Til Debt Do Us Part (Married At Midnight #4)

Chapter 4

Four

Talia

I carry a patchwork quilt in my arms as I descend Hope House's narrow stairs. It's cold here in the ancient house, as it is every winter, being that we are so close to the shore. The house is precariously close to being eaten up by the warehouse district. It stands amongst the last remaining row of ramshackle homes, once proud, now gone to seed. Everything else has been boarded up and torn down, but the children's shelter and the few houses around it have somehow survived.

I step off the stairs into immediate chaos in the downstairs living room. Olivia is very patiently sitting in the middle of the circle of girls who are putting makeup on her. To my left is a row of couches that another group of children are currently trampling over, playing a rowdy game of tag. I walk over to put the quilt down on a pile of blankets and start picking up toys to return to the toy box in the corner.

Olivia turns, her bright smile growing as she sees me, and looks at her watch. "It's almost three o'clock. Time for their nap."

I give her a watery smile. What she really means is that she will send the kids upstairs to nap soon, and we will both slip out unnoticed. At least, that's what we have planned. Leaving here is always really hard for me and slipping away is the only way I can do it and not be an overwhelmed mess for at least an hour afterward.

“That sounds good.” I say, though I don’t mean it. I feel wrung out and paper thin after spending the morning here. I know it’s good for the soul, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling emotionally drained after spending so much time with the kids.

One very small girl with reddish blonde hair tugs on my sleeve. She looks between me and Olivia, sinking her hands into the pockets of her secondhand, oversized overalls and sticking out her bottom lip.

"Are you coming upstairs to nap with us?” she asks.

I look at Olivia, my breath catching. This little girl looks exactly like me twenty years ago. She even ended up here at Hope House, just like I did early in my life.

Olivia sees my distress and rushes over to the little girl, trying to explain to her in the gentlest tone possible. "We have to go home, Maddie. That's where we keep our toothbrushes, our nap blankets, and our extra clothes. But we will be back before you know it. I promise."

Maddie glances at me, her lower lip starting to quiver. "You're going, too?"

She looks between me and Olivia, her eyes wide, her chin wobbling.

"Don’t leave," she asked. "Miss Olivia, Miss Talia, I want you to stay with me."

She appears to be on the verge of tears. "Olivia and I have to head home. We have to go to sleep and go to work. But we will be back very soon.” I cross the room, kneeling near her feet. This is the hardest part of volunteering at a children's shelter. Telling the kids that you have to leave in order to sleep or work or really do anything but hang out with them is incredibly hard.

"Olivia and I have to go home. But Bert and Miss Alina are just coming in to get you ready for your nap. Don't you want to see Bert? He brought his puppy with him."

Maddie tilts her head back, inconsolable. Usually the puppy is a great way to draw a kid’s attention to something positive. But not today. She flings her arms around my shoulders and starts sobbing. "You can't leave! Everybody leaves all the time, and it isn't fair! I don't want you to go!"

Everything in my body seizes up. I raise a trembling hand to the back of her head, putting her wild curls into a gesture that is supposed to be soothing. I glance at Olivia, my eyes welling up.

She knows exactly what I'm struggling with and how much I want the little girl in my arms to be able to rely on me. The only problem is that after Maddie is long gone, I need to stay here at Hope House, ready to open my arms to dozens of other kids without anywhere to go.

Olivia comes over to us, kneeling beside Maddie. She puts her hand on Maddie's shoulder, rubbing it reassuringly.

"I know. I know that it doesn't seem fair. You're allowed to have big feelings about it. That's totally valid. But I'm going to tell you right now, if you don't go upstairs for your nap, Miss Alina is going to miss you. You don't want that, do you?"

Maddie pulls back, her head turning to consider Olivia. Her crying slows, and she wipes a hand across her snotty nose.

"Miss Alina will miss me?" she asks.

"And Bert too. It's their turn to put you to bed and tuck you in. We can't take that away from them. That wouldn't be fair." I stroke Maddie's hair one more time and then gently separate our bodies. She seems pretty fragile, but another older child comes over and grabs her hand.

"I heard that we get pudding cups for snack. Come on, let's go see."

Maddie allows herself to be pulled away from me, her gaze shifting toward the stairs. I give the older girl a sincere thank you glance, but see that her desire for pudding was genuine. Olivia stands up, offering me her hand. I take it and get to my feet. Olivia gestures toward the stairs, calling the kids.

"Come on, everyone. Ms. Alina is waiting for you. Let's go."

The sound of tiny feet clattering up the stairs soon drowns out my anguish. I take a deep breath and look at Olivia, shaking my head. She just jerks her head toward the door, heading over to put on her heavy coat and gloves. "Come on. It's hard to be here, I know."

