Dot’s life had been opening itself to Laurie like a book for more than a month now, unfurling folded pages she’d never known anything about, letting Van Halen tickets flutter out, writing footnotes with Polaroids and plastic sunglasses. Like any good story, it had twisted once or twice: She was a collector, she was a sucker, she was neither, and now she was maybe a woman who always wanted something she couldn’t have. Maybe all this travel and all these friends, the smiles in front of landmarks and the cocktail party candids, were because she was stuck with a duck instead of her one true love. In a way she couldn’t explain even to herself, Laurie felt betrayed.
But all she said to Ryan was “So, it’s real.”
He nodded. “I think it’s real.”
“After all this.”
He nodded again. “Yes.”
“And we got it back.”
“You got it back,” he said. “You got it back for Dot.” He chuckled. “Boy, she’d have gotten a kick out of it, too. You had these guys for lunch, Laur.”
“What are you going to say when he calls you and he wants his money?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I might not answer, but I might answer and say somebody broke into my truck and then say, ‘What are you gonna do, call the cops?’？”
“I like it.”
She felt him turn to look at her from the passenger seat. “What are you going to do?”
“I think I have to go talk to her. The granddaughter. I think I have to meet her.” Laurie frowned. “That might be the wrong thing to do, I don’t know. But I’m definitely not ready to talk to the rest of the family, because I don’t know what we’ll do if it’s worth money. Everybody’s kind of been assuming Dot’s estate wouldn’t amount to much other than the house. I don’t want to get a whole thing started if it’s not necessary.”
“There’s not going to be a fight, right? They wouldn’t all start rolling around in the mud, Mom and her sister and her cousins?”
“I don’t think so. Dot’s will is clear enough. I just don’t want people spending money they don’t have yet. I don’t want the aunts to book any spa vacations or buy new cars. The letter and the picture are enough for me, but I don’t know what the process is for something like this, if we even want to sell it. And maybe we don’t want to sell it; maybe we want to keep it in the family. Maybe it’s an heirloom now. Maybe it’s the kind of thing you pass on to your kids. I mean, not mine, but yours.” She turned up the air-conditioning. “I just think I have to start by talking to his granddaughter. If she talked to that weasel, she’ll probably talk to me.”
“She’s not going to be happy to learn he’s a weasel.”
“Probably not, no.”
“Well, I’m excited to hear what happens next. I should get back to my wife, because I desperately want to tell her how I impersonated a con artist to nab a potentially valuable duck.” He sighed. “I can’t wait to see her.”
“You’ve been gone like three days,” Laurie said.
“Laur,” he said, “you know I don’t care if you ever get married, and you know I don’t care if you live by yourself or live with somebody else. I don’t even care if you give in to whatever this thing with Nick is. But if you’re surprised that I’m excited to see Lisa after four days, then I’m glad you didn’t marry Chris. Because you deserve to miss the hell out of somebody after four days, and you deserve to have them miss you too.”
“I have to tell you, I don’t think it’s in the cards.”
“Eh,” he said. “My softball buddy just got married, and he’s older than you.”
She groaned. “It’s different. When men are single when they’re forty, people think it’s adorable. ‘Oh, now that he’s done whatever he wanted for the first twenty years of his adulthood, maybe he’ll settle down.’ I mean, do you know how many times I’ve seen a guy on a dating site who’s forty-five, who is open to dating women who are, like, twenty to thirty-four?”
“But you’re not trying to date that guy.”
“I know. I’m just saying, it’s a system that’s rigged against women who want those same twenty years of doing whatever they want.”
“I don’t know if a bunch of dating-site clowns are a system.”
Laurie rolled her eyes and nodded. “You know how when you turn on the tap, you expect water to come out?”