CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Then
“Do you know how proud I am of you?” Theresa’s father was in a good mood. He’d shaved, put on clean clothes. So far as she could tell, he wasn’t using, at least not at the moment.
When he hugged her, Theresa closed her eyes and let him. They’d just returned from her high school graduation. She wasn’t at the top of her class, but she did well enough to get a small scholarship to Millersville University. She was going to study accounting. This didn’t thrill her, but it felt like a good, steady choice. She’d be able to get a job. She wouldn’t have to live in a crappy apartment with roaches in the walls and rats by the dumpster. Not ever again.
“Very proud,” her father added when she didn’t answer.
“Thanks, Dad.” She squeezed him in return, then let go.
It had been a tough year and a half since Galina Stern had tossed them out. Her dad had quit his job at the hospital two months ago, or so he said. Theresa suspected he was fired. Again. You couldn’t miss so many days of work and not expect repercussions. He would find something else, he told her. It was what he always said. But he hadn’t yet.
He was cooking dinner. Most everyone else she knew was having a graduation party, or at least going out to a restaurant in celebration, but Theresa didn’t bother asking if they could do that. He might have said yes, but she’d just feel bad about spending the money. She took off her graduation gown and folded it neatly, along with the cap. She couldn’t imagine ever needing either of them again, but since she was the one who’d come up with the money to pay for them, she wasn’t willing to simply toss them. Beneath it, she wore the required white dress she also couldn’t imagine ever wearing again. She’d bought it at the thrift shop for $3.99, along with the shoes for another three bucks. She hated the entire outfit, but it had done the job.
When she was out on her own, she would never have to suffer with thrift-store clothes or not eating in restaurants. She would make a good life for herself. She wasn’t going to mess it up, either. Not with drugs or booze or falling for the wrong person. She’d make the right choices.
Her father’s good mood continued over the spaghetti dinner he cooked. He poured them both glasses of cheap red wine even though Theresa wouldn’t touch hers. She should have. He’d finish it for her. But what difference did it make, really? He’d drink the whole bottle. They both knew it. And later, there would be a pill or three from the tin he kept in his pocket. She ought to have known better, thinking he’d stay sober at least this one night.
“I’ll take care of the dishes,” he said when they finished eating. “Don’t you have a party or something to go to? You must have a party.”
She had received a few invitations. Theresa liked the kids at Central High about as much as they liked her, which was to say she had a few dozen casual friends and one or two good ones. Heather’s family was in town, but Lia’s party was tonight. Theresa could go to that.
“Nah, we can hang out, Dad.” Everything was changing. No matter how eager she was to get out of there, she couldn’t make herself forget that in a few short months, she wouldn’t be around anymore. And then what would happen without her there to take care of things?
Theresa was giddy with the relief of not caring.
Her father shook his head. “You should go out, Theresa. You don’t need to stay home with me. It’s a Friday night. You should have a date.”
“Yeah, sure.” She laughed, shaking her head. “No, thanks.”
“I don’t understand you.” He sighed. “When I was your age—”
“I don’t see the point in it, Dad. That’s all.”
Tying herself down to someone now would be stupid, when she planned to leave as soon as she could. Millersville was only an hour or so away, but the rest of her life could take her anywhere. Besides, she thought as she cleared the table and washed the dishes while Dad packed up the leftovers, having a boyfriend would mean taking care of him, and she was just about over all that. She didn’t ever want to take care of anyone except herself ever again.
“I’ll run out and pick up a DVD. What are you in the mood for?” He jingled the change in his pocket—a restless, familiar sign. “Something funny? Scary?”
She didn’t want him to go out at all. The DVD was an excuse. He’d probably already put in a call to someone while she was in the bathroom. He would come home flying.
“We can just watch what’s on TV, Dad.”
It was useless to protest. If she told him not to go, he would argue with her, and it would ruin the night. If she offered to drive him, he would end up lying to her face about what he was doing, and she would have to pretend she didn’t know what was going on when he ran in “real quick” to “catch up” with his buddy.
For a moment, though, he stopped fidgeting to look at her. There was love and pride in his eyes. It was like he was really seeing her for the first time in a long time.
“Sure,” he said. “Sure, okay.”
He made it through forty minutes or so of inane TV before he started to jostle his knee up and down. Tapped his fingers on the arm of the sofa. He polished off the wine and moved on to even cheaper beer, but it wouldn’t be long before he was digging in his pocket for the little tin that used to hold mints. If it was empty, he would go out to see if he could fill it.
