The Accidentals Read online

  Why yes, I am. Livid, even. But I can’t let Frederick know how I really feel, or he’d just hightail it back to California before I get a chance to… To what, exactly? Get to know him? State my case? Learn the truth?

  Make him sorry?

  “Just be careful, Rae,” Haze says gruffly. “Call me for any reason. I’ll come get you.” He kisses me quickly, just a peck. Then stalks off, angling close to Frederick Richards, staring him down all the way.

  I watch him go. Then I take a steadying breath and start again toward the man who is my father.

  Frederick Richards takes off his sunglasses and stows them in his shirt pocket. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” I say, just standing there, not sure whether he expects me to get into the car or not.

  His eyes follow Haze toward the parking lot. “All right. I know it’s hot, but do you feel like walking?”

  “Sure?”

  “If you want, you can stash the backpack in the car.” He holds out a hand.

  “Okay.” I hand it over.

  He opens the back door and puts my pack on the seat. Then he closes the door and turns to me.

  “You can’t park here,” I have to point out. “They tow.”

  “Oh, it will be fine. Carlos will move the car if he needs to.” He opens the passenger-seat door. “Stay cool, man. I’ll call you.”

  “Okay, boss,” comes a voice from inside.

  My father grabs two bottles of water off the seat and hands one to me. Then he shuts the car door and tips his head toward the sidewalk that leads toward the sporting fields. “Shall we?”

  My fingers fumble the cap on the water bottle as I keep pace with him.

  “So this is your school. How is it?”

  This is an easy question. I can do this. I take a swig of water. “Not bad. But Florida isn’t known for excellent schools.”

  “It looks nice to me. My high school looked a lot like a jail, which I found to be a fitting metaphor.”

  “Not a fan of school, huh?”

  My chirpy answer startles both of us. He gives me a quick smile. “Not so much. I was impatient. Thought I had more important places to be.”

  We are having an actual conversation. The walking is good—much better than sitting on plastic chairs in the social worker’s office. Maybe he knew that when he asked me to walk.

  “I hear you have big plans for next year,” he says.

  “Yeah, Claiborne Prep.” The acceptance letter had meant everything to me for about a month. And then one morning my mother couldn’t get out of bed, and everything went to hell. Frantic, I’d called 911. A couple of weeks later she was gone.

  “That’s a big decision,” he says carefully. The sidewalk stretches toward the baseball diamond.

  “Yeah…” I can’t tell him my real reasons for wanting to go there. I can’t explain that besides the excellent education, I’m dying to see the place where my story began. “My, uh, guidance counselor wanted me to go to private school. There aren’t enough honors courses here.”

  That’s true. But it’s not the whole truth.

  “Well, good for you. Claiborne is a nice town. I went to college there.”

  Of course I know that already. It says so right on Wikipedia. “It looks nice in the pictures,” I say lamely.

  He stops. “You’ve never been there?”

  “Not since I was a baby. Then after I applied… It wasn’t a good year to travel.” My mother spent the winter lying on the sofa, getting thinner and losing her hair. But I hadn’t panicked, because the chemo seemed to be shrinking her tumors.

  He sucks in a breath. “Right.” We continue along the walkway. The baseball team is practicing, but the bleachers are empty and shaded. He walks over to them and sits down, so I sit too. The ball players are engaged in some sort of complicated throwing drill, balls flying everywhere. Every few seconds the coach blows his whistle.

  “Rachel…”

  It’s wild hearing him say my name. His speaking voice has the same rough timbre as his singing voice, and I’ve been studying the sound of it since forever.

  “I can’t even imagine the year you just had. And I can’t decide whether it’s rude to ask you to tell me about it, or rude not to ask.”

  There’s no way I can talk to Frederick about my mother’s death. I can barely think about it myself. So I say nothing.

  “But I do need to ask you about this place you’re staying. Do you feel safe there?”

  I don’t look at him. “It’s not dangerous. It’s a little gross, but nobody is trying to hurt me. And I’m the oldest one there.”

  “How is it gross?”

