Jo and Mark Patterson lived in a newly developed section of town where trailer parks and chicken farms had been replaced by massive five- and six-bedroom houses on three-acre estate lots. This was the sprawliest of urban sprawl, people who were rich enough to live in Atlanta, but successful enough to make the two-hour drive to the city once or twice a month to check in on their investments before heading back to cleaner, easier living in the country. Ben and Charlie often made caustic jokes about the hideous McMansions, but the truth was that they were jealous of the bonus rooms and four-car garages and especially the swimming pools.
The Pattersons only had a three-car garage, which made her feel weirdly sorry for them. From the street, the brick and stucco semi-Tudor style looked crisp and clean, but as Charlie pulled down the long drive, she saw that some of the paint was peeling back from the trim. All of the garage doors were closed. An older-looking BMW was parked in the driveway. Charlie had hoped she’d be early enough to accidentally run into Oliver, Flora Faulkner’s alleged boyfriend, but she gathered from the MY KID IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT PIKEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL bumper sticker that Jo Patterson was a stay-at-home mom.
Charlie checked back through her notebook, because she had already forgotten the Patterson girl’s name.
Nancy.
Charlie found her Dorito-dusted pen. She had put on her list that she needed to talk to Flora’s teachers at school, but she should go ahead and check out Nancy Patterson, too. And she might as well throw Oliver Patterson into the mix. He was likely long-gone from school, but teachers tended to remember bad kids, and Charlie guessed by the fact that Oliver already had a criminal record that he had been memorable in high school.
There was a low rumble of a car engine gurgling from the street as she got out of her Subaru. Charlie watched a stunning, sapphire blue Porsche Boxter roll past the driveway. If she had to guess, she would say the scrawny young man behind the wheel was approximately nineteen years old with a rap sheet as long as Maude Faulkner’s dick. The boy who could only be Oliver Patterson had a shock of bright yellow hair and a flattened nose that had clearly been broken many times over. Oliver saw Charlie and pushed his wrap-around sunglasses up on his head. He narrowed his eyes at her, his lips pursed. He was trying to be a badass, but all she could think was that he looked like a capuchin monkey.
The tires screeched as he hooked a sharp U-turn around the cul-de-sac and sped back the way he had come.
“Okay,” Charlie mumbled, wondering what that show was about. If Oliver Patterson was really Flora’s boyfriend, then the girl needed a lesson about the frying pan and the fire.
She hefted her purse onto her shoulder and turned back toward the house. Up close, the peeling paint gave way to rotted wood and large patches of missing stucco. Some of the bricks were chipped. There were large cracks in the walk as she approached the front door. Weeds sprung up between the gaps. The lawn was patchy, like a dog with mange. The leaves on the boxwoods in front of the porch were curling from some kind of fungus. One of the panes in the bay window was broken; others were fogged up between the double layers of glass. Some shingles had fallen from the roof and landed in the yard. The porch steps were rotted. Even the paint on the front door had faded from red to almost pink.
Charlie had dealt with her share of rich people. Either the Pattersons were from old money and they didn’t know how to take care of things or they were from new money that had run out too quickly.
She remembered what Leroy had said about Oliver being as crooked as his father. Charlie cursed herself for not looking into the family before coming over. Her intrinsic nosiness, her joy of delving into other people’s business, was paramount to her job as a criminal defense lawyer. Normally, she knew more about her clients and potential witnesses than they knew about themselves. Not this time. She didn’t even know how Mark Patterson made a living. Or didn’t, if that turned out to be the case. She was too distracted today, taking too much of what she was being told at face value.
The doorbell was Scotch-taped over, so she knocked four times and waited. Then she knocked again, but harder, thinking a more timid sound would go unheard in the gigantic house.
Charlie watched another car roll by. The neighbor across the street, she assumed, as a brand-new Mercedes pulled into the driveway opposite. A woman got out with her suit jacket over one arm and a briefcase hooked on the other, personifying the clip art of a working mother. She stared openly at Charlie, her nose wrinkled as if she could smell out Charlie’s purpose for being on her neighbor’s front porch.
“Hello?”
Charlie jumped back, almost falling down the steps. The front door was open. A petite, forty-ish woman in black yoga pants and a neon green tank top stood with a water bottle in one hand and a shotgun in the other.
“Shit!” Charlie’s hands went up, though the barrel of the gun was pointed down.