He did go out a short time later. Theresa no longer wanted to watch TV. In the tiny galley kitchen that always stank of grease and garbage, she cleaned off the counter. Her father had separated out a stack of mail for her, most of it junk. The information from Millersville, about selecting a roommate, and when the first payments were due, she set aside. There were three credit-card offers addressed to her that she tossed in the trash. She’d seen her dad chasing the payments on credit cards, using one to pay off another. She wasn’t going to get suckered into that, not if she wanted to start off ahead in life and not always running behind.
There was one other letter, already removed from the envelope. Theresa read it, then read it again to make sure she understood the contents, before looking at the discarded envelope stuck to the back of one of her letters. It wasn’t addressed to her, and she was sure her dad hadn’t meant for her to read it.
Written in a loosely looping and clearly feminine hand, it looked like it should have been a love letter; it was not. Theresa had no idea why Galina was writing to her father and, frankly, wished she didn’t even know there was a letter at all. Whatever happened between them that kept them tied together was none of Theresa’s business or her concern, and she didn’t want to know any more about it. If her father wanted to spend his life going back and forth with a woman who thought it was okay to put them out on the street with only the clothes on their backs, he was more than welcome.
There was one part of the letter Theresa couldn’t stop thinking about. Galina had called her dad out as an addict, something Theresa had never said aloud to her father or to anyone else. Galina’s words also laid blame at his feet for something that had happened, something he’d done, unnamed but clearly horrible. Something to do with “all that money” he owed her.
Heart pounding, stomach sick, Theresa went to bed but couldn’t sleep. She heard her father come home sometime later. The clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Running water. She tensed at the pause of his footsteps outside her bedroom door, but he didn’t knock or try to come inside.
In the morning, sitting across from him at the table, she thought she would ask him why he was still tied to Galina, but in the end, she discovered she didn’t really want to know.
Once she’d begun unburdening herself, Theresa found herself almost incapable of holding back—except for the part about finding that letter from Galina. That was an entire tale, one she thought she’d never know the full depth of, and she didn’t want to get into it. What she’d already spilled was bad enough.
“He opened almost a dozen credit cards in my name while I was in college. He ran up debt I had no idea existed until last year,” Theresa said. Alicia had insisted on taking her somewhere to talk. Ironically, they’d ended up at the diner. She hadn’t been there in years, and now twice in one week. “He’d been making the minimum payments on the cards for years, but always in rotation. He’d pay a few one month, then a few others the next. Always enough so he didn’t totally default. Just enough to completely screw my credit score. I’d never had reason to look at it. I had one credit card that I got right after I graduated from college, which I never carried a balance on because I’d grown up watching him overspend, and I was determined I wouldn’t live like that. I bought my cars used, with cash. Lived in the same apartment for years so I didn’t need to go through the application process for a new one.”
“Damn, Theresa, that’s rough. I’m so sorry.”
Theresa warmed her hands on the mug of coffee. It tasted burnt, but her stomach was churning too much to drink it, anyway. She shook her head.
“I’d been dating a guy for a couple years. When he asked me to move in with him, I thought it was a good idea, you know? I thought it was what I wanted.” She didn’t mention that the guy was Wayne, the owner of the company that had bought the quarry.
Alicia snorted soft laughter. “Let me guess. Not all it was cracked up to be.”
“Not even close. It was fine at first, but after a while it turned out he was really serious about us. He asked me to marry him.” Theresa’s fingers tightened on the mug.
“Wow.”
She nodded. “Yeah, exactly. When I said no, he didn’t take it very well. I’d spent so many years making sure I would never be put in that position again. At least, unlike Galina, he gave me a few days instead of a few hours to get out. That’s when I found out that I couldn’t get an apartment because my credit score was so bad nobody would rent to me. And wouldn’t you know it? I lost my job in a downsizing thing. That was about nine months ago.”
Alicia shook her head and gave a low whistle. “I don’t understand . . . why are you responsible for this debt? You didn’t open the accounts. That’s fraud, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Theresa swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I’d have to file a police report and declare identity theft. I would have to prove I wasn’t the one who’d made the charges. Instead, I consolidated everything into a single payment and closed the other accounts. I’ve been doing what I can, but it takes time to erase bad credit.”
“Like gaining weight. Easy to put on, hard to take off.” Alicia frowned. “Sorry. I shouldn’t make light. He should be paying, Theresa. Not you.”
“He sends me money every month toward it, but my father is not . . . reliable,” Theresa said stiffly. “And before you ask me why I didn’t just turn him in . . . he’s my dad, Alicia. I don’t know if I can forgive him for any of this, but he’s still my father. I couldn’t send him to prison.”
“So you’ve been living in your car?” Alicia waved at the waitress to refresh their mugs, waiting until she’d gone before continuing. “All this time?”
“Only the past month or so. I stayed with some friends, on and off, although I didn’t want to tell them this wasn’t a temporary thing, so I could only stay for a few days at a time. I stayed with the Sterns for a bit around the time of the funeral.”