  I look up at his face for half a second, but it makes me nervous. “It’s just dingy. The kids that live there are depressing.”

  “But they leave you alone?”

  “Pretty much. They go through my things when I’m not around. I was going to try to get more of my stuff out of our house. But now I think there’s really no point. I had my own bottle of shampoo, and it disappeared. Things like that. It’s just…little stuff.”

  “What if you had a trunk that locked?”

  “It’s not allowed.”

  He rubs his chin. “Well, that sounds craptastic. And you probably don’t feel like yourself.”

  “Not really. No.” As far as I can tell, I’m never going to feel like myself again, and it isn’t the group home’s fault. “It’s a lot of small humiliations. Free lunch tickets. Not enough minutes in the shower.” I finger my hair. It’s shaggy and terrible.

  “What’s happening with your place on Pomelo Court?” he asks.

  His mention of our house startles me. Of course he knows where we lived—he’s been sending us a check there every month. He can probably rattle off the zip code.

  It’s just that he’s never once stopped by.

  I realize he’s waiting for an answer. “Um, one of my mother’s friends is taking care of things. Mary.”

  “Mary…” he repeats. His eyes are a warm shade of gray. That’s something I never could quite tell from pictures of him. “Is this someone you trust?”

  “Well, sure. She was Mom’s best friend. She runs a salon in South Eola.”

  “Okay,” he says, his face thoughtful. “Look. The social worker and the lawyer tell me that until you turn eighteen in a month, there are only little things I can do for you. If you need to find your stuff, or hit your friend Mary’s salon for another bottle of shampoo, I can help with that.”

  I put a hand to my stringy hair. “I would love to see Mary.” In fact, I should have thought to visit her myself. “She’s probably working, though.”

  He shrugs. “So, let’s go. If she’s too busy to talk today, you can go back tomorrow.” He stands up, and I follow him.

  I used to be the sort of person who found answers to problems. Now I’m somebody who life leads around by the elbow.

  Chapter Three

  Back at the car, Frederick opens the back door and slides across the seat. I get in next to him.

  The driver turns around to look at us, and I recognize him. He’s the man who’d smiled at me from the car in Hannah’s parking lot yesterday. “Hi, Rachel,” he says. “I’m Carlos.”

  “Hi, Carlos.”

  “Where to?”

  “East Washington Street?”

  “Gotcha.” He reaches for a GPS on the dash, although I could have told him where to go. “Hey, boss,” he says, handing a phone over his shoulder to Frederick. “It’s been dancing the Macarena.”

  “That’s unfortunate.” The car slides away from the curb while Frederick scrolls through messages on his phone. Then it rings in his hands. He taps the screen and puts the phone to his ear. “Henry. What now?” He listens for maybe two seconds before cutting Henry off. “I know that chaos makes you twitchy. But I’ve been your easy client for a decade. You’ve never bailed me out of jail, or FedExed me to the Betty Ford clinic, right? But for once I really need your help, and you act like I owe you some
thing.”

  I stare out the window, feeling like an eavesdropper.

  “I don’t have answers for you yet. And I understand that I’m going to look like an asshole before this is over. But it is what it is. I have to go now.” Frederick ends the call.

  He throws the phone on the seat. “So, Carlos. How are the Dodgers doing?”

  “Not good, boss,” the driver answers, turning the radio up a notch. “It’s going to be another humiliation.”

  “That seems to be a theme today.”

  * * *

  The bell tinkles on the salon door when I open it. I don’t know the young woman behind the counter. But Mary is in her usual spot near the window, with an elderly woman in her chair. I stop to watch, and Mary looks up.

  “Rachel!” She puts down her scissors and comes running. “Oh, honey! Why aren’t you in Atlanta with your aunt?”

  This is not an easy question to answer, but I don’t have to. Because Mary’s eyes travel up and over my head, and then she gasps.

  I turn around to see Frederick standing there in front of a display of haircare products. Straight-faced, he raises a hand and salutes the two of us.