“Oh, sorry. It’s not loaded. At least, I think it’s not loaded.” The woman set the shotgun down beside the door. She wiped her forehead with a towel. She had that slight glisten of rich-people sweat that came from doing Pilates or yoga or some other form of stretchy exercise that took a lot of time and money to learn.
She told Charlie, “I thought you were our neighbor from across the street. I was upstairs working out and saw her car. She’s such a bitch. Knocks on the door every day giving us shit about this or that—like it’s any of her business.” She motioned for Charlie to come in. “You must be the lawyer?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m Jo Patterson. Flora told us you’d be coming over. Such a wonderful young woman. Did you know she sold the most cookies of anyone in the state? Plus, she’s Nancy’s best friend. Those two are like peas in a pod. We just love her to bits. Do you want some iced tea?”
Charlie felt like she needed to shake her head to make the jumble of information settle into a sensible, linear pattern. “No, thank you.”
“Let’s go to the back. Only a matter of time before that bitch knocks on the door.”
Charlie was delighted to follow her to the back, mostly because she’d always wanted to see inside one of these big houses. Jo pulled closed huge, wood-paneled pocket doors as she walked down the hall, mumbling apologies about the mess. In her wildest dreams, Charlie couldn’t imagine having so many rooms, let alone how to decorate them all. Jo Patterson had apparently run into the same problem. There was a den with nothing but two beanbags and an old tube TV with a gaming console underneath. The dining room was absent a table and chairs. The chandelier was listing sideways as if someone had tried to swing from it. Even the powder room showed signs of neglect. The wallpaper had rolled down from the ceiling. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to tear it off, but that had only made it look worse.
Charlie asked, “How long have you been here?”
“Five, six years?” She shut another door to what had to be an office. There was a metal desk like they gave high school teachers, metal filing cabinets with heavy locks, and boxes and boxes overflowing with papers. “We’re remodeling, but I’ve been saying that for a while now because I simply cannot make a decision. There are too many choices, you know what I mean?”
Charlie would love to make the decisions if it meant a new dishwasher that didn’t flood if you put more than four plates on the bottom rack.
Jo said, “Here we go.” She held out her arms, indicating a large family room and kitchen. Sunlight streamed in from the humongous windows. The vaulted ceiling was at least thirty feet overhead, wooden beams making it somehow feel homey. The back of the house, at least, had been decorated. It was the only part that looked lived in. Deep leather couches. Recliners. A giant flat-panel TV mounted above a stone fireplace. There was an open concept kitchen that made Charlie’s eyes water with jealousy—not because she was a cook, but because she wanted a kitchen that made people’s eyes water with jealousy.
If they didn’t want to adopt Flora, Charlie would gladly offer herself up as a replacement.
“We’re not lawn people,” Jo said, as if Charlie had asked a question about the muddy back yard. “It’s a thing with the neighborhood, because there’s some kind of bullshit line in the covenants for the home owners’ association about yards and we were, like, ‘So what?’ but apparently you can’t take a crap around this place without getting permission. But, hey, you’re a lawyer, right? Could you help us get them off our backs? All they are is a bunch of whiny bitches with nothing better to do.”
Charlie had to shake her head again to make sense of the request. “I’m not a real estate lawyer, but I can give you the name of one.”
“Nah.” She waved her hand, indicating Charlie should follow her into the kitchen. “They’ll just charge us for it.”
Charlie didn’t point out that she would’ve charged them, too.
“Sweet or unsweet?”
Charlie hadn’t asked for tea, but she wanted a reason to stay in the kitchen so she could ogle the stainless steel appliances. “Unsweet.”
“Flora is amazing. We couldn’t love her more if we tried.” Jo jerked opened the glass door of the Sub-Zero fridge. The glass rattled. She had to muscle the door closed. She told Charlie, “Nancy met Flora on the first day of school, and they got along like a house on fire. Always have. Two peas in a pod.” She found two clean glasses in the Miele dishwasher beside the scratched apron-front sink. “I was really worried when Mark moved us up here from Roswell, but it’s all worked out. He’s a real estate developer. That’s where he’s at now, scouting out some new property for some developers up from Atlanta who want to build an Applebee’s off of the North 40. Applebee’s! Can you imagine? What’s next? An Olive Garden? A Red Lobster? This place’ll be hoppin’!”
