“She died yesterday,” I say, my voice as flat as a board.
“Oh God, Elizabeth, I am so sorry,” she says, her voice filled with horror. “I thought you were going to say she was coming to L.A.”
“Nope, definitely not coming to L.A.,” I say, and even I can’t help but giggle at my horrible joke (lack of a joke).
“Tell me how you’re feeling,” Courtney commands in a soothing voice, which I affectionately call her “therapist voice.”
Courtney had quite a bit of trouble finding her true calling. At UCLA, while I stayed firmly focused on journalism (whole lot of good it did me career-wise), she flopped around in every major from Chinese landscaping to nursing, including an entire year as a psychology major which she thinks makes her Dr. Freud’s equal. She eventually landed in English, with plans at graduation to become an acclaimed novelist. Courtney spent the summer working on her book, which I think never got past Chapter 3, before deciding that going to law school and becoming the attorney general was her definite calling.
Showing more drive and dedication than I had expected, Courtney graduated from law school, passed the bar, and got a job as an assistant D.A. in Beverly Hills. This is where she met Dan and introduced us. Less than a year after beginning her legal career, she realized she hated the law. She quit her job, intending to pursue acting, actually explaining to me with a straight face how she thought her experience in the courtroom really made her perfect to star in an L.A. Law–type drama. At the same time, she started gluing rhinestones on everything from cell phones to Ugg boots to sell to rich people. Then, by some miracle, InStyle magazine called her accessories “must-haves,” and ever since then her business, SparkleCourt, has been her main focus, but she still considers herself something of a psychology expert and a qualified therapist.
“I dunno, Court,” I admit, letting her play shrink, since I definitely need the help. “Conflicted?” I offer.
“Um-hum,” she replies, and I have to stifle a giggle.
Courtney does her best to counsel me for the next hour before getting off because she is late for a party at the home of Debra Messing, who is apparently a huge SparkleCourt fan. When we hang up, I’m relieved that our session is over and that Courtney has settled into only helping people through retail therapy. She’s well intentioned, but there certainly isn’t a hidden talent there.
I glance at the clock again and decide to call Dan…maybe he has been trying all this time and there is something wrong with my call waiting? His cell phone goes straight to voice mail and I click off dejectedly without leaving a message.
I wander into the kitchen to find some food and am spreading peanut butter on white bread when the phone rings again. I drop the bread and knife in mid-smear and trot to the phone, so confident that it’s Dan that I don’t even bother to look at the caller ID.
“Hey,” I answer the phone, picturing Dan’s sweaty head under his plaid visor and his wide, toothy smile. Instead of hearing his warm voice, I hear the same stranger’s voice I heard last night.
“Ms. Castle, this is Mr. Platner. We spoke last night regarding Charla Tatham,” he reminds me.
Oh, so that’s who last night’s caller was. If memory serves, all the sons of the Platner family are attorneys in Victory. They are a strange family that for generations has left Victory to attend law school and then—here’s the strange part—returned to Victory to practice in the same dumpy office the generation before had used. I’m wondering which Platner this is. There was one a year above me at Victory High, but Buck Platner always seemed a little dense.
“Is this Buck Platner?” I ask, unable to fathom the football playing meathead who took me to his senior prom as an attorney.
“Yes, Lizzie, it is,” he says as if he doesn’t want to admit it, and my temper flares internally as he uses my childhood nickname.
“It’s Elizabeth now,” I correct him, coolly, trying to quash a swell of anger, “or Liz.”
“Oh, well, sorry about that Lizzie…I mean Elizabeth,” he stutters. “Look, Liz, you hung up so fast last night and your line has been busy ever since, except when there was no answer at all.”
“Well, what is it Buck?” I snap as my concern that something is wrong with my call waiting is confirmed. I need to get off this stupid call quickly since Dan is probably trying desperately to get through.
“Look, Lizzie…Liz…Elizabeth, Charla had a last will and testament. My father was actually the one who drew it up for her,” he drawls, and my mind goes back to Victory.
I am 100 percent, or if it’s possible to be more than 100 percent certain, that’s what I am that Charla did not have any great fortune that she left to her long-lost best friend. In fact, I am pretty certain that all she had was a crappy old Victory house and maybe a crappy old compact car, and since the truck clearly would not be getting handed out to survivors I didn’t see any loot I’d be interested in.
“Well, she named you guardian of her daughter, Tiffany Debbie Dearbourne.”
Again he pronounces the name the way it’s spelled, and again I correct him, but this time with a bit less patience.
“It’s Dearburn,” I bark. “You ought to know…you went to high school with her.”
“Dearburn,” he repeats, without making any apologies for his mistake. “You’re her guardian.”
I’m so focused on thinking about how even though he’s now an attorney it is clear that Buck Platner is still dense that I don’t hear him.
“So we’ll need you to sign some papers,” he continues.
“Sign what papers?” I ask, not getting over my annoyance easily.
“The guardianship papers,” he explains, and then goes on in depth about some sort of process, but again, my mind is not with him.
“Guardianship papers?” I ask, feeling that perhaps there is something wrong with my whole phone and not just the call waiting, since Buck and I seem to be carrying on two separate conversations.
“Lizzie…Liz, I just explained that you are to be guardian of Tiffany,” he says sounding exasperated and probably thinking that I am the dense one.
As his words finally penetrate, I feel a tightness in my chest and a spinning in my head. I can’t breathe well—short snips of air are escaping out of my chest, but I can’t seem to draw a good breath in. As my head grows lighter, I am somehow able to rationalize that this is a panic attack. I had one once before when my hairdresser and I had a major failure to communicate and I had to attend my college graduation with a permanent wave.
“Relax,” I command myself, but apparently I say it out loud and Buck thinks the command is intended for him, which leads to more confusion between us.
I grab an empty paper bag which was used to bring take-out moo shoo into my apartment yesterday and breathe in and out, hardly noticing the lingering smell of hoisin sauce. My heart starts to slow down, and suddenly my head rationalizes that “guardian” in this case obviously doesn’t mean what I think it means.
“What do you mean by guardian?” I ask, eager to get the misunderstanding cleared up. “Doesn’t a person have to agree to be a child’s guardian? Wouldn’t I have had to sign some sort of legal document?”
“Jesus, Lizzie,” he says, forgetting to correct himself, which is okay since I’m too distracted to notice his mistake, “I thought your folks said you went to UCLA.” He pronounces my alma mater in what I am assuming is his attempt at a hoity-toity voice. “By guardian I mean you are her legal guardian—you have custody. Charla is dead and her will states that if that happens, you raise her kid,” he finishes in a huff, forgetting his professional manner and not bothering to sugarcoat a thing.
I have a horrifying flashback to a conversation in Charla’s dingy bedroom, shortly after