Bundling myself up, I sigh. "It's necessary, though. If we didn't volunteer, who would take our place? Somebody has to be here for the kids."

Olivia gives me a quiet smile and opens the door for me.

As soon as we step out on an icy, windy day, I want to shrink down into my coat. The cold weather will not leave me any room for emotion. Any tears on my face or any bit of water sniffling from my nose will become frozen soon enough.

Olivia looks out at the cobblestone street, her gaze going straight down to the frenzied gray-green sea. You almost can't see the dark shoreline today because the wind is making the waves so wild.

She shivers and pulls me close, turning away and toward the center of town. We walk along the sidewalk, the houses getting progressively nicer until we reach the commercial district, where the buildings become three and four story tall brick structures.

The town here is admittedly quite charming, with everything looking like it came out of a retro, post-war movie.

All the brownstone houses are well maintained, and the plate glass windows of the businesses are often decorated this time of year with Christmas and Hanukkah lights. As we take a right, we pass by our favorite bakery and cafe; its broad display window is all decorated with tiny snowflakes. It’s a magical winter wonderland, white and red cakes and pies nestled in a white silk centerpiece. I force myself to walk past it, but I definitely notice that there is a big cherry pie sitting next to a red velvet cake with a piece cut out of it right in the front of the display.

I rarely spend money on luxuries like dessert and coffee, especially when someone else makes them. But my stomach rumbles; it's long past lunchtime, and I am getting quite hungry. My footsteps slow.

"Do you want to stop?" Olivia asks.

I blush and shake my head. She always notices my moods—one of her best and worst qualities.

"No, it's fine. I have some leftovers at the bookshop."

Olivia shrugs her shoulders and doesn't press the issue.

At least now that we are closer to the heart of our town, we are farther away from the sea and a little bit warmer.

"Should we talk a little bit about the plans we have for the future of Hope House, of getting a newer house in a better part of our town?"

Olivia is not too interested in the conversation after a moment, so I let it go.

I see that Olivia has a tear in the back of her dark coat. I stop, catching the ends briefly with my fingertips. "You have a tear." Olivia looks back and grimaces. "I know. I just got it last night. I tried to climb over my neighbor's fence to grab my cat, and I heard it rip. Does it look terrible?"

I shrug and start walking again. "Not terrible. But you should let me sew it. There is no need to go around looking tattered and frayed."

"I was just thinking of getting a new coat," she says. "This one is four years old. It has lived a good life."

"You're going to give up a coat that has served you so well without so much as a fight?" I roll my eyes. "Let me take a crack at it. Then you can decide when it's fixed whether you want to spend your precious dollars on a new coat or something more important."

Olivia frowns a little. "Maybe I want a new coat. Maybe I want a different style. I know that you won't approve, but I don't have to patch every hole and mend every ripped seam. I am not as handy as you are."

I shove my hands into my pockets and give her a long look. "You don’t have to be. That's what I'm saying. I'm offering to fix your coat for you."

Her mouth bunches up the way it often does when she wants to say something but bites her tongue. I know that look exactly. After all, we’ve been best friends for almost our entire lives.

"What?" I ask.

"We should talk about something else. Have you got plans for the rest of the week?"

I reply, feeling like I didn't really get my point across about her coat. "Not exactly. I work at the bookstore every day. I'm thinking of cooking a lasagna tonight because I have these coupons that go bad pretty soon that are for ground meat, noodles, and cheese. All totaled, I won't have to spend more than fifteen dollars to make the whole pan of lasagna. And I know that Minnie likes it when I cook, so..."

"Fifteen dollars?" Olivia looks at me, surprised. "That's really cheap."

I slide her a sly smile. "I know. I've gotten to be an expert at extreme couponing."

She smiles and shakes her head. "Of course you are."

"What, I am!" I say in protest.

Her face splits into a smile. As we round a corner and go by a dollar store, she mock bows to me. "All hail the queen of penny pinching, Lady Talia."

I grin. "I'll take that praise. When you have to take on the mantle of household finances at age ten, you develop a keen sense of how money can be spent or saved."

Olivia looks thoughtful. "Yeah, I can see it. Minnie seems like a lovely person, but I don't imagine that she is particularly spectacular with money."

I snort. "Spectacularly bad, maybe. Or rather, it isn't that she is even bad with it. It's more like she gives it away when she doesn't even have anything to give. It's a little frustrating." I scrunch up my face. "Not that I am complaining about her being charitable, I guess. She did adopt me."