Charlie sat down at the bar-top counter. The smooth granite was cold under her palms. An empty wine fridge purred beside her. Her jealousy dialed back a notch. On closer inspection, the kitchen looked too lived in. There were scuff marks on the walls. A chunk of wood was missing from the vent hood. Two of the red knobs on the range were missing.
Jo, oblivious to the silent criticisms, poured the tea. “And then there’s some other folks looking to build a shopping center off that old mill property on 515. You know the one I’m talking about?” She didn’t need encouragement to keep going. “I could totally see a day spa there. I love it up here, but my Lord, it’s been hard on my nails, and I think half the people up here would be in a hell of a lot better mood if they could get a decent massage. But look at me talking about myself. What do you need from me?”
Charlie listened to the unaccustomed silence.
“About Flora?” Jo prompted. “What do you need me to say?”
Charlie took a moment to put her lawyer hat back on. “Flora is seeking emancipation.”
“Right, she told us that. Remember that Drew Barrymore movie where she was a kid and did the same thing?”
“It’s a bit different from—”
“Irreconcilable Differences!” She snapped her fingers. “God, that would’ve driven me crazy, trying to remember the name of that movie. I wonder what happened to Shelley Long? She was so good in Cheers.”
Charlie couldn’t get sidetracked. “With emancipation, what happens is, we all have to persuade the judge that Flora is capable of being an adult—looking out for herself, being responsible, staying off the government’s dime. I think we’d be much more likely to win if we could prove that she had a good home to go to.”
“Can’t get any better than this.” Jo spread out her arms with pride, as if her house was not falling apart around her. “But we wouldn’t be adopting her, right? She would be living here. Almost like a tenant. But not, like, we have her sign a lease or anything. One of our kids, but not really our kid.”
“Exactly,” Charlie said, because Flora was still a kid and there was no way she could navigate the world completely on her own. “So, what I need from you in the immediate is for you and your husband to sign an affidavit stating that you’re willing to take Flora into your home until she’s eighteen years old.”
“Oh, hell yes, but more than that.” She pushed a glass of tea across the counter toward Charlie. “We’ll take her on until she’s married. And then she can live in the basement if she wants. We just love her to bits. I said to her the other day—whatever she needs, we are here to give it to her. Anything.”
“Anything,” Charlie repeated, because there was something strange, almost practiced, about her tone. “What about Oliver, your son? Is he still living here?”
“Of course. He’s still my baby.”
“Are you hoping they’ll get married?”
“Oh, who knows with these kids?” She laughed. “Oliver is so silly around Flora. He used to keep his hair long down to here—” she put her hand to her shoulder. “And he always had zits from the oil in his hair touching his face, and I’d say, ‘Ollie, wash that hair and you won’t get zits’ and he’d slam the door to his room and say, ‘Mom!’ But then Flora came along and he gets it cut the same way as Mark’s, but don’t tell Ollie it’s the same as his father’s because he’ll—” She rolled out her lip in a pout, then gave a laugh deep from her belly. Then she kept laughing. And laughing. And eventually, she was laughing so much that Charlie wondered if there was something really funny about this situation that she was missing.
For instance, why was the house falling apart?
Why was the only room that was decorated the only room you’d have visitors in?
Why couldn’t they hire a landscaper to do the yard?
Why couldn’t they hire a handyman to take care of the house?
And, most importantly, why was Oliver driving a Porsche that, according to Belinda, Maude Faulkner had been driving the month before?
Charlie leaned back in her chair. There was an open door leading off the kitchen, presumably to the basement, which was fine, but the drywall had not been painted, which meant that the basement was unfinished.
“Oh, my.” Jo wiped pretend tears from her eyes. “I hope they get married. We all just love that little Flora to bits.”
Charlie crossed her arms. “Tell me more about Oliver.”
“He’s such a gentle, sensitive old soul.” She put her hand to her chest, seemingly unaware that she was contradicting herself. “Even when he was a little boy, he was always looking for ways to help people. That’s what he wants to do. All of us, really. We want to help Flora, but Oliver feels it more keenly.” She leaned against the counter, hand still to her heart. “One time, when Ollie was a little boy, I remember him asking me, ‘Mama, why do homeless people smell so bad?’ and I was, like, ‘Honey, it’s because they don’t have a home with a shower and a place to wash their clothes,’ and the next thing I know, he’s talking to this homeless man on the street—in downtown Atlanta—and offering to bring him to our house so he can have a shower and wash his clothes. Of course I couldn’t let that happen, but still, it tells you what a sweet heart he has.”