  Mary gets ahold of herself. “Come with me, sweetie. I have someone in my chair, but Megan is going to give you a nice shampoo, and you need conditioner. Then I’m going to trim you up while we talk, okay?” She cups my face in her hands and frowns. “You look awfully tired.”

  I allow myself be snapped into a salon gown and led to a sink. I tilt my head back onto the neck rest.

  “You let me know if that’s too hot,” the girl says.

  “Okay.” I close my eyes while shampoo is massaged into my scalp. This is a nice salon, and Mom and I can only afford it because Mary gives us a deal. The shampoo girl takes her time, rubbing her thumbs on my temples, massaging the crown of my head. Her gentle touch has the unexpected effect of making me want to cry. Every swirl of hands through the soap threatens to break me.

  “Just one more rinse,” she says. And when I finally sit up again, I look around. Frederick has seated himself on a pink divan with a tufted footstool. He has a magazine open on his lap, and he’s poking his phone with one finger.

  “Come quick,” Mary says. “My next client is always late. We can make this work.”

  “Thank you,” I say, sitting in her chair.

  Mary swivels the chair around, and the face that comes into view in the mirror looks so hollowed out that I recoil.

  It’s my own face.

  “Oh, sweetie. Are you okay? You have to tell me what’s going on. And you look so thin, Rachel.”

  I close my eyes. “I’m okay… It’s just hard.”

  “That’s your father?”

  I nod. “I met him yesterday.”

  “Heavens. Your mother once told me who he was. But then she never brought it up again. Forgive me, this is going to sound awful. But I was never really sure she was serious.”

  Serious as cancer.

  In the mirror, I see Mary’s eyes sweep to the side as she checks Frederick out. “He sure is a looker. No wonder your mother…” She lets the sentence die.

  I don’t blame Mary for saying it. I’ve been trying to picture it myself—a twenty-one year-old Freddy, and a nineteen-year-old Mom. She was biding her time in New Hampshire, saving up for college. And he would have been a local star and a new graduate of the music school, just months away from breaking out nationally.

  Somehow they met one night, maybe after one of his concerts. Together, they took off all their clothes and made a baby. And then he left for his first tour before Mom even knew what happened.

  The mother I knew wasn’t like that. She was the original Good Girl—attending nursing school while working full time, then working double shifts for the overtime pay. My mom could smell an incomplete homework assignment or a dirty dish from a block away.

  The mom I knew had a tired smile, and didn’t swoon for anyone.

  “Since you’re here, we should talk about the house,” Mary says, her scissors working behind me. “The electricity is the only thing I left on. And the rent is paid up through August fifteenth.”

  “August fifteenth,” I repeat.

  Mary sets down her scissors and moves around the chair to face me. “If you need another month, we can tell the landlord. But I didn’t think you’d want to spend your money on a house you’re not living in.”

  “No, I…” I’m supposed to be heading to Claiborne soon after that. “That sounds fine.”

  “I’ll pack the place up, Rachel,” Mary whispers. “You don’t have to do that. But there must be things in your room that you want to sort through, since you’re still here. Are you going to Atlanta at all?”

  My answer is slow. “I don’t think so.” My aunt Lisa had come to the funeral. The details of that day are patchy in my memory. The funeral home was packed, mostly with nurses from the hospital where my mother worked. My choir friends were there too, but I hadn’t talked to them. I’d sat, numb, in the front row between Haze and the aunt I barely knew.

  My mother’s sister lives seven hours from Orlando. They weren’t close, and I’ve met her only a couple of times. After the funeral, and a lunch arranged by Mary at which I ate nothing, my aunt Lisa drove back to Atlanta without me. She’d left it to Hannah Reeves to explain.

  “You have just a couple of weeks of school left,” Hannah had said in her ever-steady voice. “I know that your prep-school acceptance is very important to you, and that you need your grades. And Lisa told me she can’t stay on in Orlando without losing her job.”

  It sounded logical enough until I met Hannah’s gaze. It was the only time I’d seen her look anything but self-composed. For the barest moment, Hannah’s hazel eyes got wet.

