Page 2 of Blame it on the Bet
“Guys, let’s not do this. Please. Look, I’m here now, and we can get the business back on track. I’ll take over the day-to-day of the pub. James, maybe you can handle the paperwork? Walker, we all know you’re the best bartender in the family, after Pops. You can help out nights and weekends when you’re not in school. And Bailey can help in the kitchen and with serving food. I’ll call the bank tomorrow and see if I can refinance the loan. That should buy us a couple of months?—”
“Hennessy.” Jameson cuts me off. “We don’t have a couple of months.”
This time, she takes a letter from the drawer of the sideboard and hands it to me. I pull it from its envelope and start to read, my jaw dropping a little lower with every line that I skim. I glance, more than once, between the official correspondence and Jameson’s drawn face.
“What?” I gasp, not believing what’s right there in black in white. “They’re calling the loan? The bank is calling the entirety of the loan? And they want it in…ninety days?”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Jameson says solemnly. “Keep reading.”
She’s right. Upon further inspection, I see that this is the second notice. I look at the date at the top of the page and do the math in my head. Six weeks. We’ve already lost six weeks, and there are only six more to go.
No. No, no, no!
“How?” I whisper.
Jameson shrugs slightly and shakes her head. “I don’t know. Maybe the first notice was lost in the mail. Maybe it was somehow shredded with the rest of Pops’s paperwork. But, however it happened, we’re in a pretty tight spot here.” “You can fix it, though, right, Henny?” Bailey asks hopefully from across the table.
I consider her closely. Not even out of high school and she’s lost both parents. She lives at home with Walker, who’s rarely there, and depends on a hot meal from the woman we pay to clean up the house, shop, and make dinner most nights. At least the rest of us are adults, more or less. The last thing Bailey needs is to be worried about something like this.
“I’m going to try, Bailey,” I say with the most reassuring smile that I can muster. “I just have to figure out where to begin…”
“Well, this might help,” Jameson says, reaching into the sideboard once more.
“Good lord, James!” I huff. “Another one? Quit the drama already, and just give me everything at one time, will you?”
She scowls.
“This is the last one. And excuse me for trying to break it to you gently. We’ve all had a few days to digest this.”
I don’t respond as I take the last document from her hand. It’s a letter of intent to purchase the pub property. Upon closer examination, I see that it’s come from a real estate developer out of Los Angeles—some guy named Bryan Truitt has made an offer to purchase the pub, and by the looks of this, my father was planning to accept. I’m suddenly struck by how little I knew about what was going on here. I was so busy trying to prove to myself and everybody else that I could make it in the “Big City,” that I was oblivious to what was unfolding back here at home.
“All righty, then. It would appear we have a little mystery to unravel if we hope to salvage the pub,” I say with quiet resignation as I let go of the paper and watch it waft down past the table, landing on the oak floor in my sister’s dining room with a soft swoosh. “And I suspect this Bryan Truitt guy is at the center of it.”
It takes me a few seconds to locate the key on my ring. And, when I finally do manage to get it into the lock, I have to jiggle it a little before the deadbolt retracts. It’s been a
while since anyone has used the apartment above the pub. The steep, narrow staircase is dark. I reach for the light, but nothing happens when I flip the switch. I leave my suitcase at the bottom of the stairs, propping open the door with it so I can have a slice of light from the streetlamp outside. The upstairs lock is considerably smoother than the downstairs one, and when I reach around on the wall, I find the light switch, and the apartment’s interior hall light comes on. Perfect.
Once I reclaim my suitcase and hoist it up the stairs to join me, I close the door behind me. I heave a deep sigh and take a long, appraising look at the tiny rooms that were our home for the first seven years of my life. It was sweet, and cozy, and I loved sharing a room with James. But then, along came Walker, and my parents shoehorned her crib in between Jameson’s and my beds. By the time Bailey came a few years later, it was clear that the O’Halloran Clan needed something bigger. That’s when we moved to the little cape cod on Orange Avenue.
Like the rest of the place, the bedroom smells musty. Clearly no one’s stayed here since I was in town for my father’s funeral in December. I crack open the windows on the opposite side of the room, inhaling the frigid, fresh air.
Back in the kitchen, I get a K-Cup going in the Keurig and pull the phone out of my pocket. The phone that I’ve been ignoring all night.
There are a few messages from work that I’ll return tomorrow, and twice that number of work-related emails. Several un-work-related emails offer me a hot Russian beauty, an all-natural miracle for erectile dysfunction, and a walk-in tub.
And then there’s the text. Just the one.
Hey. You get there okay?
That’s from my “Friend with Benefits,” who shall remain nameless. Because I like it that way. And so does he. This relationship couldn’t get any more casual. We were random strangers in a bar who found out after last call that we lived in the same apartment building. We decided to share more than the Uber ride home. It’s not love or anything. It’s not even lust—not for me, at least. FWB has come in very handy during the long, dark winter nights. Oh, who the hell am I kidding? The lonely winter nights. Well, at least he cares enough to check on me, and that’s something. He’s also agreed to water my plants while I’m gone. My thumbs are a blur as I text him a succinct reply.
All good, TYVM. TTYL.
I flop onto the couch and close my eyes. It’s good to be home—even under these insane circumstances. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived here in Mayhem—college, law school, and my internship having kept me downstate. Finally, the pot of gold at the end of that particular rainbow was an assistant district attorney position with the Hennepin County Prosecutor’s office.
The truth is that I could have had Jameson send me all the papers—hell, I could’ve asked one of the senior partners to go over them with me. But I packed up and got in my car before I’d even gotten off the phone with her, calling the office from the road.
What’s wrong with me?