Charlie wondered at the woman’s practiced tone of voice. She was getting the distinct feeling that she had a front-row seat to the best show in town.
The woman said, “And Nancy is our pride and joy. Sharp as a tack. Not really book smart, but she can figure things out so fast. We’re so proud of our little angels. There’s my big boy!”
Charlie turned around, expecting to see the family dog, but she found instead an older man with salt-and-pepper hair, a chin cleft that could slice open a bagel, and bronzed skin that had likely been cured under a tanning bed lamp.
“Mark Patterson.” He held out his hand, flashing a too-white set of teeth, a heavy gold Rolex and a pelt of hair on the back of his arm that fell in line with having a capuchin monkey for a son. He said, “You must be the lawyer. Flora told us to look for you. What can we do to help?”
Charlie shook his hand, which was damp with sweat. “Tell me what Flora’s living situation would be like if she moved in.”
His eyes cut to his wife. “Well, she’d be like one of our own children. We’d do everything we can for her. I realize that the emancipation means that she’ll legally be an adult, but she’s still a sixteen—”
“Fifteen,” Jo mumbled.
“Sure, fifteen now, but she’ll be sixteen when she moves in. Still a girl, is what I mean. A teenager.” He added, “A good teenager. I mean, Flora’s stellar, but still a teenager.”
Charlie took out her notepad. “Would she have her own room?”
“Of course. We’ve got plenty of space here.”
Jo added, “She might want to be with Nancy, though. Two peas in a pod.”
Charlie wished she’d thought to turn the “two peas in a pod” thing into a drinking game, because she’d be drunk by now. She asked, “Could I see where Flora would be living?”
Mark and Jo exchanged another look.
Jo said, “It’s a mess upstairs, but I’d be glad to show you another day. Or take some pictures and send them to you. Would pictures work?”
Charlie wondered how many empty rooms she’d find upstairs. And then she wondered how she was going to get the truth out of this couple. “How about a car?”
“A car?” Jo echoed.
“Like you said, Flora will be sixteen soon. She’ll need a car to drive.”
Again, Jo’s eyes shifted her husband’s way. The obvious answer would be to say that the trust would pay for Flora’s transportation needs, but Mark jumped in with another option.
He said, “Nancy will have a car as soon as she turns sixteen next month. Beat-up Honda I plan to buy off an old client. I imagine they’ll share. They always go everywhere together anyway. They’re two peas in a pod.”
The peas/pod thing was like a mantra to this family. In fact, it had almost a rehearsed quality.
Charlie asked, “What about food? Clothing? School fees?”
“Not an issue,” Mark said. “Flora is already like a daughter to us. We’ll gladly provide for her. She’s an amazing girl. We couldn’t love her more if we tried.”
Charlie saw Jo wince at the statement, which employed the exact same words the woman had used before.
It’s like they were going off a script.
Charlie asked Mark, “They get along like a house on fire, do they?”
“Exactly.” He beamed, as if he’d passed a test. “Like a house on fire.”
“Anyway,” Jo said, trying to do clean-up. “The Faulkners, her grandparents, are not good people. I’m sorry to say that, but we are talking about Flora’s future here, her college education, her life as a young woman. They try, but their character is—” She stopped herself, probably about to repeat the same line Flora had given Charlie in the bathroom at the Y this morning.
Instead, Jo said, “I know Flora won’t say a word against her Meemaw and Paw, but Leroy has a drug problem and Maude is … well, you’ve met Maude. You know what she’s like. I wouldn’t cross her for all the tea in China, but we love Flora so much. She’s an amazing girl. We couldn’t—”
“Love her more if you tried?” Charlie asked.
“N-no,” Jo stammered.
Mark jumped back in. “I imagine what my wife was going to say is, we couldn’t live with ourselves if we let Flora stay in that awful situation.”
“What’s so awful about it?”
Mark’s well-tanned nose wrinkled in distaste. “That apartment complex is horrible. It’s directly off the highway.”
“I think that’s all they can afford. There’s no crime in being poor, is there?” Charlie watched their expressions, which were as fixed as a marble statue. “Unless you mean the trust?”
“Trust?” Mark said, his voice going up at the end. “Why wouldn’t we trust her?”
Charlie almost laughed at the poor attempt. “Flora told me that she told you guys about the trust.”
The lie made them both relax a tiny bit.