Olivia frowns and puts her hand out, shielding me from walking into the street. We stop, and a police officer runs by, clearing the street I was about to step into. He steps closer to me, looking to his right. Glancing down the street, I am able to get a glimpse of the beginnings of a large black hearse. The cop runs ahead to the next intersection, and the procession of vehicles approaches.

I can see from here that all the vehicles following the hearse are limousines, each one long and black, with their windows tinted so that I can't make heads or tails of who is inside.

My mouth pulls to the side, as I am temporarily distracted.

I can tell by the niceness of the hearse that the funeral procession is heading up toward the nicer cemetery, up by the Morgan estate that looks down on the town. Everybody else has to be buried in the same place, about five miles south of our little town, but not the rich people. My mouth puckers, and I feel a wash of resentment for someone that I don't even know.

Olivia isn't distracted and continues our conversation, though.

"She's your aunt, Talia. Not a random stranger. I love Minnie as much as anyone else, but you make it sound as though she adopted some child she didn't even know." I can feel the words of protest filling up my chest. I peer down the road, not sure what we are stopped for.

This is an old argument between Olivia and I, nothing new. We are not about to cover any new ground right now if we bicker.

"Hey, can I ask you to change the subject again?"

Olivia looks surprised, but she just shrugs. "Sure. What do you want to talk about?" Then she gets a mischievous smile on her face. "Maybe about going back to the Raven’s Head Club?"

My entire face turns bright pink. I look at her and wish that I hadn't ever been so loose with my emotions and with my body. That's one way to say it, at least.

"I think I still have a hangover from drinking all that alcohol. Can you have a hangover for a month?"

She grands. "Maybe. Or maybe you're experiencing withdrawals from the really wild sex that you had that night."

"Olivia! I didn't tell you any of the details because I didn't want you to get any ideas about having another night out like that one."

"No, but you did say that you lost your v-card. When I found you the next morning, you were still wearing your same clothes. I asked what you had been doing, and you went bright pink and couldn't meet my eyes. We've been friends for long enough that I know exactly what that means."

In order to appear as prim as possible, I fold my hands just below my waist. "For your information, I think I was more drunk than I should've been. And you didn't say anything when I left the place with Burn."

"Should I have?" Olivia frowns and sticks her hands in her pockets.

"No, I mean not exactly. I certainly had fun. And he was... very attractive. But it's not a chapter of my life that I am particularly proud of, nor one I care to repeat."

Olivia bleats out a laugh. "Sorry. It's just, if you'd asked me what I thought you felt about that night, I would have repeated that exact line. She had fun, but she doesn't care to revisit the experience."

I sigh, thinking of Burn's blue-green gaze. It was mesmerizing, almost more intoxicating than the alcohol. And I really let it all hang out when I was with him, as they say. It was very unlike me.

I straighten my coat, feeling rather embarrassed over the whole thing.

Olivia puts her arm around me, hugging me. "Come on. You had fun. No harm was done. Condoms were used. Everyone got what they wanted out of the night."

"Condoms?" I give her a look.

"Yeah. Condoms. Burn seems like the kind of guy that gets around and doesn't worry about protection too much." She pauses, a question in the air between us. "Please tell me that you were safe."

My cheeks couldn't be more red. "Well, no. I honestly didn't even think about it. Do you think I have anything to worry about?"

Olivia comes to my rescue fairly quickly. "Surely not. I'm just saying, you know, for the future, make sure you use condoms. You don't want to end up carrying some stranger's baby or anything."

"Can you imagine?" I say with a laugh. "I mean, how would I even go about finding a random guy that I got super drunk with and did the nasty with? It’s laughable."

"I don't even know. You have always been such a good girl in comparison with literally everyone else. It would be surprising, to say the least."

I blow out a breath.

"Well, it's the first and the last time that we ever have to go down that specific road. After all, you only lose your virginity once. It’s more than okay for you to have gone out and gotten your jollies, but I think the Ravens Head is not exactly the scene you want to hang out at."

"Definitely not. It was thrilling for one night. But I don't think it will be an everyday thing for me. Even if I didn't pay for a single drink all night."

Olivia grins. "Yeah well." She comes to a street corner and then pauses, looking both ways. "I have to go to the public library. They have a book on hold for me. Should I come by the store later?"

"Yeah. I just found a DVD player at the dollar store and I have a pile of old Fawlty Towers DVDs. So that's what I'll be doing all night tonight."

“Sounds thrilling. Tell Minnie I said hi, will you?”

She gives me a tiny hug and then heads off. I turn and walk the remaining two blocks, stopping just outside the book shop.