  That’s when I’d looked out of Hannah’s car window for my first view of the Parson’s Home for Children.

  Hannah had taken a deep breath through her nose. “Rachel, this happens a lot. Your mother didn’t expect the end to come so fast. Nobody ever does. She didn’t think she’d die before you turned eighteen. And your aunt is in shock right now. I’m going to give her a week, and then I’ll call her again to see if you can join her in Georgia when you’re done with school.”

  But then Hannah tracked down Frederick instead, who surprised us both by showing up a few days later. And I still don’t know what it means for me.

  While Mary blow dries my hair, the next client arrives. Her handbag is an elaborate, quilted monstrosity. “Just one minute,” Mary cries. “Listen, you call me any time,” she whispers to me. “I’m always home by seven. Seriously, I want to hear from you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mary waves off Frederick’s payment.

  “How about I leave a tip?” As I watch, he puts five twenties into a tiny salon envelope and leaves it at Mary’s station. “Didn’t you need shampoo?” he asks, jutting a thumb toward the wall of products.

  “Well…” The things in Mary’s shop are twenty-five bucks a bottle. My mom and I bought our shampoo at the drugstore, like normal people.

  Mary snatches a bottle off a shelf and presses it into my hand. Then she gives Frederick a firm stare. “She needs to eat more often,” she says. Then, to me: “Call me, sweetie. Any time.”

  * * *

  An hour later, I sit on a chaise lounge under an umbrella beside the Ritz-Carlton hotel pool. With my math book in my lap and a pencil in my hand, I could almost be studying.

  Except that Frederick is seated a couple of umbrellas away from me, growling into his phone.

  Whoever Henry is, Frederick is unhappy with him. “Look, I get that the promoter has your balls in a vice. Otherwise you wouldn’t be whining at me like a fucking girl. But this is only going to get worse before it gets better.”

  There’s a lull, and I think maybe they’re done arguing. But not yet. “Dude,” Frederick says, his voice tight, “I need the calendar cleared, and you need to deal with the fallout. Rip the Band-Aid off, Henry. Do it now, or I’ll hi
re someone who will.”

  Yikes.

  And if Frederick needs his calendar cleared, is that because of me?

  A waitress approaches, flashing a set of perfectly pearly teeth. “How are you doing today?”

  “Fine, thanks,” I say automatically. Her name tag reads Heidi. What would Heidi even do if I admitted that I was not at all fine?

  “Can I bring you anything? A glass of lemonade? Iced tea?”

  “No, thank you.” This is a nicer hotel than the ones where Haze and I sneak in to use the swimming pool. A glass of tea is probably six bucks.

  “Just wave me down if you change your mind.” She gives me another brilliant smile and moves on.

  As it happens, I end up ordering that tea an hour later, anyway.

  “We’re in a bit of a hurry,” Frederick tells another smiling waitress as we sit down at a cafe table. “What can we order that comes out quick?”

  “Steer clear of the pizza,” she advises. “Salads and burgers don’t take as long.”

  “Gotcha. Pizza at a hotel is a pretty dicey proposition, anyway. Okay, I’ll have a burger, medium rare. And fries.”

  I order the Cobb salad. And when she walks away, a silence falls over us. Frederick fidgets with his roll of silverware. I watch a young father in the swimming pool. He stands in the shallow end, encouraging his little girl. “You can do it! Kick!”

  The child is wearing pink swim fins and a Mickey Mouse bathing suit. Frederick notices them too. The swimming dad plucks the little girl out of the water and whirls her around. “Whee!” he says. “Whee!” And then he says it ten more times.

  I feel like throwing my overpriced iced tea at them.

  That’s when Carlos approaches our table with a little black shopping bag. He deposits it in front of Frederick.

  “Would you bring the car around in fifteen?” Frederick asks. “We’re going to have to dine and dash.”

  “Sure thing.” Carlos gives me a face-cracking smile as he turns away.

  Frederick reaches into the bag and pulls out a phone, which he hands to me. “This is for you. So I can get in touch with you.”