent Night. She had to keep the house spotless in case people came to look at it, and then vacate when prospective buyers wanted to tromp through. She was also busy with the usual business of selling her CDs, and now she wondered if she should start trying to sell some of her father’s books online too. Feeling as if she was taking her life into her own hands, she broached the subject with him.
Though braced for a blast of indignation, all she received was a shrug.
“I enjoy looking at them,” he said, “but not enough to carry them all with me.”
His nonchalance upset her more than a full-scale opposition would have.
By the time Dominic’s Parent Night rolled around, she had almost forgotten all about it. Lily reminded her the night beforehand.
“Saint Xavier’s is sort of snobby,” she informed Grace.
“I’m sure I can handle it,” Grace said.
Lily didn’t look convinced. “Do you own a dress? You’re supposed to look nice.”
Grace laughed. “I won’t embarrass Dominic, I promise. Besides, Dad always looks dapper when he goes out. He’ll provide the wow for the both of us.”
“You should be wow too,” Lily argued. “Do you want me to pick something out for you?”
Grace practically had to bar her from the staircase to keep her from marching up to her room and ransacking her closet. Up to that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she must have let herself go in the past year, but if even a fifteen-year-old self-professed former geek wanted to give her fashion tips . . .
The next day she went for a haircut, dragging her father off with her to the salon. She dug a dress out of her closet that she hadn’t worn since leaving Portland. It felt like an outfit from another life. When she was checking on her dad, he was putting on a suit that was fresh out of a dry cleaner’s bag.
“How do I look?” he asked.
“Very Savile Row,” she replied, although he’d made a complete shambles of his tie. She reknotted it for him and combed his hair. “I don’t think Dominic will be embarrassed by us.”
As they were ready to leave for the school, Dominic knocked on the door. “Are y’all ready?”
Grace stepped back, confused. “Do you need us to drive you after all?”
“No—I told Dad y’all are coming with us, so he’ll drive.”
Dominic turned and gestured toward Ray, dressed in a suit, standing on the porch. Ray swept his gaze up and down Grace’s person, taking in her fancied-up appearance.
“C’mon, Professor Oliver,” Dominic said, practically vibrating with nervous energy. “We’re going to go in my dad’s Prius!”
He pulled Lou out of the house and led him to the car.
“I
did not
do this on purpose,” Grace declared, before Ray could say anything. “Dominic invited us. I had no idea—”
“It’s all right, Grace. I understand what happened.”
“But Dad and I don’t have to go. If you’d rather—”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m glad you’re coming along.”
She couldn’t believe that. “Really?”
A horn honked from the driveway. “Dad,
let’s go!
”
Ray’s lips twitched into a smile at Grace. “Okay!” he called back.
At St. Xavier’s, they started out in Dominic’s homeroom, where there was a contest to guess how many gumballs were in a jar. In secret, the parents had to write down an estimate of what half the total number would be, and then the following day the students would put down their own guess for half. The two numbers would then be added up and the parent-student team that came closest to the actual tally would win something.
Grace and her father held back, looking at photos the students had taken, but Dominic grabbed Grace’s arm and dragged her over to the gumball jar, which Ray was staring at intently. “C’mon,” Dominic said. “Y’all have got to make a guess. There’s a really good prize—it’s a vacation!”
“Seriously?” Grace asked. She’d never gone to the kind of schools that gave away real loot.
Dominic pointed to the flyer taped to the blackboard behind the gumballs. The vacation was a two-night stay at something called the Winecup Lodge and Spa in the Hill Country.
“How many do you think?” Ray asked her.
“I can’t know your guess,” Dominic said, backing away from them. “I’ll go introduce the professor to my English teacher.”
He disappeared.
Grace leaned in toward Ray. “I really am sorry. If I’d known you were coming . . . ”
“You wouldn’t have come?” he asked.
Actually, she supposed that
was
what she had meant, but she hadn’t wanted it to sound so blunt. “I just assumed that you would be . . .”
“Too busy for my kids?” he asked. “I’m not entirely negligent.”
“That’s not what I meant. I only wanted—”
He cut her wittering short. “Grace, one way to get over the awkwardness here might be to focus on the gumballs. Do you have a guess?”
His open strategizing to defuse the tension made her laugh. “One hundred and sixty?”
BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed
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