I slow to a stop, realizing that Aunt Minnie has started changing the display. Currently, there are red, green, silver, and navy gift boxes sketched onto the glass with erasable glass markers. Gold marker urges people to buy their holiday gifts inside the store, the beautifully decorated font swirling off to blend in with the ribbons decorating the packages, the contrasting colors looking very neat.

Aunt Minnie spent hours on the design, carefully blending and smudging her drawings until they looked practically lifelike.

Now, she’s added a new element to the design. Behind the glass window, there are many gift-wrapped packages on our table, enticing customers to enter the store. Next to it is a stack of all sizes of books, each carefully wrapped in brown paper. The large hand lettered sign next to the stack encourages customers to buy a mystery date with books they don't yet know.

I smile. Aunt Minnie isn’t here, yet her touch is undeniable.

I hold the door open to the shop, and immediately I'm engulfed by the smell of old and new books. It's cold in the store—barely warmer than outside—but I start smiling the second I enter anyway. Bookcases line the walls of this room and the one beyond, floor to ceiling, stuffed with books. There are books absolutely everywhere, overflowing the aisles, stacked in cascading piles placed precariously everywhere you can see.

It's a barely contained world of chaos and a good representation of what’s in Minnie's brain. I like to imagine that I am inside her thoughts when I dust a high corner or gently reorganize a pile of books. I can't seem to figure out what system Aunt Minnie uses when putting them together.

This is Minnie’s world. This is all her doing.

I carefully make my way to the cash register at the front of the store. Aunt Minnie pops up from behind the counter, her gray hair looking more disheveled and completely uncombed than usual. Her dark purple velvet muumuu is obviously in the way because she picks it up from the floor and shows off her thin, sharp knees as she kicks free of whatever is entrapping her feet. She mouths something as I come up behind her.

"Damn drapes."

Sure enough, there is a huge pile of black velvet drapes sitting on the floor behind the counter. I unintentionally startle her as I try to suss out what the situation is.

"Doing all right there, Aunt Minnie?"

She practically jumps out of her skin. She turns her head to face me, clutching her heart. "Oh! Oh, Talia. I didn't see you there. I was just trying to straighten out these drapes that I found. Would you believe that the elementary school is just giving them away?"

My lips twitch. "Do you have something in mind for them?"

She puts her hands on her hips, dragging a hand through her long gray hair. "Not yet. But I'll think of something."

Of that, I have no doubt. I slide past her and look at the stack of boxes immediately in front of the cash register. "What are those?"

She bends down and bungles the heavy cloth in her arms, picking them up with a groan. "Oh, those are the books that the Morgan family ordered. Apparently, they made a mistake and ordered them twice, so they won't be needing those twelve hundred copies of "The Night Before Christmas."

I squint at her. "Where else could they have ordered them from? We are Harwicke's sole bookstore." A little frown tugs at my lips. Minnie waves a hand. "You know what that means. They got them at a better rate because they bought them on some discount website or something."

I pick up the stack of invoices from beside the cash register and shuffle them, peering at the books. "They have to take them. We special ordered them."

Aunt Minnie shrugs. "We can send them back, can't we?"

"No. I was very clear with the guys from the Morgan Foundation who I spoke with on the phone. The books are not returnable. And we are not taking them back. They have to be picked up and signed for by someone from the Morgan family."

"I will call them, okay?" Minnie's lips twitch. "Those damn Morgans. It isn’t enough that they’re so rich that they have more money than God himself. They are the wealthiest family in town, and they’re the main source of charitable donations for the local hospitals and sports teams. They have all those ridiculous gala events at their fancy house that overlooks the town. It's outrageous, really."

I set the stack of papers down and look at her quite seriously. "They have to pick up the books. I know that they are trying to use their charitable foundation to organize some kind of Christmas giveaway. We have heard about it at Hope House. But they cannot just expect us to eat the cost of those children's books. They were expensive!"

Aunt Minnie drops the drapes, leaning on the counter. She looks out of breath suddenly, which is a little weird. "This is the fourth year that something has gone wrong with their order around this time of year. And it is never something on our end. It's always something on their end, like they don't have the right book or they don't have enough. Remember last year when they said that they ordered twice as many copies of Thomas The Tank Engine than they actually did?"

I grit my teeth. "Boy, do I. Every single time this has happened, they have backed out and left us holding the bag. It's not right, and it’s not fair."

Minnie spreads her hands. "I know, the prospect of the Morgan family buying a thousand or more dollars' worth of books has always been too tempting for us to pass up."

I draw myself up, glaring at the tall stack of boxes. "This is the last time," I declare. "This is the absolute last time this is going to happen to us. I'm going to do something about it."