“I wondered why on earth you’d agreed to do that,” Alicia said.
Theresa laughed. It felt genuine. It felt good. She felt lighter, at least a little unburdened by her confession. “It was a place to stay. Food. I wasn’t too proud to take it. Now you know.”
“But what about the quarry deal? That didn’t help?”
“It wasn’t as much as I was counting on,” Theresa said. “It was enough to take care of the debt I’d racked up over the past few months. Money I didn’t want to spend but had to. My cell bill. Car insurance. That about wiped me out, but I need the phone and the car in order to make the cold calls I need to put these deals together. And I’m good at this, Alicia, surprisingly good, but everything is on commission, and so far nothing’s really come in the way I need it to. Until then, I have to keep hustling.”
Hustle was the right way to describe it, not that she’d admit that to Alicia. The quarry deal had been the best and biggest she’d managed to put together—but only by the skin of her teeth, and her ex-boyfriend’s lovesick hope that helping her out would get her back into his life. She’d been lucky the entire deal hadn’t fallen through when Ilya refused to sell, but as it turned out, she had a talent for this sort of thing. Wayne might have wanted to pull out to spite her once he knew she’d used his emotions to get him to agree, but his partners were completely on board with the hotel and condo plans. Working with them on this had led to other opportunities she hoped would soon pay off.
Alicia shook her head, frowning. “All of this sucks. No wonder you didn’t look happy to see your dad when he came to the house after Babulya’s funeral.”
“I hadn’t seen him since I confronted him about what I’d learned. Yeah, that was . . . awkward.” Theresa stretched, rolling her neck on her shoulders. “You’re the first person I’ve told any of this to. Thanks for listening. I guess I needed someone to vent to.”
“Are you kidding me? I can’t imagine having to deal with all of that. You’ve held it together remarkably well, better than I ever could have.” Alicia leaned across the table. “Look. You come stay with me.”
Stunned at this sudden and undeserved generosity, Theresa shook her head. “No, I couldn’t . . .”
Alicia held up a hand. “Don’t even. I’m in that house all by myself—”
“For now,” Theresa said with a grin.
Alicia grinned, too. “For now. And for a while, anyway. Niko and I haven’t even talked about making anything permanent, and I have no idea what’s going to happen. But I definitely have an extra bedroom, and you’re going to move into it until you get back on your feet.”
“I can contribute,” Theresa said at once, already deciding she was going to take the offer. She had to. This was no time for too much pride. “Not a whole lot. But you won’t have to carry me, Alicia. I mean . . . you don’t have a job, either. And trust me, you don’t want to get behind on things.”
Alicia shrugged. “Honestly, my parents left me pretty well set with the house. I have money left from the sale. It will last me for a little longer. If you chip in for utilities and food, I’m good with that.”
This gesture was beyond generosity. This felt like true friendship. It struck her, then, why she hadn’t asked her other friends to help her out. It had been more than embarrassment. Shame. It had been a deep-seated knowledge that even if she did ask, none of them would have offered her anything close to what Alicia just had. There were friends, and there were people who would always be more than that.
When she said as much, Alicia’s brows rose. She shrugged. “Well . . . we’ve known each other for a long time, Theresa. I mean, just because we haven’t been superclose doesn’t mean that it doesn’t count.”
“It would only be for a little while,” Theresa insisted, but her heart lifted. She didn’t want to cry, but she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to hold back.
“It would be for as long as it takes,” Alicia said. “Okay?”
Theresa wiped her eyes. “I don’t want anyone to know about my dad. The rest of it is bad enough, but please, don’t tell anyone what my dad did.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“Not even to Niko. Please, Alicia. It’s so embarrassing. And definitely not to Ilya.” Theresa paused, considering for a moment the folly of blurting out that she and Ilya had made out by his front door, and that had somehow made things different enough between them that she cared about saving face. Wisely, she kept that bit of information to herself.
Alicia looked wary at the request, but then nodded. “I’ll do what I can. And I’ll lend you the money for the storage units so you don’t lose your stuff.”
At that, Theresa could no longer hold back the tears. She tried to say thanks, but nothing came out. Alicia’s eyes were bright, too. They both sniffled and grabbed napkins to dab at their eyes.
“Thank you, Alicia. Thank you so much.” Theresa shook her head. “I can’t even begin to describe what this means to me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alicia said. “And, hey, look at it this way. If you’re right across the street from him every day, maybe you’ll be able to convince my stubborn ex-husband to take that deal.”
“Right,” Theresa answered. Across the street from Ilya. Every day. Every night, too. Her heart thumped harder at the thought. “That would help.”