Yes. My father married a woman named Crystal Dawn, first and middle name respectively, but he never missed an opportunity to call her by both. She wasn’t a stripper. Though, if you asked me, she’d missed a pretty great opportunity with a name like that. Instead, she was a beautiful white-haired widow who carried chocolates in her purse for the neighborhood kids and thought my father had hung the moon.
I hated the idea of losing him. Not being able to swing by The Wave after a hard day and find his smiling face milling around the dining room was going to be a tough adjustment. But I had every reason to believe Crystal would take care of him.
He let out a loud groan and settled on the edge of the desk. “Come with us. I’m sure they have houses to sell in Florida. Condos too.”
I lifted a handful of paper napkin IOUs in his direction. “What? And abandon all this?”
A slow smile stretched his mouth. “That was my plan.”
“Then who’s going to feed the Heathers and Kennys and Allens of the world?”
He finally chuckled. “Okay. Okay. Fair enough.”
I had no desire to take over The Wave, but I’d grown up in the burger joint. My name was quite literally carved into the back booth, and my handprints were permanently imprinted in the sidewalk. I couldn’t stand the idea of letting it close. Grey Realty kept me busy, but luckily, Mark had connections and found a full-time manager for me. Looking at the mess that was my father’s bookkeeping, I probably needed a whole team.
“All right, old man. Let’s get this organized before you abandon me for Margaritaville. Who’s your accountant?”
“Mr. Samuel,” he replied curtly.
My mouth gaped. “What the hell, Daddy? He died, like, two years ago.”
“Three actually.” He rose from the corner of the desk and walked toward the door. “I didn’t say he was good.”
“Or breathing,” I smarted. “Have you been doing this on your own since then?” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Oh, God, please tell me you’ve been paying taxes.”
He hiked up his khaki pants. “I’ve been paying…some. I got a little account set aside in case they want more, but I’ll be honest, the whole tax thing is a racket. If they know how much money I made, why won’t they just tell me what I owe? Why do I have to figure it out on my own?”
“Oh, gee. I don’t know. Maybe because it’s the law?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not behind bars yet, am I?” He pulled the door open, the loud chatter of a bustling lunch rush filling the room. “I gotta get back out there. Have you eaten?”
And that was it. He was done talking. Welcome to The Wave: where paper napkin IOUs were currency and tax evasion was the house special.
“Suddenly, I’m not hungry,” I replied.
“I’ll make you a club sandwich for the road.” The door clicked behind him.
I dropped my head to the desk. Jack Grey, with his heart of gold, was always a bit of a wildcard. Usually, I admired that about him. Now though?
I spent the next hour trying to make heads or tails of his chicken-scratch ledgers and an entire drawer of vendor receipts. True to his word, he sent one of the waitresses in with a club sandwich—no lettuce, bacon on the side, just the way I liked it—but it was a small consolation for the shitstorm he was leaving me with when he moved.
Remi
It was a bad idea. I knew it the moment I saw the going-out-of-business post on Facebook. However, I also knew it was a bad idea when I got in my car, drove forty-five minutes across town, and then street-parked because the parking lot was packed. None of that stopped me though.
I didn’t have a lot of plants—at least not by my standards. By Mark’s and Aaron’s standards, my babies were just shy of being awarded rainforest protections. They swore if I brought another one home, I was going to have to move into a she-shed in the backyard, but I was mostly sure they were bluffing. Besides, I hadn’t said anything about Mark’s pilsner glass collection on the top of the kitchen cabinets or Aaron’s million pairs of shoes that had taken over the hall linen closet. A few (dozen) plants were the least of their concerns.
Or so I told myself as I came face-to-leaf with the most beautiful Monstera Albo Half Moon to ever wear a clearance tag. She was my dream plant, my unicorn, with full tropical white-and-green split leaves. While customers swirled around the shop snatching up the Pothos, African Violets, and Peperomia, she stood alone next to the cash register. This was probably because her red tag had two thousand dollars written on the back and not a buck seventy-five like everything else. But the price of variegated perfection was not for the weak of heart—or wallet.