"Like what?" Minnie says, giving me a skeptical look. "What are you going to do, go confront the Morgan family? It's better to just eat the cost ourselves."

"With what money?" I ask, my words coming off a little more venomous than I really meant them to be.

Aunt Minnie goes quiet, something painful passing through her expression. I give her a little smile. I tilt my head.

"What?" I ask.

She shrugs one shoulder, her hands nervously gripping the front of her dress. "We can talk about it after the holidays. I don't want to stress you out right now."

My pulse picks up, and I grow tense. I cross my arms and furrow my brow. "Well, now you have to tell me. What are you talking about?"

Minnie can't meet my gaze. She looks down at the floor, pawing it with her heavy shoe. "Well… I didn't want to loop you in on this or anything. But the store is in some debt."

I reach up, placing my hand around my own throat. "Since when?"

She struggles again. "A few months ago, Hope House needed money for roof repairs. So, I offered to pay for it. But then it turned into foundation problems and issues with zoning. Blah, blah, blah. They were having issues getting financing, so I loaned them some."

“How much?” I narrowed my eyes on her face. "Where did you get the money?"

"A friend of a friend. He provides loans for people in need."

"What does that even mean? Is he a bank?"

"No. He is more of a businessperson. He manages a ton of these small loans,” she says.

"Small loans? I do not understand. If he is not related to a bank, then that means that he is a private financier. And that means he can charge you a ton of interest. Is that what you don't want me to be mad about?"

Aunt Minnie drops her gaze to the floor again. "Well, I was planning on paying him back when I got the money from a busy Christmas season."

My breath catches. "How much money are we talking about? And how did you even get it?" Minnie looks straight at me, her brown eyes worried. "At first, it was just ten thousand. But that quickly became twenty, then forty, then…" She trails off. "I lent the administrator at Hope House almost one hundred thousand dollars."

For a brief moment, my mind is filled with static and crackling. I blink and try to wrap my head around that figure. "One hundred thousand dollars? Where did you even get that? The last time that you tried to lend Hope House money, the bank wouldn't give you a second mortgage on your house. So where did you go to get that kind of money?"

Aunt Minnie licks her lips and looks at me, holding a hand out to forestall my protest. "You can't be mad. After all, it's for a good cause. If I didn't lend them the money they needed, the people at the shelter were looking at having to rebuild all the walls. On top of that, they needed a mold inspection and…”

“Aunt Minnie. Be serious. Did you get the money from a loan shark?”

Her expression pinches and she looks away. “Some people might call him that, yes.”

For several seconds, I can’t speak. “And what did you put up as collateral?”

Her mouth twists. “The bungalow. It’s the only thing they would accept.”

My pulse pounds. I swallow hard, anger rising like a tidal wave in my chest.

“So now you have to pay some crook back a hundred thousand dollars plus some crazy amount of interest or he takes our house? Is that the sum of things?”

Aunt Minnie winces. “I have to start paying him back in a couple of months. That’s plenty of time for me to figure it out.”

“Figure it out?!” My exclamation bursts from my lips. “Aunt Minnie, we don’t have that kind of money! In fact, we are already in the hole for those stupid books that the Morgans don’t want! How can you think that we are going to figure it out?”

Minnie licks her lips and runs a hand over her hair. “Someone will come through. You’ll see. Just have a little faith.”

My hands bunch into fists and I drop them to my sides, feeling another pulse of anger throb through me. I want to yell. I want to call her names. To demand to know why she has put us both in such an impossible situation. But the way she is looking at me right now, her eyes pleading with me not to be angry, keeps me from unleashing my voice.

This is not the first time that I have been extremely let down in my life, nor will it be the last. Smoothing my hands down the front of my coat, I collect myself. I clear my throat, trying to school my expression.

“Okay. We should talk about this again sometime when I am less emotional.”

Minnie reaches out and grabs my forearm, her gaze searching my face. “You aren’t mad, are you Talia?”

I force myself to shake my head. “Nope. Not mad.”

The lie feels oily leaving my lips but Minnie brightens.

“Oh, that’s a relief. I thought you would be angry with me.”

I bow my head, my face contorting. “Nope.”

Minnie pats my cheek and gives me a quick hug. Then she scoops up a stack of books, hustling into the hallway, and disappears.

I look at the mess she’s left by the cash register, little scraps of paper, the glass markers strewn about, a tattered book of poems left open with a page ripped out and left disconnected.

Unable to control myself, I reach down and sweep everything off the desk, sending it all flying in every direction. It is a satisfying feeling for a whole of three seconds… until I see the mess has now expanded, taken over the floor where it has landed.

With a heavy sigh, I step around the desk and begin picking up the rubble.