Jo laughed uncomfortably, which was the second laugh in her arsenal, right behind the belly brawl.
Mark said, “Well, we weren’t thinking of the trust because, obviously, that’s for Flora’s college, and to help her get started in life. She’s a very smart girl. She could go to any school, really.” He indicated the house. “I don’t want to sound crass, but, obviously, we don’t need the money.”
“Obviously,” Charlie said.
Jo laughed again, but only twice—a “ha ha” that literally sounded like she was reading it off the back of a box of cereal.
“One more thing—” Charlie always loved the one more thing, because it was usually the thing. “I’m sorry to say this, but Leroy had some unkind words to say about you, Mark. Something about your being crooked?”
“Oh, dear.” Jo gave laugh number one, deep from the belly. “We’re standing in the middle of a joke here: a builder and a lawyer walk into a bar…”
Mark joined in, actually clutching his stomach.
Charlie stared at them both until their guffaws gurgled down the drain.
“Ah.” Mark wiped bogus laugh tears from his eyes. “Well, you know how people feel about builders. They paint us all with the same brush.”
“I thought you were a developer?”
“Builder, developer. Same difference.”
“Really? One seems much more speculative than the other,” Charlie said. “And financially risky.”
Jo said, “We do all right. Mark is really good at his job.”
“That’s great.” Charlie waited, looking at Mark as if she expected him to add more.
His mouth was so dry that his lips caught on his teeth when he smiled. “Is there anything else?”
“Nope. Thank you.” Charlie closed her notebook. She capped her pen. She pretended not to notice them both exhale in unison. “I’ll just need you to put what you said in the affidavit, that you won’t ever take any money from the trust.”
They did the look again, their eyes bouncing in their heads.
“A letter, you mean?” Jo’s voice had gone up, too.
“No.” Charlie drank a sip of tea, but only to make them wait. “I’ll need a sworn affidavit from both of you saying that you’ll never receive any money, directly or indirectly, from Flora’s trust.” Charlie smiled. “And of course you’ll need to take the stand in court and say the same thing, which shouldn’t be a problem, right?”
Mark sucked on his bottom lip. “Mm-hm.”
She tightened the screw. “Because that would be perjury, if you said that you weren’t going to take any money from the trust, but then you did.”
“Perjury,” Mark repeated.
“Well.” Jo cleared her throat. “I’m not a lawyer, but as I understand it, Flora will be emancipated.” She smiled weakly at Charlie. “She’ll control the money, not us. She can do with it whatever she likes.”
“Correct, but if you received money, like if she was a tenant, or she paid utilities or helped with the mortgage or groceries or anything like that, then that would be taking money from the trust. Which is why I’m glad you said she wouldn’t be a tenant, because then it might be construed as an inducement to you, as if the only reason you’re taking Flora in is to exploit the money in her trust, and since she is still a juvenile and not yet emancipated, the judge would frown on that kind of arrangement. Which is why we need to make it clear that what you said is the truth: Flora would be like one of your own children. Not a cash cow to bail you out of whatever financial straits you might find yourself in.” Charlie put her notebook in her purse. “Right?”
Mark did another, “Mm-hm.”
Charlie said, “The thing is, the judge would assign a social worker and a trustee to follow up on everything, because taking a child away from her blood relatives, emancipating her as an adult, all with the understanding that she would be looked after by a kind and loving family, is a really big deal. He’d want to make sure that everyone was doing what they’d promised to do. The social worker would make spot checks. The trustee would oversee the outgoing money to make sure everything is above board. And of course everyone would be concerned with the perjury thing, because that can carry a prison sentence of five years and a fine of up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Good-good-good,” Mark said. “Good. To. Know.”
“It is,” Jo chimed in, her lips quivering around a smile. “And I have no problem signing that. Our intention is to not touch a dime in that trust.”
Mark caught on quickly. “Jo’s right. We have every intention of making sure Flora has that money for college.”
They should’ve known better than to try to bullshit a lawyer. “I’m afraid intentions aren’t the same as legally binding agreements. The judge isn’t looking for intentions. He’ll be looking for sworn testimony.”
Jo said, “Well—”
“Obviously, this isn’t about the money,” Mark interrupted. “Flora is very important to us. We couldn’t love her more.” His eyes moved like the carriage on a typewriter. “As you said. Before, I mean. That’s what you said. We couldn’t love her more if we tried.”
Charlie matched his fake grin. “Obviously.”